Philo Farnsworth. The Creator of Television

Written by Margot Cleverly

In a small town in Utah, a man was born who changed the way the world receives images. Philo Farnsworth had no engineering degree, but at age fifteen, he drew a sketch on a blackboard of a device that now sits in nearly every home.

From Farm to Electronic Vision

When Farnsworth was a few years old, his family moved to a farm near Rigby, Idaho. The place had an electric generator – a rarity in the early twentieth century. The boy was fascinated by the machine, repaired it, experimented with it. He even converted a hand-operated washing machine to electric power.

In 1921, at age fifteen, Philo came across technical magazines and understood that images could be transmitted using electrons. He imagined that an electron beam could scan a surface line by line – like a plow tilling a field. His chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, saw the sketches on the blackboard and saved them. He knew they would someday serve as evidence in a patent case.

The Farnsworth family returned to Utah in 1923. Philo began studying at Brigham Young University, but a year later his father died. He left school to earn money to support his mother and siblings.

First Laboratory and a Line on the Screen

He met two philanthropists – George Everson and Leslie Gorrell. He convinced them of his idea. He received six thousand dollars and opened a laboratory in Los Angeles, then in San Francisco. In 1926, he married Pem Gardner, a girl he had met at university.

On September 7, 1927, something happened in the laboratory on Green Street. A simple line appeared on a screen in the adjacent room. It was the first electronic image transmitted and received in history. A year later, Farnsworth demonstrated the system publicly – he transmitted a live human face. He received a patent.

The world was beginning to notice his invention. But the road to commercial success was still long – the system required very strong lighting to work efficiently.

War with RCA and a Million Dollars

In 1930, Vladimir Zworykin from RCA came to Farnsworth. The giant wanted to buy the patents. Farnsworth refused. He knew what he had in his hands. RCA didn’t give up – it launched a legal battle that lasted nearly a decade.

Farnsworth tried to cooperate with Philco in 1931, but after two years they parted ways. He founded his own company and moved it to Fort Wayne, Indiana. He manufactured televisions, established a local radio station in Indianapolis. In 1939, the courts ended the dispute with RCA. Farnsworth won – he received a million dollars in royalties.

But the victory had a bitter taste. RCA had money, market power, an army of engineers. Farnsworth had the truth, but he didn’t have an empire.

Bankrutcy and the End of Dreams

In the 1950s, Farnsworth began researching nuclear fusion. He built a device called a fusor that generated thermonuclear reactions. He dreamed of clean, unlimited energy. The fusor worked, but it never became a practical source of power.

In 1949, his company was acquired by IT&T. Farnsworth became vice president of research, managed a laboratory, developed air traffic control systems. But this was no longer his own work. It was a salaried job.

In 1967, he moved his laboratory to Brigham Young University – where he had once begun his studies. Three years later, the company went bankrupt. Farnsworth had to stop his research. On March 11, 1971, he died in Salt Lake City from pneumonia. He was sixty-four years old. His wife Pem lived until 2006.

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Margot Cleverly

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Margot's journey into women's history began with a box of forgotten letters in a Cambridge archive – suffragettes whose voices had been silenced for over a century. Since then, she's been on a mission to uncover the stories history overlooked.

What she writes about: Queens who ruled from the shadows. Scientists whose male colleagues took credit. Revolutionaries who risked everything. But also ordinary women – those who survived wars, raised families through upheaval, and shaped their communities in ways no one bothered to record.

Margot turns historical figures into real people. She writes with warmth and detail, making centuries-old stories feel surprisingly relevant. Rigorous research meets accessible storytelling – no dusty academic jargon, just compelling narratives backed by solid facts.

When she's not writing, you'll find her in regional archives, collecting oral histories, or visiting sites connected to the women she writes about.