"He got a picture."

The text (and photo) of the actual San Francisco Chronicle article referenced in The Farnsworth Invention. Those already involved in the show will recognize key players and descriptions. This comes from The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco at http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist10/philo.html where you can read more information about Farnsworth and his laboratory. The original article is dated September 3, 1928.

S.F. Man's Invention to Revolutionize Television

NEW PLAN BANS ROTATING DISC IN BLACK LIGHT

W.W. Crocker, R.N. Bishop Head Local Capitalists Backing Genius

Two major advances in television were announced yesterday by a young inventor who has been quietly working away in his laboratory in San Francisco and has evolved a system of television basically different from any system yet in operation.

The inventor is Philo T. Farnsworth, and local capitalists, headed by W.W. Crocker and Roy N. Bishop, are financing the experiments and have aided him in obtaining basic patents on the system.

In any method of transmitting moving images at a distance, some means must be evolved of breaking the image into pin points of light. These points are translated into electrical impulses, the electrical impulses are collected at the receiving end and translated back into light, and the image results.

NEW PRINCIPLE APPLIED

All television systems now in use employ a revolving disc, two feet in diameter, to break up or "scan" the image. A similar disc is at the receiving end, and the two discs must revolve at precisely the same instant and at precisely the same speed or blurred vision results.

Farnsworth's system employs no moving parts whatever. Instead of moving the machine, he varies the electric current that plays over the image and thus gets the necessary scanning.

The system is thus simple in the extreme, and one of the major mechanical obstacles to the perfection of television is thereby removed.

It was through this simplicity that he achieved his second greatest advance, the cutting in half of the wave band length necessary to prevent television broadcasts interfering with each other. The importance of this is manifest, inasmuch as it requires approximately four times the wave band length for television that ordinary sound broadcasting requires. Farnsworth has cut this television wave band in half and is hoping for still further reduction.

PERFECT MOTION RECORDS

His system sends twenty pictures per seconds, so motion is perfectly recorded, and there are 8000 elements, or pin points of light, in each picture to insure detail. The laboratory model he has built transmits the image on a screen one and one-quarters inches square. It is a queer looking little image in bluish light now, one that frequently smudges and blurs, but the basic principle is achieved and perfection is now a matter of engineering.

The sending tube which is the heart of Farnsworth's transmitting set is about the size of an ordinary quart jar that a housewife uses for preserving fruit, and the receiving tube containing the screen is even smaller. Farnsworth estimates the receiving apparatus could easily be attached to an ordinary radio set and can be manufactured to retail at $100 or less.

Farnsworth is a native of Provo, Utah, and conceived the idea for his television set while a student at Brigham Young University there. He was discovered by George Everson and Leslie Gorrell, who brought the set to the attention of research engineers at the California Institute of Technology. These experts pronounced it workable and helped Farnsworth obtain the financial backing. The research laboratories are at 202 Green street.

Building an Empire

Four weeks from opening and this is what the set looks like. Larry has been doing an amazing job getting things up and going. Even I've been impressed!! Thanks also to Brian Stratton, Leroy Cupp, Bob Nees and Dan DeYonke for all your help.

Farnsworth Remembered

For years, the name Philo T Farnsworth had been mostly lost to history. Through the tireless, decades-long efforts of his widow Pem, more and more people know of his accomplishments, and that once-forgotten name has started to turn up in some most unusual places. Among the tributes to Philo:

*In Matt Groening's animated series Futurama, the professor's name is Hubert J. Farnsworth. (The "J" is a tribute to animator Jay Ward. Many of Ward's and Groening's characters have "J" as a middle initial.)

*A free app for the iPhone allows users to connect with other users watching the same TV episodes on their devices. It's called 'Philo'.

*In "Weird Al" Yankovic's 1989 cult comedy UHF, the engineer at the TV station is named Philo. (He's played by Anthony Geary of soap opera fame)

*In the Syfy series Warehouse 13, characters communicate on an odd-looking two-way device called a Farnsworth. (In the fictional history of that show, the device was created by Philo himself, and one of the characters owns the original model, known as "Farnsworth's Farnsworth".)

*At least two awards are named for him. Philo Awards are given in the midwest to honor outstanding achievements in public access programming. On a larger scale, the Philo T. Farnsworth Corporate Achievement Award is a special Emmy award for companies than have made historic contributions to television engineering. In 2009, NASA received the award for its 1969 broadcasts of the Apollo 11 landing.

Great Minds

Kudos to Greg Pratt for his patent worthy idea of creating business cards advertising The Farnsworth Invention!!

Just gave one of them out today. They are perfect; easy to carry and contain all the pertinent information for friends and family.

A first for NBC

This is from Sarnoff’s dedication of the RCA Exhibit Building at the 1939
World’s Fair. Sarnoff spoke in front of a television camera, with Fair visitors watching on receivers inside the building and RCA engineers monitoring the broadcast from 30 Rockefeller
Plaza

FROM ABOVE THE RCA PAVILION WAS IN THE SHAPE OF A RADIO.



Today we are on the eve of launching a new industry based on imagination, on scientific
research and accomplishment. We are now ready to fulfill the promise made to the public last
October, when after years of research, laboratory experiments, and tests in the field costing
millions of dollars, the Radio Corporation of America announced that television-program service and commercial-television receivers would be made available to the public with the opening of
the New York World’s Fair.

Ten days from now, this will be an accomplished fact. The long years of patient experimenting
and ingenious invention which the scientists of the RCA Research Laboratories have put into
television development have been crowned with success. I salute their accomplishments and
those of other scientists, both here and abroad, whose efforts have contributed to the progress of
this new art.

On April 30th, the National Broadcasting Company will begin the first regular public television-program service in the history of our country; and television receiving sets will be in the hands of
merchants in the New York area for public purchase. A new art and a new industry, which eventually will provide entertainment and information for millions and new employment for
large numbers of men and women, are here.

…

"If there are any Brits in the house..."

The play The Farnsworth Invention dismisses fairly quickly the contributions of John Logie Baird to the development of television. However, Baird (who was Scottish) does have a following in the UK and Australia, folks who will point out, quite correctly, that Baird got there first. His mechanical system may have been inferior to what Team Philo and Team Sarnoff were working on, but he showed his system to the public almost two full years before Farnsworth did.

A website maintained by Baird's son details his father's contributions to television, as well as other inventions Baird developed in his career. It also has remarkably objective profiles of Sarnoff, Zworykin, Farnsworth and many other TV pioneers. There's even his take on the play!

http://www.bairdtelevision.com/

The Australian equivalent of the Emmy Awards for outstanding television are know as the Logie Awards in honor of Baird. The most popular personality in Australian television each year wins the coveted "Gold Logie".

Fitting, isn't it?

From "Beetle Bailey", July 17, 1981