Remembering Philo Farnsworth

Inventor of television had home in Brownfield; his son will be at John's TV Tuesday night

"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, we might still be eating frozen radio dinners." Johnny CarsonYou may not know the name Philo T. Farnsworth, but he's a part of your life.Farnsworth, who died in 1971, invented television, or, more precisely, the current system of television transmission and reception. And on the 75th anniversary of that invention, he is finally getting some of the recognition and accolades that he did not receive when he was alive.The little town of Brownfield, Maine, can wave his name proudly, because Farnsworth lived in Brownfield for awhile and had a research lab there. Today his son, Russell "Skee" Farnsworth, continues to maintain a second home in Brownfield, at the same site where his father lived and worked.On Tuesday evening at 7, Skee will be at John's TV/Valley Rentals in Center Conway to talk about his father and his place in history. Tom McLaughlin, a history teacher at Molly Ockett Middle School in Fryeburg and a columnist for The Conway Daily Sun, will interview Skee, and the audience will have an opportunity to ask question or offer anecdotes.The presentation is free but seating is limited. Those wishing to attend are asked to call (603) 447-5880 or (603) 447-5823 to reserve seats.Judi Calley, wife of the late John Calley, of John's TV/Valley Rentals, said that, this being the 75th anniversary of the invention that spawned television, and with two new books coming out about Farnsworth, the time just seemed right to recognize Farnsworth locally and tell his story."The story is fascinating," Calley said. "The brilliance of this man, the problems he had to go through, the effect on his family and all the ups and downs of those years."The presentation Tuesday can't cover it all, Calley said, but it might be enough to whet the public's appetite and encourage people to "read a little more" about Farnsworth.According to the web site, philo75.com, "television as we know it" arrived on a steamy summer day in 1921, as the 14-year-old Farnsworth, a farm boy from Utah, sat atop a horse-drawn plowing machine, criss-crossing an open field."Noticing the neatly cut parallel rows in the dirt before him, he was struck with a flash of inspiration," wrote Paul Schatzkin, web master and author of, "The Boy Who Invented Television." "Just as he plowed the field back and forth in parallel rows, so could he scan an image, one line at a time, with a magnetically-deflected beam of electrons inside a cathode ray tube."The concept continued to take shape in Farnsworth's mind, and he received some financial backing. On Sept. 7, 1927, in San Francisco, "Farnsworth and his tiny 'lab gang' performed their first successful experiments, transmitting the simple image of a straight line," Schatzkin wrote. "As long as he could see if the line was horizontal or vertical, he knew that information was being transmitted from the bottom of one bottle to the bottom of another, proving the principle that struck him that day in the hayfield."In 1930, Farnsworth was granted patents "for the ideas that still form the very heart of every video system in use in the world today," Schatzkin continued. But throughout the 1930s, he fought with David Sarnoff and Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to hold onto those patents. Finally, in 1939, "RCA capitulated and agreed for the first time in its corporate history to a license that required the company to pay royalties for the use of Farnsworth's patents."Schatzkin said on the web site that, come Sept. 7, 2002, "We want everybody who turns on a television set to know that date is the anniversary of the date the medium arrived on this planet, and to know the name of the man who delivered it."Judi Calley said her husband, because of his interest in the history of electronics, was familiar with the Farnsworth name. But it wasn't until he was called to Farnsworth's summer home in Brownfield to repair his TV on two or three occasions in the late 1960s and early 1970s that John Calley got to know Farnsworth and came to appreciate his achievements."It amazed him the man's brilliance, and the fact that he didn't get the recognition he was entitled to, and that even local people didn't seem to know of him," Calley said.Tom McLaughlin, who will be interviewing Farnsworth's son at Tuesday night's event, said he also was "somewhat familiar" with Farnsworth, "but not as familiar as I've become lately reading his biographies."What becomes clear, in reading those biographies, McLaughlin said, was that Farnsworth was a genius."He compares with people like Edison especially Edison as far as his lack of formal education prior to coming up with these ideas," McLaughlin said. "That's what he shared with Edison. I'm struck by that, and also that he came up with the idea (for television) at the age of 14."McLaughlin can relate to that age."It's the age I teach," he said. "I've had some brilliant students at that age. They come up with some terrific ideas, because they were never taught it wasn't possible."McLaughlin believes one of the reasons Farnsworth is not a household name in a country that has televisions in almost every household is that he didn't profit greatly from his invention, and he was overshadowed by RCA's David Sarnoff, a communications mogul."He wanted to play down Philo's contribution and play up RCA," McLaughlin said.But Farnsworth's contribution has not gone completely unnoticed. Time magazine, in 1999, named Farnsworth one of the 100 great scientists and thinkers of the 20th century. And the city of San Francisco, where the first electronic transmission of an image occurred 75 years ago, has declared Sept. 7, 2002, Philo T. Farnsworth Day.Farnsworth had a research plant in Brownfield from 1939 to 1947, and he and his wife, Pem, lived in Brownfield full time during those years. The plant went down with the Brownfield fires of 1947, and Farnsworth later rebuilt a cottage on the site.One of the projects that Farnsworth worked on in Brownfield was producing nuclear fusion as an energy source, an idea that is still being developed to this day."Nobody has done it yet," McLaughlin said. "He might have been the guy if he had lived."Farnsworth died in Salt Lake City, Utah, his home state, in 1971. His wife is still alive and is 94 years old. She wrote a book about her husband entitled, "Distant Vision.""His wife was his assistant," McLaughlin said. "He told her when they met that, if they were going to have a successful relationship, since he was a workaholic on his projects, that she was going to have to work with him if they were going to have any time together."Son Skee lives half the year in Brownfield and the other half in New York City, where he is a musician and does musical arrangements.McLaughlin met Skee Farnsworth for the first time last week in preparation for Tuesday's program."He's a very nice guy," McLaughlin said. "Very engaging. He's going to be the show, really."