Thomas Rogers
Well-Known Member
The Story of Philo T. Farnsworth
--by Chris Davison
September 7, 1927. San Francisco. A young man transmits the image of a horizontal line from one room to the next. As the invisible EM waves slip silently through the wall, they stimulate electrons to light up a screen in the next room, a glow that has reflected down through the past 79 years and in which we all still bask. To announce the enormity of his achievement in his own uniquely understated way, the young genius says, "You've got television."
The young man in question is Philo T. Farnsworth, born in a log cabin in Indian Creek, Utah on August 19, 1906. By the age of three he was already showing signs of being a true wunderkind: Philo's father had allowed him to see the inside of a train for a few moments, and when they got home the toddler demonstrated a photographic memory by spontaneously reproducing a detailed schematic of the train in perfect detail.
In Philo's later boyhood years the Farnsworth family left Utah and moved north to Rigby, Idaho. Philo was thrilled to discover that his new home had electricity, and was even more excited when he went up into the attic and discovered a large cache of scientific and technical magazines. Philo was an avid reader and by 1920 he was aware of scanning disk television technology, though he already knew it would never work as a practical device. Thirteen-year-old Philo reasoned that mechanical televisions were impractical since their large spinning disks could never spin fast enough, safely or otherwise. In 1921, Philo had an epiphany while plowing his family's potato fields: he noticed that the plow created long, straight lines one by one, which when viewed as a whole created a larger picture. A flash of insight occurred and Philo realized that if only he could somehow figure out a way to control electrons, to make them scan and line up in perfect rows, that he could use them to create pictures, images that could be transmitted and received using radio waves. A few years later, Philo told his girlfriend about his ideas for television and she promptly dumped him, saying that the man she would marry had to be headed someplace.
Undaunted, Philo chanced to meet beautiful young Elma "Pem" Gardner, and when he told her about his ideas she loved them and offered to help in any way possible.
Not long afterward, Philo and Pem were married and on their wedding night Philo said, "There's something I need to tell you. There's another woman in my life?." Before Pem could faint, he added "?and her name is television." Philo then suggested that the two of them work together on his vision so that they could spend a lot of time with each other. Pem accepted and so began the partnership that would lead to the birth of television.
In 1926, Philo approached bankers at San Francisco's Crocker National Bank and told them that if they funded his experiments he'd scan, transmit and display TV images by 1927. From a purely engineering standpoint, think about the chutzpah of this fellow: a teenage boy with no formal training promising some hardnosed bankers that he could go from concept to working prototype by the next year. Any trained engineer--then or now--would have said that it's impossible, but here we are today retelling the story because Philo was right. Back east, companies like GE, RCA and AT&T were hiring PhDs and spending millions of dollars to develop a working electronic television system, while Philo's San Francisco team consisted of himself, his 18-year-old wife and her 21-year-old brother, Cliff--three untrained kids working on a combined R&D budget of $1000 per month.
On August 30, 1927, Philo and his team tried their first test, but the images produced were unclear. Philo proceeded to strip everything right down to the bare bones and within one week he had either refurbished or replaced every single component. On the night of September 7, Philo trie
--by Chris Davison
September 7, 1927. San Francisco. A young man transmits the image of a horizontal line from one room to the next. As the invisible EM waves slip silently through the wall, they stimulate electrons to light up a screen in the next room, a glow that has reflected down through the past 79 years and in which we all still bask. To announce the enormity of his achievement in his own uniquely understated way, the young genius says, "You've got television."
The young man in question is Philo T. Farnsworth, born in a log cabin in Indian Creek, Utah on August 19, 1906. By the age of three he was already showing signs of being a true wunderkind: Philo's father had allowed him to see the inside of a train for a few moments, and when they got home the toddler demonstrated a photographic memory by spontaneously reproducing a detailed schematic of the train in perfect detail.
In Philo's later boyhood years the Farnsworth family left Utah and moved north to Rigby, Idaho. Philo was thrilled to discover that his new home had electricity, and was even more excited when he went up into the attic and discovered a large cache of scientific and technical magazines. Philo was an avid reader and by 1920 he was aware of scanning disk television technology, though he already knew it would never work as a practical device. Thirteen-year-old Philo reasoned that mechanical televisions were impractical since their large spinning disks could never spin fast enough, safely or otherwise. In 1921, Philo had an epiphany while plowing his family's potato fields: he noticed that the plow created long, straight lines one by one, which when viewed as a whole created a larger picture. A flash of insight occurred and Philo realized that if only he could somehow figure out a way to control electrons, to make them scan and line up in perfect rows, that he could use them to create pictures, images that could be transmitted and received using radio waves. A few years later, Philo told his girlfriend about his ideas for television and she promptly dumped him, saying that the man she would marry had to be headed someplace.
Undaunted, Philo chanced to meet beautiful young Elma "Pem" Gardner, and when he told her about his ideas she loved them and offered to help in any way possible.
Not long afterward, Philo and Pem were married and on their wedding night Philo said, "There's something I need to tell you. There's another woman in my life?." Before Pem could faint, he added "?and her name is television." Philo then suggested that the two of them work together on his vision so that they could spend a lot of time with each other. Pem accepted and so began the partnership that would lead to the birth of television.
In 1926, Philo approached bankers at San Francisco's Crocker National Bank and told them that if they funded his experiments he'd scan, transmit and display TV images by 1927. From a purely engineering standpoint, think about the chutzpah of this fellow: a teenage boy with no formal training promising some hardnosed bankers that he could go from concept to working prototype by the next year. Any trained engineer--then or now--would have said that it's impossible, but here we are today retelling the story because Philo was right. Back east, companies like GE, RCA and AT&T were hiring PhDs and spending millions of dollars to develop a working electronic television system, while Philo's San Francisco team consisted of himself, his 18-year-old wife and her 21-year-old brother, Cliff--three untrained kids working on a combined R&D budget of $1000 per month.
On August 30, 1927, Philo and his team tried their first test, but the images produced were unclear. Philo proceeded to strip everything right down to the bare bones and within one week he had either refurbished or replaced every single component. On the night of September 7, Philo trie
