PHILO T. FARNSWORTH: "Dr. X's" Instant Images
One fine day in a field of hay, an Idaho farm boy dreams up electronic television
In 1957, a "Dr. X" appeared on CBS-TV's I've Got a Secret with this "secret" (as revealed to the studio audience on a flashcard): "I invented electronic television." A second card added--"In 1922 when I was 14 years old." One panelist thought "Dr. X" might be a medical doctor who had invented some kind of machine that was painful when used. "Yes, sometimes it's most painful," he replied, drawing chuckles from the audience. The panel did not guess the secret of the nondescript, frail 50-year-old and gave no sign of recognition when his name was announced. Philo T. Farnsworth's moment on the small screen was brief: "Unfortunately, television being what it is, and it's your baby," said host Garry Moore, "we're out of time." Professing "eternal gratitude"--"We'd all be out of work if it weren't for you"--Moore gave him $80 in winnings and a carton of Winstons. Farnsworth flashed a smile as he left--or was it a grimace? The inventor deserved to be a legend like Edison, his hero. Instead, fate--abetted by the Radio Corp. of America--had reduced him to a game-show curiosity.
His dreams of glory had first been dreamt in an Idaho hayfield in 1921. The Mormon farm boy had read articles in popular technical magazines about early mechanical television systems ("Pictures That Could Fly Through the Air"). Experimenters in New York and abroad sought to scan images with a spinning perforated disk, send them through a wire or by radio, and reconstitute them with a second spinning disk into a fuzzy pattern of light and shadows. Young Farnsworth knew instinctively what it would take the pioneers of mechanical television another decade to learn: The disks would never spin fast enough to make a moving image sharp. A magnetized beam of electrons, however, could do the job, the 14-year-old decided. As he looked at the horizontal rows he had just cut in the hayfield with a horse-drawn harvester, he envisioned electrons following the same path on a viewing screen--scanning line by line at electronic speed--producing a picture the eye would see as solid and continuous.
Young Farnsworth's manner was self-effacing, his speech was halting. Yet when he talked about his hopes of inventing electronic television, he swelled with infectious confidence and the words tumbled out. At age 15, he convinced his high school chemistry teacher that his ideas would work. Bankers and other serious folk were impressed enough with him at age 19 to set him up in a small laboratory staffed by his young wife, her brother, and a couple of engineers. Working 12 hours a day and six days a week, the team blew glass for the tubes, sculpted metal, scavenged everywhere for usable components. In January 1927, Farnsworth filed his first patent application and come September 7, in a loft at 202 Green Street in San Francisco, he transmitted the first electronic television image in history. It was of a glass slide with a line drawn on it (a subsequent transmission teased his financial backers by showing a dollar sign). When Farnsworth gave reporters a look a year later, the image was blurry and no bigger than a postage stamp. Still, objects in the picture were seen to move.
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