Modern-day information and entertainment would not be the same without the contribution of one unlikely inventor, who changed society so profoundly but was unjustly denied the fame and fortune he rightly earned after many years of hard work and sacrifice…
Sharp pains interrupted his tortured, shallow breathing as sweat beaded and dripped from his forehead. His skin pale, clammy, cold, and riddled with goosebumps as a chill persisted throughout his entire body. His eyes sunken, bloodshot, crying out for help in the inevitable, unwinnable struggle with death.
This was the end. The final conscious moments of a brilliant mind, now forever losing its grip on autonomy, on existence.
Soon, all his mortal functions would cease and the only things he would leave behind were an alcohol-ravaged body and a legitimate claim to one of the most life-changing inventions of humanity. But even the latter, with all due official legal credit, would not spare him from the unbearable shame of historical ambiguity.
His name was Philo Farnsworth, a boy from Utah, born August 19th, 1906 – almost four months to the day of the Great San Francisco Earthquake, which killed over ten thousand, left a quarter million homeless, and caused an excess of $250 million in damage. And, if fate didn’t intervene so cruelly in his own life, he would have left a fortune that would have rivaled or even dwarfed many of his contemporaries, including the great robber barons of the day, like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan.
But, despite his intelligence and persistence, he would fall short, practically through no fault of his own, never attaining due status in his day or in the chronicles of history. Instead, his name would be relegated to those forgotten by the simple passage of time.
Before his unceremonious and excruciating end, Philo Farnsworth spent many years amazing those around him. And, it all began at a very early age – about twenty years after the initial invention of the radio and just prior to the new technology’s ubiquity. With his inquisitive mind and articulate hands, he successfully converted all the appliances in his family’s home to electric power.
Then, not long after, he took first place in a national science contest with a totally original invention – a tamper-proof lock. An auspicious moment, in many ways. By the time he was fourteen years old, the prodigy had already imagined a daring new concept that would revolutionize the dissemination of information. And, it started with a fortuitous discovery in the family’s farm attic.
There, young Philo Farnsworth came across books and magazines about science and inventions, some of which presented the challenge of going beyond radio and being able to transmit not only sound, but pictures, too.
Inspired by the idea, the fourteen-year-old farm boy looked into the possibility in the school and town libraries. Philo subsequently learned many great inventors had already tried to create such a technology, but had failed time and again.
Farnsworth was himself an obsessive tinkerer, with a natural knack for electronics and technology. He looked up to inventors like Tesla and innovators such as Edison. So, he thought with just the right materials, he could indeed design a system that would marry audio and images.
Then, one day, after plowing the field, Philo looked back and saw the parallel lines in the soil, which gave him an idea – to build a machine that could do the same thing with photos and create moving pictures. He envisioned a technology that could scan line by line and then arrange everything captured into a single picture – just how the human eye functions.
But, Philo wasn’t the only one trying to invent the television. In the UK, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird built a working mechanical TV, but it was very crude, though it still projected images. Its biggest drawback was it could not be reproduced on a mass scale. It was way too bulky and the machine’s parts moved too slowly to produce a sharp image. So, while his machine worked where others had failed, it wasn’t practical.
When the news of Baird’s inventions reached America, the aspiring inventor studied descriptions and depictions of the Scottsman’s system.
Thinking over the mechanical system, Philo experienced a revelation and he imagined an alternative, believing electrons would be ideal. But, he was unsure about how to properly manipulate the subatomic particles. If he could harness electrons, they’d move fast enough for the human eye to see a series of images as one clear picture.
Philo sketched a depiction of his invention “the image dissector,” and showed it to his science teacher, Justin Tolman.
“You see, Mr. Tolman, my device takes in light through a lens, which is then converted into electrons, passed through a vacuum, and turned into an electronic signal. The signal can then be transmitted far and wide – just like radio waves – but the signal from his machine recreates the original image, line by line.”
“Yes, I suppose so, Philo. It’s a great hypothesis, but what about its practical application? How would you make this actually work?”
“Let me show you.”
“Okay, but keep the particulars to yourself…be very careful to who you show these ideas. Possibilities like this can bring out the worst in people, young man.”
Justin Tolmon’s warning was indeed prolific, though its gravity didn’t fully make an impact until Farnsworth could no longer take his prototype any further on his own. In 1927, five years after matriculating into Brigham Young University, where he was forced to drop out just two years later due to the death of his father, Philo met the Crocker family, who learned about the former collegiate’s invention.
The Crockers were interested in backing Farnsworth, putting a tiny amount of their transcontinental railroad profits into the technological venture.
“We’re prepared to give you $25,000, for sixty percent in return, Philo.”
“But, I asked for $40,000 – for a much smaller percentage, Mr. Crocker.”
“Twenty-five thousand, for sixty percent.”
Reluctantly, the young inventor agreed and with the seed money, he relocated to San Francisco with his wife Pem, setting up a lab right inside their house. Along with a couple of electrical engineers and his brother-in-law, they got right to work.
In order to bring his original sketch to life and control the electrons, they used a cathode in a prototype to create a rapid-moving stream of electrons. The team then installed anodes to accelerate the electrons and focus the particles onto a phosphor-coated screen.
“Okay, boys, let’s test it out! Flip the switch!”
“All right, Philo, here we go!”
“I don’t see anything yet. Turn it off and I’ll make some adjustments.”
But, no matter what they tweak, the system didn’t work; they couldn’t beam a picture from the broadcaster to the receiver. That is, until September 7th, 1927. With additional tests, Farnsworth eventually found the right elements to produce a squiggly line across the screen. The system now broke down images into electrons, then rebuilt them onto a receiver, reversed the process, and created moving pictures.
When Farnsworth demonstrated the system, the Crocker family urged, “Great! Now, let’s see who’s willing to buy it, Philo!”
“Buy it? Why would we sell?”
“That’s how investing works, my boy. This could bring us a small, but really nice fortune.”
“But, I don’t want to sell it.”
“You’ve done enough – job very well done, Philo!”
“How about this…we let the press see and write about it.”
“Hmmm…an interesting idea. It certainly can’t hurt to give it a try.”
Although the Crocker family wanted to sell the invention, Philo was convinced the real money was in developing the technology, then licensing it. Farnsworth followed through and sent invitations out to several newspapers. Days later, the San Francisco Chronicle published a picture of Farnsworth and his television. Shortly after, he filed for a patent – but it would take two years for the government to grant official intellectual property protection.
In the meantime, news of his invention made him the target of one of the most powerful corporations in the world, the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA – a company with a monopoly on radio. And, its President, David Sarnoff, wanted to be the first to produce televisions on a mass scale. So, he summoned the company attorneys and top executives to his office.
“Gentlemen, do you know where a huge percentage of our revenue comes from?”
“No, not exactly, Mr. Sarnoff.”
“It comes from radio parts. RCA owns radio in more than one way. Every time a manufacturer wants to produce a new line of radios, they’ve got to license the technology from us. In short, every time our competitors sell their products, we make money. Take a look at this newspaper. Seems there’s a young man on the West Coast who is about to add images to audio. It’s called ‘television,’ and it’s the next big thing.”
“You want us to bring this boy on?”
“No. I want RCA to be the first company, the only company, to make and sell television units. If we perfect the system first, we file for patents, and just like with radio, we license everything to everyone else. So, RCA makes money, no matter what. Better yet, we control the technology, and therefore, the future of it.”
Sarnoff dispatched the top executives and corporate lawyers but didn’t rely on them alone. In order to beat Farnsworth to market, Sarnoff hired Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian engineer working for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh who also had early designs on electronic television.
There was just one problem. Regardless of his past work on the technology, Zworykin had not discovered a workable solution.
Understanding the shortcomings, Sarnoff gave Vladimir an incredibly generous budget. But, after a year of experimentation, Zworykin was no closer to solving the problem.
“Good morning, Vladimir, what have you got for me today?”
“Well, not much, Mr. Sarnoff. I’ve progressed a bit further on the signal.”
“But, not as far as Farnsworth?”
“No, no sir.”
“Where’s your team, Mr. Zworykin?”
“My team? It’s Sunday, Mr. Sarnoff.”
“And why they’re taking the day off, our young rival is inching ever closer to victory.”
Frustrated with the lack of progress, Sarnoff sent his top engineer to various R&D labs, as well as to Farnsworth’s. Zworykin visited a number of places in the following weeks. But, none of them put him any closer to a workable solution. Vladimir realized the only way to improve his design was to get a close look at Philo’s machine.
“Good day, Mr. Farnsworth! My name is Vladimir Zworykin. I’m here from RCA and we’d like to extend a very lucrative offer!”
“Well, please come in, Mr. Zworykin. Let me show you around our little lab.”
“I’ve heard you’ve made some big strides in developing a working television.”
“Yes, yes…to an extent.”
Unaware of Zworykin’s true intentions, Farnsworth demonstrated his latest system. Vladimir took full advantage of his rival’s naivete, taking mental notes in order to reverse engineer Philo’s machine. And, that’s precisely what he did when he got back to RCA in New York – instructing his team to mimic various aspects and elements of what he saw just days before. It gave RCA an enormous advance in the right direction and they were much closer to building the first commercial television for every household in the country.
However, Philo learned about the espionage and that’s when the inventor began drinking. It started with just a couple of swigs from a flask – maybe once or twice a day and perhaps a nightcap in the evening before bed.
But, Farnsworth’s alcohol consumption would only grow, eventually becoming a habit to cope with stress. After a short time, he’d come to depend on drinking, and eventually, it would become a full-blown addiction.
Since Philo couldn’t compete directly with the deep pockets of RCA, he turned to Philadelphia-based radio manufacturer Philco. The move worked, but only for a brief time.
Like all other radio makers, Philco had to license its products through RCA. To prevent Farnsworth from getting his system to the market first, Snaroff threatened Philco with denying any more licensing. So, Philco stopped producing televisions, and Philo began drinking to deal with the situation.
The growing opposition of Sarnoff’s reach blocks Farnsworth at every turn. He couldn’t partner up with anyone and that leaves Philo with just one option.
“We’ve got to sue, Pem.”
“What? Sue who, Philo?”
“RCA.”
Farnsworth wasn’t being hyperbolic. He went to court. But, he faced a huge problem. Philo filed his patent in 1927, but Zworykin filed his patents in 1923 – four years earlier. In order to prevail, one party had to demonstrably prove to the court he had a working design first – the entire case depended on that fact alone.
Since the burden fell on who had the working system first, a highly technical process had to be laid out before the court. For fifteen long, difficult months, the court battle drug on, with technical experts giving their opinions about the viability of each system and RCA was in a prime position to prevail.
Farnsworth increasingly drank during the day and into the evening. But, he always rallied and sobered up. With just one chance left to convince the patent court that his design was indeed a working system, Philo called on his high school teacher, Justin Tolman, to testify on his behalf.
“Would the witness kindly state his name and profession to the court?”
“Justin Tolman, high school science teacher.”
“Thank you. Now, Mr. Tolman, please answer the questions the defendant’s attorney has for you.”
“Yes, thank you, your Honor. Now, Mr. Tolman, you stated you’re a science teacher, is that correct?”
“It is.”
“What kind of science do you teach?”
“Chemistry.”
“Hmmm…chemistry. That’s certainly a difficult subject.”
“It can be difficult, but it’s interesting.”
“Agreed. Physics is also a difficult area of science, isn’t it, Mr. Tolman?”
“Most definitely.”
“Do you have any formal training in physics, Mr. Tolman?”
“No, I do not.”
“What about mechanical engineering?”
“No, I don’t have any formal training in mechanical engineering, either.”
“But, despite this fact, Mr. Farnsworth told you about his idea for a television when he was in your class?”
“That’s correct, he told me about his idea.”
“And, what was your reaction?”
“I was astounded. He’s the most intelligent student I’ve ever had the privilege of teaching.”
“That’s certainly a nice compliment. But, let’s get back to the issues at hand, Mr. Tolman.”
“All right.”
“So, the plaintiff claims he showed you his idea back in high school.”
“That’s correct.”
“And, although you don’t have any formal training in physics or in mechanical engineering, you still managed to judge his idea to be viable, to have merit for practical application?”
“Yes, I did…as best I could.”
“Mr. Tolman, how could you be so confident he conceived a working model?”
“Well, because he drew me a picture…I have it right here.”
Philo’s high school science teacher pulled a sheet of paper out of his coat pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to the court. The sketch almost perfectly matched Farnsworth’s patent, proving he indeed did have a workable system one full year before Zworykin. The court immediately awarded priority of patent to Philo.
But, Sarnoff wasn’t finished.
Hearing the news of the court decision, Sarnoff instructed the company’s attorneys to file appeals and do anything they could to keep the litigation going.
Sarnoff pursued a ruthless lawfare strategy: bankrupt Philo while RCA continued to experiment with the technology. The underhanded tactics work. By 1939, Sarnoff introduced the public to television at the World’s Fair. Farnsworth just couldn’t withstand the onslaught. On the way home from a bar, inebriated and staggering, Philo broke through a crowd, all waiting for the introduction of this impressive visual medium. He stumbled home, depressed more than ever.
By this time, Zworykin had gotten his model up to 440 lines and 30 frames per second – the same as Farnsworth’s. It was a clever PR strategy, and now, consumers associated TV with RCA.
Still, Sarnoff was unsatisfied with the quality, so he ordered Zworykin to improve the technology and Vladimir eventually delivered.
Unfortunately, his innovation used elements of Farnsworth’s system and RCA needed the licensing rights.
Now, Sarnoff had to do the one thing he avoided at all costs before – ask Philo’s lawyers to strike a deal with RCA to license his invention. Farnsworth and RCA agree to a $1 million fee and a licensing fee for every television sold.
Philo Farnsworth believed he’d finally won. His vision for TV was for it to be used to educate people and provide valuable information. He planned to give up drinking and rededicate himself to his work.
But then, the Japanese ambushed Pearl Harbor and the U.S. government ordered all manufacturing to be dedicated to the war effort. By the time WWII was over, Farnsworth’s patents expired.
Later on, when the first shows were aired, the inventor was completely shocked. The programming was almost purely entertainment and advertising, with relatively little education, news, and information.
So, he refused to watch and forbid his own children from watching. It wasn’t until the 1969 lunar landing that he tuned into to see the historical event and remarked to his wife Pem, “This is it. This is what made it all worthwhile.”
Although he invented the television, he never became rich or famous. Philo Farnsworth, saddled with mountains of debt and faced with utter financial ruin, died at home of pneumonia in Salt Lake City, Utah on March 11th, 1971.
His wife would spend most of the next thirty-five years lobbying for her husband’s notoriety before her own death on April 27th, 2006, but she was unsuccessful.
The clever inventor never truly escaped the tortuous clutch of soul-crushing obscurity in life or death.
