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Philo Farnsworth |
| Philo Taylor Farnsworth | |
 1983 United States postage stamp honoring Farnsworth
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| Born | August 19, 1906 Beaver, Utah, USA |
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| Died | March 11, 1971 (aged 64) Salt Lake City, Utah, USA |
| Resting place | Provo City Cemetery, Provo, Utah, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Inventor of the first electronic television, over 300 United States and foreign patents |
| Religious beliefs | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints |
| Spouse(s) | Elma "Pem" Gardner |
| Parents | Lewis and Serena Farnsworth |
| Website philotfarnsworth.com |
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Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor. He is best known for inventing the first completely electronic television. In particular, he was the first to make a working electronic image pickup device (video camera tube), and the first to demonstrate an all-electronic television system to the public.
In his later life, Farnsworth also invented a small nuclear fusion device known as a fusor.
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Many inventors had written about, worked on or built various electro-mechanical television systems prior to Farnsworth's seminal contribution, among them Alexander Bain, Paul Nipkow, Aleksandr Stoletov, Karl Ferdinand Braun, Boris Rosing, Herbert E. Ives, and John Logie Baird. Several inventors also wrote about, devised or built electronic apparatus prior to Farnsworth, including Boris Rosing, Alan Archibald Campbell-Swinton, Kalman Tihanyi, Vladimir Zworykin and Kenjiro Takayanagi. Farnsworth made the world's first working television system with electronic scanning of both the pickup and display devices, which he first demonstrated to news media on September 1, 1928, televising a motion picture film; and to the public at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934, televising live images.
In 1930, after a visit to Farnsworth's laboratory, Vladimir Zworykin copied this apparatus for RCA, though he found it impractical and returned to his work on the iconoscope. The U.S. Patent Office rendered a decision in 1935 that the "electrical image" of Farnsworth's image dissector was not in Zworykin's inventions, and priority of that invention was awarded to Farnsworth. Farnsworth nevertheless lost some court decisions for other key television inventions. Some aspects of Farnsworth's 1930 camera and receiver designs remain in use today.
Farnsworth was born into a Mormon family in Beaver, Utah on August 19, 1906. His parents were Lewis Edwin and Serena Bastian Farnsworth.1 His father later relocated the family to Rigby, Idaho, where he worked as a sharecropper. When they moved to their new home, Philo was apparently excited to find it was wired for electrical power, something that was still fairly rare at that point, at least in the countryside. It had electric lighting, and power hoists to lift hay into the barn. Farnsworth converted a washing machine from hand to electric power by winding an armature to construct an electric motor.2 Young Philo developed an early interest in electronics after his first telephone conversation with an out-of-state relative and the discovery of a large cache of technology magazines in the attic of the family’s new home.
Farnsworth excelled in chemistry and physics at Rigby High School, and produced sketches and prototypes of electron tubes. One of the drawings he did on a blackboard for his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, was recalled and reproduced for a patent interference case between Farnsworth and Radio Corporation of America (RCA).3 Philo took violin lessons from Reuben Wilkins in Ucon, Idaho. After a brief stint in the Navy, Farnsworth returned to Idaho to help support his mother.
The Farnsworth family moved to Provo, Utah in 1923, where Philo enrolled at Brigham Young University. By the end of the year, his father Lewis was dead from pneumonia, Philo was forced to quit his studies, and the family moved into half of a two-family house. It was here that Farnsworth developed a close friendship with Cliff Gardner, who shared Farnsworth's interest in electronics. The two moved to Salt Lake City to start a radio repair business.
The business failed, and Gardner returned to Provo. However, Farnsworth remained in Salt Lake City and, through enrollment in a University of Utah job-placement service, he became acquainted with Leslie Gorrell and George Everson, a pair of San Francisco philanthropists who were conducting a Salt Lake City Community Chest program4. They agreed to fund Farnsworth's early television research, and set up a laboratory in Los Angeles for Farnsworth to carry out his experiments5. Before relocating to California, Farnsworth married the sister of his friend and associate Cliff Gardner, Elma “Pem” Gardner Farnsworth (February 25, 1908 - April 27, 2006)6, and the two traveled to the West Coast in a Pullman coach.
Within months, Farnsworth was ready to demonstrate his models and blueprints to a patent attorney who was a national authority on electrophysics. Everson and Gorrell agreed Farnsworth should apply for patents, which became critical to later disputes with RCA. To that point the development of television relied on mechanical whirling disks to scan the image. Farnsworth's innovation was to recognize that a satisfactory image, using whirling disks, would require a speed that was a mechanical impossibility, and that his own all-electronic system could produce an image for broadcast much more effectively.7
On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's Image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image, a simple straight line, at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. The source of the image was a glass slide, backlit by an arc lamp. This was due to the lack of light sensitivity of the Image Dissector tube design, a problem Farnsworth never managed to resolve independently. By 1928, Farnsworth had developed the system sufficiently to hold a demonstration for the press - 2 years after John Logie Baird had demonstrated his mechanical Television system in London. His backers had demanded to know when they would see dollars from the invention.8 The first image shown to them was a dollar sign. In 1929, the system was further improved by elimination of a motor-generator; the television system now had no mechanical moving parts. That year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images using his television system, including a three and a half-inch image of his wife, Pem (with her eyes closed because of the blinding light required).
In 1930, Vladimir Zworykin, who had been developing his own all-electronic television system at Westinghouse, in Pittsburgh, since 1923, was recruited by RCA and visited Farnsworth's laboratory. Zworykin was impressed with the performance of the Image Dissector and had his engineers make a working copy of it, though he saw that the dissector's need for excessive light requirements made it impractical. In 1931, David Sarnoff of RCA offered to buy Farnsworth's patents for $100,000, with the stipulation that Farnsworth become an employee at RCA, but Farnsworth refused; in June of that year Farnsworth joined the Philco company and moved his laboratory to Philadelphia, along with his wife and two children.
When Farnsworth traveled to England in 1932 while raising money in his legal battles with RCA, he met with John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor who had developed mechanical-scan cameras, and was seeking to develop electronic television receivers, having made the worlds first public demonstration of mechanical Television in London in 1926. Baird demonstrated his mechanical system for Farnsworth. According to Farnsworth accounts, Baird explained "the superiority of his system to Farnsworth", but after watching several minutes of Farnsworth's version, he left the room without a word, "having realized the futility of his efforts"citation needed. Baird himself had supported an earlier merger with Farnsworth's competitors in the U.K., the Marconi Company; the merger did not succeed. Marconi had a patent-sharing agreement with RCA. Baird company directors decided later to merge with Farnsworth. Baird's company paid Farnsworth $50,000 to supply electronic television equipment, and provide access to Farnsworth television patents. Baird and Farnsworth competed with EMI for forming the standard U.K. television system. EMI however merged with Marconi in 1934, gaining access to the RCA Iconoscope patents. After trials of both systems, the BBC committee chose the Marconi-EMI system, which was by then virtually identical to RCA's (Zworykin's) system. The Image dissector camera scanned well, but had poor light sensitivity compared to the Marconi-EMI Iconoscopes, which were called Emitrons. Farnsworth's old adversary, Vladimir Zworykin, also made an appearance at the BBC television trials.
After sailing to Europe in 1934, Farnsworth also secured an agreement with the Goerz-Bosch-Fernseh interests in Germany.9 Some image dissector cameras were used to broadcast Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Philco denied Farnsworth time to travel to Utah to bury his young son Kenny, who died in March 1932; this death put a strain on Farnsworth's marriage and may have marked the beginning of his struggle with depression. In 1934, because Farnsworth was making poor progress with in his television work, Philco severed their relationship.
Farnsworth returned to his lab. By 1936, Farnsworth's company was transmitting regular entertainment programs experimentally. In addition, Farnsworth, working with University of Pennsylvania biologists, developed a process to sterilize milk by passing radio waves through it. He had also invented a fog-penetrating beam for ships and airplanes.10
In 1938, he established the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with E.A. Nicholas as president, and himself as director of research. In 1939, Farnsworth sold his television patents to RCA Victor for $1 million. The New York World's Fair showcased electronic television sets in April 1939, and soon afterward, RCA electronic televisions went on sale to the public.
Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation was purchased by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) in 1951. During his time at ITT, Farnsworth worked in a basement lab known as “the cave” on Pontiac Street in Fort Wayne. From here he introduced a number of breakthrough concepts, including: a defense early warning signal, submarine detection devices, radar calibration equipment, and an infrared telescope. “Philo was a very deep person – tough to engage in conversation because he was always thinking about what he could do next,” says Art Resler, an ITT photographer who documented Farnsworth’s work in pictures.11 One of Farnsworth's most significant contributions at ITT was the PPI Projector, which allowed safe control of air traffic from the ground. This system developed in the 1950s was the forerunner of today’s sophisticated air traffic control systems.
In addition to his electronics research, ITT management agreed to nominally fund Farnsworth's controlled fusion ideas. He and staff members invented and refined a series of fusion reaction tubes called "fusors." For scientific reasons unknown to Farnsworth and his staff, the necessary reactions lasted no longer than thirty seconds. In December 1965, ITT came under pressure from its board of directors to terminate the expensive fusion research and sell the Farnsworth subsidiary. It was only from the urging of President Harold Geneen that the 1966 budget was accepted, permitting ITT's fusion research one additional year. However, the stress associated with this managerial ultimatum threw Farnsworth into relapse. One year later he was terminated and eventually allowed medical retirement.12
In the spring of 1967, Farnsworth and his family moved back to Utah to continue his fusion research at Brigham Young University, which presented him with an honorary doctorate. The university also offered him office space and an underground concrete bunker location for the project. Realizing the fusion lab was to be dismantled at ITT, Farnsworth invited staff members to accompany him to Salt Lake City as team members in his planned Philo T. Farnsworth Associates (PTFA) organization. By late 1968 the associates began holding regular business meetings and PTFA was underway. However, although a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration was promptly secured and more possibilities were within reach, the financing needed to pay the $24,000 in monthly expenses for equipment rental and salaries was stalled.12
By Christmas 1970, PTFA had failed to secure the necessary financing, the Farnsworths had sold all their own ITT stock and cashed out Philo's life insurance policy to maintain organization stability. The underwriter had failed to provide the financial backing that was to have supported the organization during its critical first year. The banks called-in all outstanding loans. Repossession notices were placed on anything not previously sold and the Internal Revenue Service put a lock on the laboratory door until delinquent taxes were paid. During January 1970, Philo T. Farnsworth Associates disbanded. Farnsworth became seriously ill with pneumonia and died on 11 March 1971.12
Farnsworth's wife Elma Gardner "Pem" Farnsworth fought for decades after his death to assure his place in history. Farnsworth always gave her equal credit for creating television, saying "my wife and I started this TV." She died on April 27, 2006, at the age of 98.13 The inventor's long-lived wife was survived by two sons, Russell (then living in New York), and Kent (then living in Fort Wayne, Indiana).
Philo Farnsworth had been credited as the "father of television."
Scientific American Magazine called him one of the ten greatest mathematicians of his time.12
Farnsworth worked out the principle of the image dissector television camera at age 14, and produced the first working version at age 21. A farm boy, his inspiration for the scanning lines of the cathode ray tube (CRT) came from the back-and-forth motion used to plow a field. During a patent lawsuit against RCA in 1935, his high school chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, reproduced a drawing that Farnsworth, when he was just 14, had made on the blackboard at the school. Farnsworth won the suit and was paid royalties but never became wealthy. The video camera tube developed from a combination of the work of Farnsworth and Zworykin, was used in all television cameras until the late 20th century, when alternate technologies such as charge-coupled devices started to appear.
Farnsworth developed the "image oscillite", a cathode ray tube receiver that could display images captured by the image dissector.
The Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor, or simply fusor, is an apparatus designed by Farnsworth to create nuclear fusion. Unlike most controlled fusion systems, which slowly heat a magnetically confined plasma, the fusor injects high temperature ions directly into a reaction chamber, thereby avoiding a considerable amount of complexity.
When Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor was first introduced to the fusion research world in the late 1960s, the Fusor was the first device that could clearly demonstrate it was producing any fusion reactions at all. Hopes at the time were high that it could be quickly developed into a practical power source. However, as with other fusion experiments, development into a power source has proven difficult. Nevertheless, the fusor has since become a practical neutron source and is produced commercially for this role.
At his death, Farnsworth held 300 U.S. and foreign patents. His inventions contributed to the development of radar, the infra-red night light, the electron microscope, the baby incubator, the gastroscope, and the astronomical telescope.1412
Although he was the man responsible for its technology, Farnsworth appeared only once on a television program. On July 3, 1957, he was a mystery guest ("Doctor X") on the TV quiz show I've Got A Secret. He fielded questions from the panel as they unsuccessfully tried to guess his secret ("I invented electronic television."). For stumping the panel, he received $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes.15
In the interview with host Garry Moore, Dr. Farnsworth said: "There had been attempts to devise a television system using mechanical disks and rotating mirrors and vibrating mirrors--all mechanical. My contribution was to take out the moving parts and make the thing entirely electronic, and that was the concept that I had when I was just a freshman in high school [in 1922, at age 14]." When Moore asked about others' contributions, Dr. Farnsworth agreed, "There are literally thousands of inventions important to television. I hold something in excess of 165 American patents." The host then asked about his current research, and the inventor replied, "In television, we're attempting first to make better utilization of the bandwidth, because we think we can eventually get in excess of 2000 lines instead of 525 ... and do it on an even narrower channel ... which will make for a much sharper picture. We believe in the picture-frame type of a picture, where the visual display will be just a screen. And we hope for a memory, so that the picture will be just as though it's pasted on there."
In a 1996 videotaped interview by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, available on Google video,16 Elma Farnsworth recounts Philo's change of heart about the value of television, after seeing how it showed man walking on the moon, in real time, to millions of viewers:
A letter to the editor of the Idaho Falls-based Post Register disputed the single television appearance claim. Published in the December 10, 2007 edition (page A4, digital version requires subscription), Roy Southwick claimed "... I interviewed Mr. [Philo] Farnsworth back in 1953 - the first day KID-TV went on the air." KID-TV later became KIDK-TV, and was the first local broadcaster in southeast Idaho. The KID-TV affiliate is located a 15 minute drive from the Rigby area where Farnsworth worked in the potato fields and struck on his idea for electrons forming an image.
He is also the namesake for Professor Farnsworth in the TV show Futurama.
Although Philo T. Farnsworth is sometimes quoted as telling his son Kent, with regard to television:
His family's website makes it clear that this is Kent's summation of his father's view, rather than a quote.
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