Posted on 04/28/2006 9:53:07 AM PDT by Borges
Elma “Pem” Farnsworth, widow of the man credited with inventing electronic television and a former longtime Fort Wayne resident, died Thursday in Bountiful, Utah. She was 98.
Farnsworth married Philo T. Farnsworth in 1926. On Sept. 7, 1927, he transmitted the first image on television in San Francisco, the concept for which he came up with while plowing his father’s Idaho potato field at age 14.
When she married Philo, whom she called Phil, he told her he had another woman in his life – television, said Bob Metcalf of Fort Wayne, who formerly held her power of attorney. Pem Farnsworth welcomed Philo’s interest.
“She was really a partner with him,” Metcalf said.
Pem Farnsworth also was the first person whose image appeared on TV, Metcalf said.
She and Philo lived in Fort Wayne from the ’40s to the ’60s, after he established Farnsworth Television and Radio Corp. in the city in 1938. The Farnsworths lived in a house at State and St. Joseph boulevards. They moved to Maine in 1967 and later to Salt Lake City, where he died in 1971.
In 1997, Pem Farnsworth moved back to Fort Wayne to live with her youngest son, Kent. She returned to Utah less than two years ago to be near family, including a sister who died less than a month ago.
“Pem was a very vivacious and energetic woman who believed she could do anything,” said her Hawaii-based personal manager, Georja Skinner. “She gave such great things to our world. She was someone who really lived from the heart and spoke frequently on having children know that anything you can dream, you can do.”
Skinner met Pem Farnsworth in 1975, when her then-husband, Paul Schatzkin, met with Farnsworth to gather information for a TV movie on Philo. That movie never happened, but Skinner and Schatzkin, who wrote a biography of Philo Farnsworth, struck up a lifelong friendship.
Pem Farnsworth dedicated her life to making sure people knew that her husband was the inventor of TV, Schatzkin said. Philo never received his full due while alive because of the expiration of patents and the marketing muscle of competitor RCA.
That began to change in the 1980s when he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame and was among a handful of inventors whose faces graced postage stamps.
In 1990, Pem Farnsworth published a book about her husband, “Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier.”
In 2003, an Emmy award named after Philo was given for the first time – the Philo T. Farnsworth Award for Technical Achievement. Pem Farnsworth attended the ceremony.
“We liked to call her the mother of television,” Schatzkin said.
She had mixed feelings about her husband’s finally receiving recognition, he said.
“She had great disappointment that she was never able to see a movie about her husband’s accomplishments,” he said. “There was frustration that he still hadn’t gotten the recognition he deserved on a global scale.”
A movie is in the works for HBO, Skinner said.
“I’ll make sure that movie gets developed,” she said. “I’ll continue the work we started together.”
Pem Farnsworth is survived by her sons, Kent and Russell of New York, and several grandchildren. She was preceded in death by sons Kenneth Gardner and Philo III. Funeral arrangements in Utah are pending.
--(this is a vanity reply)--Philo Farnsworth was my son-in-law's first cousin, three times removed-
I'm pretty sure Al Gore invented television. Are you sure this article is reliable?
Philp did indeed invent Television. RCA even went to court over it, saying that their guy (Zarnoff) invented it. Z got all the publicity, but eventually it came out that Farnsworth was the man. An unheralded genius. That guy could do things with vacuum tubes that were way ahead of his time. Some say he was on his way to developing a form of fusion reaction.
Farnsworth got the idea for the cathode ray tube's scanning dot from the repetitive trips he made across the potato field on a plow.
The Farnsworth Radio Factory, Marion, IN, later became the RCA Plant, then Thomson Consumer, then on to Mexico just 2 years ago. Farnsworth is a household word around here.
Fort Wayne native bump!
I believe there's not much controversy about Farnsworth.
There are a couple of biographies written a few years ago. He and his wife did have some marital troubles and he did some pretty serious drinking (was a very apostate Mormon) but quit in later life--
My son-in-law's mother can remember her mother's family being fascinated by his high school experiments with electromagnets, etc.--
May she rest in peace.
I grew up in Ft Wayne too! :)
Sounds familiar. My father invented the in-window, portable air conditioner in 1945 and patented it in 1948 (US Patent #2,433,960 -- look it up). GE liked it so much they stole the patent and threatened my father not to pursue it. He never received a dime nor any recognition.
Ah, right you are.
Duh.
Spent my first 5 yrs on Bowser off of Oxford. Then we moved to the suburbs in the mid 50's which was SE in the Hessen Cassel area. I still know some people who live out your way. After college, was recruited to Evansville where I met my hubby. Then moved to Indy in the mid 80's. Yes, FW is a nice town to grow up in. Lots of fond memories
Just amazing. Farnsworth's invention had such an impact on the world, and most people have no idea who he was.
Just Sad.
RIP.
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