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Actually, television
was invented by an independent inventor working alone. There were
three inventors trying to develop television at the same time:
1. Philo Farnsworth,
a 15-year-old farm boy from Idaho who rode his horse to school each
day
2. Vladimir Zworykin,
a Russian immigrant born in 1889 who worked for RCA
3. John Baird, a
Scottish inventor born in 1888
Philo Farnsworth,
whose grandfather settled with Brigham Young, was born in a log
cabin in 1906. According to his 95-year-old widow, Elma Farnsworth,
he decided at age 6 that he was going to be an inventor when he grew
up.
Farnsworth conceived
of what television should look like while plowing one of his
family's potato fields (although I doubt this is where the term
“couch potato” comes from), and he drew illustrations on the
chalkboard for his high school chemistry teacher to see.
In his early 20s, he
turned down job offers from both RCA and GE, choosing to go it
alone. Both of these companies had spent millions of dollars trying
to develop television. RCA had also waged a seven-year legal battle
with Farnsworth over his patent rights.
A major part of
Farnsworth's battle with RCA came from Vladimir Zworykin, who had
developed an electronic method of scanning an image for RCA in 1925.
After Zworykin was finally issued his patent 13 years later, he
couldn't produce any evidence to prove that he had constructed and
operated his system before Farnsworth did, and RCA lost the case.
Across the ocean,
there was another inventor obsessed with inventing the first working
television. John Baird sent what he called “pictures by wireless” in
1923 and then sent and received the first wireless television signal
two years later. In 1928, he became the first person to broadcast
live images across the Atlantic, and in 1929 he started broadcasting
with the BBC regularly. But the process with which he did all this
-- known as “mechanical scanning” -- soon became obsolete.
Despite the
competition with John Baird and the financial backing that RCA
provided to Vladimir Zworykin, it was Philo Farnsworth who became
the father of television. So did Farnsworth live happily ever after?
[to top of
second column in this article]
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Unfortunately, no.
After beating Zworykin and RCA in court, Farnsworth was paid a
handsome royalty for the right to license his television, which
marked the first time RCA paid a royalty to anyone. Even though he
developed modern television, RCA brought it to market first and
began regular broadcasts in 1939 through NBC, which it owned.
By 1941, Farnsworth
was ready to follow RCA onto the market, but the United States
government soon banned commercial television during World War II. By
the time the war ended, Farnsworth's patent had run out, and so did
his luck. While he profited from the licenses he sold, those
licenses ran out when his patent expired.
More than a decade
after his death in 1971, Farnsworth finally received some of the
credit that he deserved. The U.S. Postal Service commemorated him
with a stamp in 1983, and he was given an honorary television Emmy
Award in 2001. Time magazine recognized him as one of their “100
Most Influential Persons of the 20th Century.”
By 1951, there were 10 million TV sets
in the United States, and it is estimated that there are now more
people who own a TV set than a telephone.
[Paul
Niemann]
Sources:
“The Farnsworth Chronicles,”
“The Straight Dope”
website and the Salt Lake City Tribune
Invention Mysteries™
is written each week by Paul Niemann on the horse farm where he grew
up, just south of Quincy. He can be reached at
niemann7@aol.com.
Copyright Paul Niemann 2003
Last week's
column in LDN:
"The future looks bright
for these four inventions"
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