"An inspiring true story of a boy genius. "Plowing a potato field in 1920, a 14-year-old farm boy from Idaho saw in the parallel rows of overturned earth a way to make pictures fly through the air. This boy was not a magician; he was a scientific genius and just eight years later he made his brainstorm in the potato field a reality by transmitting the world s first television image. This fascinating picture-book biography of Philo Farnsworth covers his early interest in machines and electricity, leading up to how he put it all together in one of the greatest inventions of the 20th century. The author s afterword discusses the lawsuit Farnsworth waged and won against RCA when his high school science teacher testified that Philo s invention of television was years before RCA s."
While the great minds of science, financed by the biggest companies in the world, wrestled with 19th century answers to a 20th century problem, Philo T. Farnsworth, age 14, dreamed of trapping light in an empty jar and transmitting it, one line at a time, on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons. Farnsworth was a farm boy from Rigby, Idaho, with virtually no knowledge of electronics when he first sketched his idea for electronic television on a blackboard for his high school science teacher. Fifteen years later, his teacher would recreate that sketch as part of his testimony in patent litigation between Farnsworth and the giant Radio Corporation of America. In 1930, Farnsworth was awarded the fundamental patents for modern television; but he had to spend the next decade fighting off challenges to his patents by the giant Radio Corporation of America and defending his vision against his own shortsighted investors who did not share his larger dream of scientific independence. The Boy Who Invented Television traces Farnsworth's guided tour of discovery, describing the observations he made in the course of developing and improving his initial invention and revealing how his unique insights brought him to the threshold of what could have been an even greater discovery -- clean, safe, and unlimited energy from controlled nuclear fusion. - Publisher.
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was an American inventor and television pioneer. Although he made many contributions that were crucial to the early development of all-electronic television, he is best known for inventing the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system, and for being the first person to demonstrate such a system to the public.
The world remembers Edison, Ford, and the Wright Brothers. But what about Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, an innovation that did as much as any other to shape the twentieth century? That question lies at the heart of The Boy Genius and the Mogul, Daniel Stashower's captivating chronicle of television's true inventor, the battle he faced to capitalize on his breakthrough, and the powerful forces that resulted in the collapse of his dreams. The son of a Mormon farmer, Farnsworth was born in 1906 in a single-room log cabin on an isolated homestead in Utah. The Farnsworth family farm had no radio, no telephone, and no electricity. Yet, motivated by the stories of scientists and inventors he read about in the science magazines of the day, young Philo set his sights on becoming an inventor. By his early teens, Farnsworth had become an inveterate tinkerer, able to repair broken farm equipment when no one else could. It was inevitable that when he read an article about a new idea -- for the transmission of pictures by radio waves--that he would want to attempt it himself. One day while he was walking through a hay field, Farnsworth took note of the straight, parallel lines of the furrows and envisioned a system of scanning a visual image line by line and transmitting it to a remote screen. He soon sketched a diagram for an early television camera tube. It was 1921 and Farnsworth was only fourteen years old. Farnsworth went on to college to pursue his studies of electrical engineering but was forced to quit after two years due to the death of his father. Even so, he soon managed to persuade a group of California investors to set him up in his own research lab where, in 1927, he produced the first all-electronic television image and later patented his invention. While Farnsworth's invention was a landmark, it was also the beginning of a struggle against an immense corporate power that would consume much of his life. That corporate power was embodied by a legendary media mogul, RCA President and NBC founder David Sarnoff, who claimed that his chief scientist had invented a mechanism for television prior to Farnsworth's. Thus the boy genius and the mogul were locked in a confrontation over who would control the future of television technology and the vast fortune it represented. Farnsworth was enormously outmatched by the media baron and his army of lawyers and public relations people, and, by the 1940s, Farnsworth would be virtually forgotten as television's actual inventor, while Sarnoff and his chief scientist would receive the credit. Restoring Farnsworth to his rightful place in history, The Boy Genius and the Mogul presents a vivid portrait of a self-taught scientist whose brilliance allowed him to "capture light in a bottle." A rich and dramatic story of one man’s perseverance and the remarkable events leading up to the launch of television as we know it, The Boy Genius and the Mogul shines new light on a major turning point in American history.
Philo T. Farnsworth (1906-1971) has been called the "forgotten father of television." He grew up in Utah and southern Idaho, and was described as a genius by those who knew and worked with him. With only a high school education, Farnsworth drew his first television schematic for his high school teacher in Rigby, Idaho. Subsequent claims and litigation notwithstanding, he was the first to transmit a television image. Farnsworth filed ten patents between 1927 and 1929 for camera tubes (transmitting), circuitry, and the cathode ray tube (viewing). After his early years as an inventor in San Francisco, he worked as an engineer, doing battle with RCA in the 1930s over patent rights, formed the Farnsworth Television Company in the 1940s, and worked for IT&T after their purchase of the Farnsworth enterprises. Every television set sold utilized at least six of his basic patents. Because of endless legal wrangling with RCA over patent rights, he received very little financial reward for his television patents. Donald Godfrey examines the genius and the failures in the life of Philo Farnsworth as he struggled to be both inventor and entrepreneur.
Celebrating the inventor of the Crayola crayon This gloriously illustrated picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Edwin Binney, the inventor of one of the world's most beloved toys. A perfect fit among favorites like The Day the Crayons Quit and Balloons Over Broadway. purple mountains' majesty, mauvelous, jungle green, razzmatazz... What child doesn't love to hold a crayon in their hands? But children didn't always have such magical boxes of crayons. Before Edwin Binney set out to change things, children couldn't really even draw in color. Here's the true story of an inventor who so loved nature's vibrant colors that he found a way to bring the outside world to children - in a bright green box for only a nickel With experimentation, and a special knack for listening, Edwin Binney and his dynamic team at Crayola created one of the world's most enduring, best-loved childhood toys - empowering children to dream in COLOR
Learn about the battle between David Sarnoff and Philo T. Farnsworth to create the world's very first television! Twists and turns in the story of this important device's development will have readers on the edge of their seats.
Ever since Newton Minow taught us sophisticates to bemoan the descent of television into a vast wasteland, the dyspeptic chorus of jeremiahs who insist that television news in particular has gone from gold to dross gets noisier and noisier. Charles Ponce de Leon says here, in effect, that this is misleading, if not simply fatuous. He argues in this well-paced, lively, readable book that TV news has changed in response to broader changes in the TV industry and American culture. It is pointless to bewail its decline. "That s the Way It Is "gives us the very first history of American television news, spanning more than six decades, from Camel News Caravan to Countdown with Keith Oberman and The Daily Show. Starting in the latter 1940s, television news featured a succession of broadcasters who became household names, even presences: Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and, with cable expansion, people like Glenn Beck, Jon Stewart, and Bill O Reilly. But behind the scenes, the parallel story is just as interesting, involving executives, producers, and journalists who were responsible for the field s most important innovations. Included with mainstream network news programs is an engaging treatment of news magazines like "60 Minutes" and "20/20, " as well as morning news shows like "Today" and "Good Morning America." Ponce de Leon gives ample attention to the establishment of cable networks (CNN, and the later competitors, Fox News and MSNBC), mixing in colorful anecdotes about the likes of Roger Ailes and Roone Arledge. Frothy features and other kinds of entertainment have been part and parcel of TV news from the start; viewer preferences have always played a role in the evolution of programming, although the disintegration of a national culture since the 1970s means that most of us no longer follow the news as a civic obligation. Throughout, Ponce de Leon places his history in a broader cultural context, emphasizing tensions between the public service mission of TV news and the quest for profitability and broad appeal."
“...Fascinating... A riveting American classic of independent brilliance versus corporate arrogance. I found it more fun than fiction.” — James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers “... The fascinating inside story of how this eccentric loner invented television and fought corporate America.” — Walter Isaacson, chariman, CNN “...Compelling...Strong, dramatic prose...” — Kirkus Reviews “...A lively and engaging account.” — Library Journal “[A] gripping and eminently readable saga of the birth of television and the death of the Edisonian myth.” — Darwin magazine
