Excerpts from the Philo T. Farnsworth Biography by Elma Farnsworth

Farnsworth receiver (book caption)

Mrs. Elma G. 'Pem' Farnsworth wrote about the life of her husband, Philo T. Farnsworth ("inventor of television" 1906-1971) in Distant Vision: Romance and Discovery on an Invisible Frontier published in 1990.  The first Farnsworth patents were issued in 1930, including "Television System" and "Television Receiving System."  Philo and Elma's families' spiritual tradition was the Mormon church.  Here are some noteworthy excerpts from the book.

from "A Word from the Author"

That a farm-bred boy of fifteen might conceive an idea so complex as electronic television while large companies were spending millions on television transmission by spinning discs was so unlikely as to be ludicrous.  Yet Philo's great faith in himself and in his project left no room in his mind for doubts. Philo Taylor Farnsworth made the first modern electronic television transmission on September 7th, 1927, at age twenty-one, in his simple loft-laboratory at 202 Green Street, San Francisco.  The image was simply a line, but Philo had proved his point.

Not quite a year later, he demonstrated two-dimensional transmissions in a press conference on September 2nd, 1928.  The Philo Farnsworth story immediately captivated the public fancy, and for years everything he did was reported in the press.

Phil and Pem Farnsworth with Garry Moore after Phil appeared on "I've Got a Secret" television program.  (book caption)

Prologue

Lewis Farnsworth tenderly kissed his pregnant wife and, saying the cows had to be milked, picked up his lighted lantern and milk bucket and left the cabin.  As he walked toward the corral in the gathering dusk, he thought of his young wife, Serena.  She had married him after the death of his first wife, Amelia, and had been a good mother to his two sons and two daughters.  Now she was due to give birth to their first child.

As he pulled back the top fence pole to climb into the corral, he heard a voice call his name.  Turning, he saw what appeared to be the familiar figure of Amelia, standing a few feet away.  Lewis rubbed his eyes and shook his head.  As he reopened his eyes, the apparition began to speak.  "I have come to tell you that Serena's child is one of God's special spirits; great care should be taken in his upbringing."  Lewis started toward her, but having delivered her message, Amelia faded from sight, leaving Lewis shaken and still unable to trust his senses.  However, by the time he had finished the milking, he knew that, while Amelia was an apparition, her message was not only real, but must have been of great significance to bring her to him.

When Lewis told Serena what he had seen and heard, she looked at his pale face and shaking hand and suddenly knew that something very special was happening to them.  They decided this was a sacred experience, only to be kept close to their hearts between the two of them.

from Chapter 4 "Philo, the Boy"

The question is often asked, "How could a fourteen-year-old farm boy ever devise something so technically complex as television?"  As improbable as it seems, young Philo Farnsworth not only proved it was possible, but he did it.  How could that happen?  Was it a matter of early motivation and circumstance, or, as Phil said, was there a certain amount of guidance from a higher intelligence, even God?  Phil often referred to the sequence of events that constituted our lives as a "guided tour."  Phil's inventiveness was characterized by a series of inspirations that moved him toward some distant vision.

Philo's entire life was characterized by that hope, that quest, that led him to seek constantly to further his knowledge and understanding.  He began learning about electricity from the Sears, Roebuck Catalog, then the "wishbook" of rural families nationwide.  Because the toys he coveted, such as motors and trains, required electricity to operate, young Philo decided to make his own electricity.  From parts around the farm he fashioned a sort of "perpetual motion" device.  Although it failed to produce electricity, the disappointment was easier for his young mind to bear because he felt he had made an invention.

In the spring of 1919, Lewis moved his family to the 240-acre Bungalow Ranch of his brother Albert, in the Snake River Valley, near Rigby, Idaho.  Philo was overjoyed to find the ranch powered by a Delco power system.  Of equal or greater importance to him was the stack of radio, popular science, and semi-technical magazines he found in the attic of his new home, left by the former owner who had installed the power system.

Each time Mr. Tall came to service the generator, Philo carefully observed everything he did.  He had to know how the generator made electricity.

One day he read an article about sending pictures along with sound by means of radio signals through the air.  Keep in mind this was in 1919, and radio was still in swaddling clothes.  The method described used the Nipkow spinning disc with a spiral pattern of holes through which the image to be transmitted was scanned.  To thirteen-year-old Philo, the method seemed clumsy and inadequate.  There had to be a better way.

Bit by bit he collected information that eventually led him to discover that mysterious, vitally important particle called the electron, the study of which would define his life.

Each day, Philo tried to imagine a way to use electrons to eliminate the mechanical method of transmitting pictures.  After his chores were finished, he hurriedly ate his supper to get back to his private loft and his most prized possessions, the magazines.

In the spring of 1921, Lewis purchased a 140-acre farm in Bybee, four miles from Rigby.  Philo again operated a disc, this time with a single disc and two horses.  He enjoyed the early morning hours, making a habit of rising early and studying from four to five when the house was quiet.  He was out with the first sleepy chirping of the birds to milk the cows and feed the animals and was in the field with the first rosy glow of sunrise.

He filled his lungs with the fresh, dewy Idaho air.  It was a beautiful clear day, with just a few fleecy white clouds to break the deep blue of the sky, and he had all morning just to sit on the disc seat and think.  As usual, his thoughts turned to how he might train electrons to convert a visual image into an electrical image so it could be sent through the air.  He knew this had to be done in a vacuum.  He had read of a man named Braun who had made a crude vacuum tube and who had produced light by directing an electrical beam to a surface coated with photosenstive material.  He had also read that an electron beam can be manipulated in a magnetic field.

As he turned the horses for another row, he looked back along the even rows he had made in the damp earth.  A thought struck him like a bolt out of the blue!  The tremendous import of this revelation hit him like a physical blow and came near to unseating him.  He could build the image like a page of print and paint the image line after line!  With the speed of the electron, this could be done so rapidly the eye would view it as a solid picture!  He could hardly contain his excitement.  After mulling this idea around in his mind all this time and piecing it together one piece at a time, it had fallen together like a puzzle!

from Chapter 5 "Hollywood"

We spent the first few days in the Los Angeles Library.  Not yet financially able to acquire the books he coveted, Phil was thrilled to find so much material on subjects that had been causing him concern.  To an inventor, knowledge is a tool.  Phil was up to his elbows in tools and was totally enraptured.  He researched carefully the workings of the human eye, for he needed to know how rapidly a television image had to be reconstructed at the receiver in order to fool the eye into seeing it not as a series of dots but as an instant and complete picture.  The electron was clearly the only thing fast enough to fulfill this requirement.

Phil usually explained as he went along.  Now his ideas began to emerge from the realm of magic into something quite plausible, even to me!  The excitement continued to build in me; the plausibility became real; I was rapidly becoming aware that this was no magic . . . it was going to work!

from Chapter 6 "Big Chance"

The backing syndicate proposed to put up the money and act as trustees for 60 percent of the venture.  Of the remaining 40 percent, Phil was to have 20 percent and George and Les were to divide the other 20 percent.  That was a hard pill for Phil to swallow, for he had been determined to keep control of his invention.

from Chapter 17 "Patents"

Despite losing the 1934 case, RCA continued to challenge other components of the Farnsworth patent portfolio.  Throughout the 1930s, Phil found his time divided between defending his patents, continuing to refine his system, and haggling with his own backers for adequate funding.

  from Chapter 27 "ITT Takeover"

The first president of the Farnsworth Company as an ITT subsidiary was Ellery W. Stone.  The company continued to make television receivers and Capehart record-changer/radio combinations, and Phil's research department continued to work on space-age contracts, mostly for the Air Force.  It soon became apparent, however, that the company was being phased out of commercial television.  Manufacturing activities became limited to closed-circuit TV for surveillance and monitoring equipment for such places as atomic energy plants.

ITT wanted Phil's brain, the expertise of his men, and the Farnsworth Company facilities to assist them in obtaining a substantial role in the new space-age science.  The company's involvement in television was of little consequence when viewed in this light.

The new contracts awakened his old yearning to travel in space, and he rose to the challenge.  He became an expert on star tracking.  He and his men developed a device for the United States early-warning system.  Deployed around our borders, it could detect and explode a missile long before it reached our shores.

Phil developed a new tube called the Iotron, a memory tube able to retain an image for an indefinite period.  The model 305c was the first unit (PPI Projector) to allow air traffic to be controlled from the ground.  The model 310 was used in United States defense units.  Another version of the Iotron was developed for telescopes, allowing astronomers to extend their vision by 50,000 times out in space.

In 1950, while working on a submarine detection device, Phil was invited to be on of the civilian observers on board a destroyer in Navy maneuvers off Puerto Rico.

The growth of the company under ITT was phenomenal.  Its operations expanded from the original Capehart plant to a second, and then a third plant.  In 1957 the Boeing company chose the Farnsworth Electronics company to build prototype equipment for its seven million, one hundred nine thousand dollar contract with the U. S. Air Force for the Bomark IM99 interceptor missile.  Farnsworth had been a pioneer in missile guidance systems since 1945, having subcontracts on the Bomark, Talos, Terrier, Sparrow, Meteor, Titan, Atlas, Rascal, and Lacrosse.

Despite all the activity at the plant, or perhaps because of it, Phil had a continual problem with his health.  Although he seldom mentioned it, I felt that subconsciously the second dashing of his hopes to take part in commercial television was at least partly responsible.  At the time he was refusing all invitations to speak or to make appearances.  However, after the third invitation to appear on Garry Moore's "I've Got a Secret" TV show, he relented.

from Chapter 31 "Ultimatum"

Even as his determination increased, so did his mistrust of ITT and its intentions.  Phil harbored great hopes that fusion would be used for the benefit of all mankind, but he doubted that the directors of ITT shared his humanitarian intentions.  ITT being a highly profit-oriented organization, it was naive of Phil to expect them to go along with his philanthropic ideas.  Despite his reservations about ITT's ultimate intentions, Phil continued to try to solve the problems in the Fusor.

from Chapter 34 "Curtain"

In January 1971, Phil became very ill with pneumonia.  I wanted to call an ambulance and get him to a hospital.  He flatly refused and said if he ever went to another hospital, he would not come out alive.  He was given massive shots of penicillin.  On the fourth night, his temperature shot up to 104.8 degrees, and he became delirious.  I kept cold cloths on his forehead.

About 4:00 A.M. he opened his eyes and calmly told me not to worry; it would be all right now.  He said his guardian angel and another personage would now keep watch, so we could go to sleep.  He then drifted off into a deep peaceful sleep for about six hours.  When he awoke, he told me these "personages" said he was on the brink of death, and it was his choice whether to return to his earthly life or go on.  He told them he still had work to do on earth.  They then said, "So be it."  He felt the fever begin to leave him.  It was then he spoke to reassure me, then drifted off to sleep.


With Phil's renewed interest in the life around us, the world took on a little brighter hue.  However, as the days passed, he seemed to grow weaker.  I managed to get him down to the Jacuzzi a few times, but as this became more difficult, he finally just refused to make the effort.

from Addendum

The morning after Phil died, I awoke to a feeling of profound despair.  For nearly forty-five years we had been an integral part of each other.  How could I go on as this half-person, with no purpose . . . no future?  We had lived all of our married lives for the future.  Just as Phil told me on our wedding night, we had lived our lives on the leading edge of discovery, always for the future.  I had been caught up in and had become a part of Phil's dreams, which became our dreams, and those dreams had died with Phil.  In my despair, I saw no reason to keep on living.

In recent years Phil and I had experimented with mental-telepathy to a small degree of success.  I had a feeling that he might be attempting to reach me mentally.  I concentrated all of my thoughts on Phil.  My intense efforts began to cause pains through my eyes and temples.

As I was about to give up, a voice spoke to me in my mind.  There was no sound, but the clear and distinct words had a calming effect on me.  The voice told me this was a very important time for Phil, and I must let him go . . . The voice went on to say that I still had important work to do on earth.  Suddenly I knew without a doubt the nature of this work and I was at peace.

I felt my first obligation was to write Phil's story, but it was not until five years after his estate was settled that I was emotionally calm enough to begin.