Philo Farnsworth: You may not know him, but he invented TV (He did it first, but RCA got the glory)

AP - Seattle Post ^ | Thursday, August 17, 2006 | FRAZIER MOORE

[MindBender26]

Yagi-San?

Antenna man?

And who could forget The Great Lobochevsky?

[Coldwater Creek]

I don't know, but I was thinking maybe that is where the name
for Philco TVs came from.

[FreedomCalls]

I kinda thought that it occured to him sort of like at random while he was doing the boring and mundane task of plowing the field. Now I can see he how he got his idea...

The technical term for the image built up of successive lines like that is still called a "field" in the industry.

[Dante3]

Interesting.

[Erasmus]

Do you mean

Tesla :: Westinghouse

Atanasoff :: Eckert-Mauchly/IBM

?

[Erasmus]

BTW, Farnsworth himself had almost the same attitude about commercial TV.

[ozzymandus]

There was a pretty good show on PBS (!) about this subject years ago. It had to do with "general" sarnoff screwing Philo T. Farnsworth out of his invention.

[Erasmus]

Here's the Wiki article on the Fusor .

[osideplanner]

FYI

http://www.philcoradio.com/history.htm

[Erasmus]

In the same vein, may I add:

Robert Bosch
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
Ernst Werner von Siemens

--physicists, inventors, entrepreneurs from the 19th/early 20th Century.

Considering purely 20th centry inventors, the list of course becomes pretty large.

[Sen Jack S. Fogbound]

You're right, of course! I took the list as it was from a web page. I failed to note the missing parts or people who made significant contributions to the electrical/electronics industry!

There are many. The early ones had their names immortalized by being unit of measurements such as ohm, volts, ampere, etc.

Farnsworth no doubt spawned the electronic television while he was young! He didn't get much credit....that's got to be shameful!

I read the story of Farnsworth back in the middle fifties. He was one of several people who, by example, made my decision for a career in electronics. They are W. M. Greely, Captain, USNR, Donald E. Pope, TV Station Chief Engineer, W. J. Watson, Director of Avanced Scienctific Computer Development, Ronald Isaacson, EE., and many others.

I have been involved in NASA, Motorola, and Texas Instruments as well as being the TV Chief Engineer in the earlier days. It was very rewarding career and observed and worked with great changes in the industry. From tubes (firebottles) to transistors! Integrated Circuits!

I didn't get righ! But that's all right. I am now retired and riding into the Sunset!

And I am still playing with electronics in my two private laboratories. I am having fun!

[ABN 505]

"Sarnoff was a real bastard. He also did a job on Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM, and a number of other extremely important concepts that underly every aspect of wireless technology today. Armstrong eventually committed suicide after years of battling Sarnoff's lawyers. He should have died a rich man, instead he died a pauper." I would recommend "Empire Of The Air" a facinating book about Sarnoff,Armstrong,Telsa,Farnsworth and all the pioneers of the electronic medium. It reads like a novel but it's all true!

[Tribune7]

Philco, the Philadelphia Electric Company (formerly known as the Spencer Company), was a pioneer in early radio and television and former employer of Philo Farnsworth, inventor of cathode ray tube television.

[babydoll22]

Not true. Television was invented by a black man named Josea Philco. At least that is what I was taught in my black history class.

[Coldwater Creek]

Well what do ya know!!!

[Coldwater Creek]

Thanks!

[jennyp]

This engaging Farnsworth biography used to be available in full online. You can still read a couple chapters online.

Philo's wife Pem also wrote a memoir which is quite good & fleshes out the epic & tragic arc of Philo's life & personality more than any of the other books I've seen.

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

The technical term for the image built up of successive lines like that is still called a "field" in the industry.

Excellent observation. Electronically scanned field likened to plowed field. I like it.

[ffusco]

On September 25, 2001, the United States Congress officially recognized Antonio Meucci as the inventor of the telephone, denying Bell's claim to its invention.

[Borges]

You could say the same thing about W.K.L. Dickson and the movie camera couldn't you?