Philo Farnsworth

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VOICE ONE:

I'm Phoebe Zimmermann.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with People in America in VOA Special
English. Today we tell about a man who made possible one of the most
important communications devices ever created -- television. His
name was Philo Farnsworth.

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VOICE ONE:

In nineteen-sixty-nine, American astronaut Neil Armstrong climbed
down the side of the space vehicle that had taken him to the moon.

As his foot touched the surface of the moon, pictures of the
event were sent back to televisions on Earth. The pictures were not
very good. It was hard to see astronaut Armstrong clearly. The
surface of the moon was extremely bright. And the moon lander
vehicle created a very dark, black shadow. But the quality of the
television pictures was not important.

Every man, woman and child who saw the television pictures
understood they were watching an important event. They were watching
history take place as it was happening many hundreds of thousands of
kilometers away.

VOICE TWO:

For a few minutes, the poor quality television pictures captured
the imagination of millions of people throughout the world. Experts
believe about six-hundred-million people around the world watched as
Neil Armstrong stepped from the space vehicle to the surface of the
moon.

In the years since then, people around the world have shared in
many events. Television has made it possible for people in distant
places to share a single experience.

VOICE ONE:

A television system changes light and sound waves from a moving
picture into electronic signals that travel through the air. The
signals are changed back into sound and pictures in a television
receiver.

Scientists in Britain, Germany, France, Japan, the former Soviet
Union and the United States all made important discoveries that led
to the development of modern television. Yet it was a young boy
living on an American farm who was the first person to invent and
design what became television. He first thought of the idea of an
electronic television when he was only fourteen years old. His name
was Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

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VOICE TWO:

Philo Farnsworth was born on August Nineteenth, Nineteen Oh-Six,
near Indian Creek in the western state of Utah. The house he lived
in for the first few years of his life had no electric power. But
Philo read about electricity. He was very excited when his family
moved to a new house in Idaho that had electric power. He quickly
began to experiment with electricity. He built an electric motor
when he was twelve. Then he built the first electric washing machine
for clothes that his family had ever owned.

Philo Farnsworth attended a very small school near his family's
farm. He did very well in school. He asked his teacher for special
help in science. The teacher began helping Philo learn a great deal
more than most young students could understand.

VOICE ONE:

One night, Philo read a magazine story about the idea of sending
pictures and sound through the air. Anyone with a device that could
receive this electronic information could watch the pictures. The
magazine story said some of the world's best scientists were working
on the idea. It said these scientists were using special machines to
try to make a kind of device to send pictures. The story made Philo
think.

Fourteen-year-old Philo decided these famous scientists were
wrong. He decided that mechanical devices would never work. They
could never be made to move fast enough to clearly capture and
reproduce an electronic picture sent through the air.

Philo decided that such a device would have to be electronic, not
mechanical. Philo knew electrons could be made to move extremely
fast. All he would have to do was find a way to make electrons do
the work.

Very quickly Philo had an idea for such a receiver. It would trap
light in a container and send the light on a line of electrons.
Philo called it "light in a bottle."

VOICE TWO:

Several days later, Philo told his teacher about a device that
could capture pictures. He drew a plan for it that he gave his
teacher. Philo's drawing seems very simple. But it still clearly
shows the information needed to build a television. In fact, all
television equipment today still uses Philo's early idea. Philo's
teacher was Justin Tolman. Many years later Philo would say Mister
Tolman guided his imagination and opened the doors of science for
him.

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VOICE ONE:

Philo Farnsworth had to solve several problems before he could
produce a working television system. One was that he was only
fourteen years old. He knew no one would listen to a child. In fact,
experts say that probably only ten scientists in the world at that
time could have understood his idea.

Philo also had no money to develop his ideas. His idea for a
working television would have to wait. After only two years of high
school, Philo entered Brigham Young University in Utah. But he did
not finish his education. He was forced to leave school when his
father died.

Philo did not give up his idea for creating a television. He
began serious work on it when he moved to San Francisco, California
a few years later. He was twenty-one years old.

VOICE TWO:

On September Seventh, Nineteen-Twenty-Seven, Philo turned on a
device that was the first working television receiver. In another
room was the first television camera. Philo had invented the special
camera tube earlier that year.

The image produced on the receiver was not very clear, but the
device worked. Within a few months, Philo Farnsworth had found
several people who wanted to invest money in his invention.

In August, Nineteen-Thirty, the United States government gave
Philo patent documents. These would protect his invention from being
copied by others.

Very soon, however, several other inventors claimed they had
invented a television device. One of these inventors, Vladimir
Zworykin, worked for the powerful Radio Corporation of America. The
R-C-A company began legal action against Philo Farnsworth. It said
Mister Zworykin had invented his device in the Nineteen-Twenties.
The big and powerful R-C-A claimed that it, not the small Philo
Farnsworth Television Company, had the right to produce, develop and
market television.

VOICE ONE:

The legal action between R.C.A and the Farnsworth company
continued for several years. R.C.A. proved that Mister Zworykin did
make a mechanical television device. But it could not demonstrate
that the device worked.

At the same time, R.C.A. claimed that Mister Farnsworth had
produced his television image tube after Mister Zworykin had
developed his. When Mister Farnsworth said he had developed the idea
much earlier, R.C.A. said it was impossible for a fourteen-year-old
boy to produce the idea for a television device. Company
representatives said Mister Farnsworth was not even a scientist. He
had never finished college.

R.C.A. said Philo Farnsworth should be forced to prove he had
invented the television image tube. Philo could not prove he
invented it. But his high school teacher could. In court, Justin
Tolman produced the drawing that Philo had made for him many years
before as a student. At that moment, the legal experts for R.C.A.
knew they had lost.

Philo Farnsworth won the legal action and the right to own the
invention of television. However, he did not have the money or
support to build a television industry. It was the Nineteen-Fifties
before television became a major force in American life. Vladimir
Zworykin and David Sarnoff, the head of R.C.A., became the names
connected with the new industry.

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VOICE TWO:

Philo Farnsworth continued to invent more than one-hundred
devices that helped make modern television possible. He also
developed early radar, invented the first electronic microscope, and
worked on developing peaceful uses of atomic energy. In his last
years, Mister Farnsworth became a strong critic of television. He
did not like most of the programs shown on television. Yet, as he
watched Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon, Mister Farnsworth
knew the event clearly showed the power of his invention.

Philo Farnsworth died in March, Nineteen-Seventy-One. Today, a
statue of him stands in the United States Capitol. He is considered
one of the most important inventors of the twentieth century.

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VOICE ONE:

This program was written by Paul Thompson. It was produced by
Lawan Davis. I'm Phoebe Zimmermann.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember. Listen again next week for People in America
in VOA Special English.