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Television is 75 years old, today, September 7, 2002.

Happy Birthday TV

Philo Farnsworth died in obscurity in 1971, the little known inventor of the television.

The key to the television picture tube came to him at 14, when he was still a farm boy, and he had a working device at 21.

Farnovision

Time 100: Scientists

In the 1950's Philo appeared on the Gary Moore Show and nobody knew who the heck he was.

[OK, I can hear ya now. "Who the heck is Gary Moore?"]

Around that time, a full blown home theatre unit looked like this Selectavision.

Curtained ... a great theatrical metaphor.

Isn't Gary Moore one of the lesser blues metal players?

"Ten years later, he appeared as a mystery guest on the television program <i>What's My Line?</i> Farnsworth was referred to as Dr. X and the panel had the task of discovering what he had done to merit his appearance on the show. One of the panelists asked Dr. X if he had invented some kind of a machine that might be painful when used. Farnsworth answered, 'Yes. Sometimes it's most painful.'"

"The damned thing works!"

Quote:

Sep. 23, 09:09 EDT

Emmys pay tribute to TV's inventor

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Emmy Awards paid tribute Sunday night to the man who made them possible: television inventor Philo T. Farnsworth.

Program host Conan O'Brien acknowledged Farnsworth's 94-year-old widow, Elma (Pem) Farnsworth, who was in the audience and stood up to a round of applause.

The recognition, broadcast around the world, came nearly 75 years to the day after the 21-year-old successfully demonstrated his creation. Farnsworth's first TV broadcast occurred Sept. 7, 1927, in his modest San Francisco lab, when he transmitted the image of a horizontal line to a receiver in the next room.

Later that day, he triumphantly wired one of his backers in Los Angeles: "The damned thing works!"

Inspiration for his invention had come seven years earlier, when as an Idaho farm boy he had been plowing a field and realized an image could be scanned onto a picture tube the same way: row by row.

Fame, fortune and, very nearly, credit for the invention escaped Farnsworth.

RCA's David Sarnoff fought for years to claim the invention was the child of his chief television engineer, Vladimir Zworykin. Sarnoff's son, Tom Sarnoff, was also recognized by O'Brien during Sunday's ceremony.

In 1935 the courts ruled on Farnsworth's patent, naming him TV's undisputed father. The decision was upheld on appeal.

North America's embrace of television was slowed by the Second World War, and by the time it finally caught on Farnworth's patents had expired.

He died in 1971.