A Rare Look (In Color) At Early Electronic Television…
A Rare Look (In Color) At Early Electronic Television…
This is quite an interesting look at Philo Farnsworth’s television studio and station in operation. From the technical to the theatrical side, including the wild makeup, we’ve got 10 minutes of great color film to show us how this all came together.
Farnsworth and RCA, under Vladimir Zworykin, were basically neck and neck in development and I think Philo was actually ahead of RCA, but they had the money and he didn’t. There is a famous story of Zworykin visiting Farnsworth on Green Street in San Francisco…during the visit, Philo demonstrated a new Image Dissector tube and as he did, it was reported that a big light went off in Zworykin’s head. Seeing what Farnsworth had done gave him the answer to a huge problem he had with his Iconoscope tube. As soon as he got back to RCA, Zworykin fixed his problem.
Farnsworth had talked with Zworykin as one inventor to another but Zworykin was hearing trade secrets from a competitor. RCA screwed him royally, and although he did finally get some money from the patents RCA had used, it was nothing close to what RCA was making. So, if Philo didn’t get the respect from RCA that he deserved, we can at least give him ours. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
RCA had a habit of doing that, they also did something similar to Armstrong.
I saw a somewhat fictionalized play on Broadway a few years ago called “The Farnsworth Device” about him and the battle with David Sarnoff. It was very interesting.
A couple of years ago, an excellent book came out about Farnsworth and his life, titled The Boy Who Invented Television, by Paul Schatzkin.
http://www.farnovision.com/book.html