Philo Farnsworth

He was born in a log cabin his grandfather had built at Manderfield, near Beaver, Utah, the eldest of five children of a Latter-day Saint couple. In 1918 the family took a 240-acre ranch near Rigby, Idaho, and in the attic of the new house he found a stack of technology magazines. He worked out the principle of the image dissector in the summer of 1921, before his 15th birthday, and the idea of scanning a picture as a series of lines came from the back-and-forth of plowing a field. He covered several blackboards explaining it to his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman. His father died of pneumonia in January 1924, and the boy finished high school while holding the family together.

He married Elma Gardner, called Pem, on May 27, 1926, and they went to Berkeley in a Pullman coach and rented a house on Derby Street, from which he filed his first television patent. Two San Francisco backers, Leslie Gorrell and George Everson, put up 6,000 dollars. On September 7, 1927, at 202 Green Street in San Francisco, his image dissector transmitted its first picture — a single straight line — to a receiver in the next room. The first image he showed the press, on September 3, 1928, was a dollar sign, because the backers wanted proof of a return. RCA sued on Vladimir Zworykin's claimed priority in 1934. Tolman produced the sketch he had made of the schoolboy's blackboard, and the Patent Office decided for Farnsworth in February 1935. RCA appealed in 1936 and lost.

He never got rich from it. In 1967 he moved back to Utah to keep working on nuclear fusion at Brigham Young University, which gave him an honorary doctorate, an office and a concrete bunker underground. He set up Philo T. Farnsworth Associates, landed a NASA contract, and could not raise the 24,000 dollars a month it needed. By Christmas 1970 he and Pem had sold every share of their ITT stock and cashed in his life insurance to keep the company breathing. The banks called the loans. Repossession notices went on whatever had not already been sold. The Internal Revenue Service padlocked the laboratory door until the back taxes were paid. The associates disbanded in January 1971. He had become dependent on alcohol, caught pneumonia, and died at home in Holladay on March 11 at 64.

He is buried in Provo City Cemetery. Pem spent the next three decades making sure the record named him, and lived to 98. In 1990 Utah put a bronze Farnsworth in National Statuary Hall in Washington. On March 10, 2020, it came out and went to Utah Valley University, and in December 2024 Martha Hughes Cannon took Utah's place in the Capitol instead. The measure of how far he had slipped out of view is a game show. On July 3, 1957 he went on I've Got a Secret as Doctor X, and a panel of professional guessers could not work out that the man before them had invented electronic television. He won 80 dollars and a carton of cigarettes.

Philo Farnsworth's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Image dissector camera tube invention
  The first fully electronic television camera 1927
• First television patent patent
  Filed January 7, 1927 and granted August 26, 1930 1930
• Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation company
  Fort Wayne, Indiana — it sold complete television systems until 1951 1938
• PPI Projector invention
  A circular-sweep radar display developed at ITT, the forerunner of ground air traffic control —
• Farnsworth fusor invention
  An inertial electrostatic confinement device — the reactions never lasted 30 seconds —

• 1918 aged ~12 The family moves to a ranch near Rigby, Idaho, with an attic full of magazines
• 1921 aged ~15 Works out the principle of the image dissector before his 15th birthday He explained it on his chemistry teacher's blackboards the following spring.
• January 1924 aged 17 His father dies of pneumonia and he takes on the family at 17
• May 27, 1926 aged 19 Marries Elma Gardner and moves to California
• September 7, 1927 aged 21 Transmits the first electronic television image, a straight line The receiver was in the next room of the Green Street laboratory.
• September 3, 1928 aged 22 Shows the press a dollar sign, because the backers wanted proof
• February 1935 aged 28 The Patent Office decides the interference suit in his favor RCA appealed in 1936 and lost.
• September 1939 aged 33 RCA finally licenses his 1927 patent for a million dollars The agreement ran for several years and came after more than a decade of litigation.
• March 11, 1971 aged 64 Dies at home in Holladay, Utah, at 64 His fusion company had disbanded two months earlier.

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