Our Countdown with Author Paul Schatzkin’s Weekly Stories & Podcasts –
ALL to Celebrate 100 Years of Electronic Television
Editor’s Note: Below this text block is the live feed from Paul Schatzkin’s site with great weekly stories about television’s 100-year trek to September 7, 2027’s, Centennial Celebration.
Philo T. Farnsworth was a teenage farm boy in rural Idaho when he applied Albert Einstein’s theories to a simple sketch he drew for his high school science teacher. Every video screen on the planet, including this one can trace its origins to that sketch!
Nearly a century ago, Farnsworth secured the first of more than 150 patents that laid the cornerstone of the television industry. On the verge of international fame and fortune, his breakthrough was compromised when a competitor infiltrated his lab under false pretenses and claimed credit for his ideas.
Paul Schatzkin’s book, The Boy Who Invented Television is the definitive account of a once-in-a-century prodigy and his titanic struggle with one of the most ruthless monopolies in the world – David Sarnoff’s Radio Corporation of America…RCA.
Eyes Of a Generation has invited the author of the key biography of Mr. Farnsworth to share his research and writing in weekly podcast/stories as we join with him in the countdown to the Centennial Celebration of the first ALL ELECTRONIC VIDEO SYSTEM on September 7, 2027.
Paul Schatzkin’s independent research – drawn in part from his decades-long relationship with the Farnsworth family – illuminates a pivotal chapter of history that has remained buried since the 1930s. Mr. Schatzkin has been researching and telling the story of television’s forgotten inventor for more than 25 years. His clear and entertaining writing style reveals the spark of true genius that is re-ignited every time a television set is turned on, while giving readers of all ages new insights into the technology that shapes our daily lives.
Television / video is a global phenomenon, but this is an admittedly very America-centric accounting of the medium’s history. There will be occasional nods to breakthroughs in other countries like Britain, Germany, and Japan, but the underlying reality is…Television was invented in America by an American. It is also very “Farno-centric.” At its heart, this project is intended to remind people who Philo T. Farnsworth was, and to restore to our collective memory the extraordinary, once-in-century individual who – as the poet Max Crosley put it – “breathed life into all our living room dreams.”
You’re going to learn a lot of neat stuff on this page over the next year, and hopefully, at the end, there will be a world-wide celebration of the medium and the man who invented it. Philo T. Farnsworth! The 2027 EMMY Awards show should be INTERESTING! Afterall, the EMMY is named after the Image Orthicon camera tube and Philo
In other words...A smart, curious friend of the family set out on a mission of global importance to right a wrong done to the man that invented electronic television. AND WE GET TO HELP BY KNOWING THE FACTS AND “START SPREADING THE NEWS”! Come with us…it’s going to be a great ride! -Bobby Ellerbee, Creator/Curator, Eyes Of A Generation
DEDICATION: This page and effort is dedicated to our late friend, Phil Savenick who passed a couple of years ago and things haven’t been the same since. He was a huge supporter of setting the record straight on Farnsworth’s contribution to “seeing at a distance, or tele vision”.
