Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History (30 page)

From the junior high school, Mike and I drive from downtown Rigby to our main destination—472 North 3700 East.

“I had to go through a lot of old records to verify the location,” Mike says, “but here’s where Farnsworth and his family moved to in early 1921. This is the farm where he had his revelation.” There’s no house there now, just an old feedlot.

Farnsworth’s father had brought his family to Idaho in 1919 from Provo, Utah, where Philo was born on August 19, 1906. They first stayed with relatives on a 240-acre ranch a few miles outside of Rigby, and young Farnsworth was ecstatic to discover that the house had electricity, a rarity then in rural America. When he stumbled on a pile of technology magazines, he was practically beside himself. One,
Science and Invention
, was running a contest to improve the Model T,
and Farnsworth zeroed in on a bedeviling security problem. Since all Fords used an identical key, whoever possessed one could start—and steal—any car. Farnsworth proposed a simple, cost-effective method of magnetizing each key to make it unique. He won first prize.

Antitheft ignition locks were kids’ stuff compared with Farnsworth’s primary obsession: solving the technological riddle that would make television a reality. Russian engineer Constantin Perskyi introduced the word
television
(same spelling and everything) during a lecture he delivered in French at the 1900 Paris World’s Fair, and he referenced the German technician Paul Nipkow’s idea of using hole-punctured spinning mechanical disks to convert images into electrical impulses and then send them through a wire to a second disk, which would project them onto a screen. Inventors throughout Europe and the United States tried to build on this “mechanical” model, but Farnsworth, who’d read about Nipkow, recognized its inherent limitations and knew that a radically different approach was needed.

During the summer of 1921, Farnsworth had learned that electrons could be beamed across a vacuum (or cathode) tube, undisturbed by air molecules that might otherwise cause distortion, and he wondered whether these rays, if properly manipulated, could project clear images onto a photoelectric screen at the other end of the tube. The problem was transmitting and capturing the pictures in their entirety, and this seemed technically impossible.

Like any restless and sensible young man, Farnsworth loathed the monotony of daily chores, but they did give him time to think. One morning before his fifteenth birthday, he was out plowing the family’s potato field when he took a short break. While looking back over the rows of freshly tilled earth, inspiration struck.

Lines.

Lines of electron rays, guided by magnets, could zigzag across the screen rapidly enough to fool the eye into believing it was watching a continuously moving image. No mechanical or optical spinning discs could accomplish this, ever. “Mechanical” television was a technological
dead end. “Electronic” television, Farnsworth realized, was the answer.

He rushed home and explained the still-percolating breakthrough to his father, who didn’t have the faintest idea what Philo was talking about. But he gave his son memorable advice: “You need to keep this a secret, because everyone already thinks you’re a bit odd. This would convince them for sure.”

Six months later Farnsworth couldn’t hold out any longer and confided in Justin Tolman his idea for an integrated electronic television system, which included a rudimentary camera that Farnsworth called an “image dissector” and a cathode-ray tube (or receiving set), which is why some of us still refer to a TV set as “the tube.” Farnsworth breathlessly detailed to his science teacher how the components interacted, and he sketched the design on Tolman’s blackboard, then drew more detailed schematics on a sheet of notebook paper. Farnsworth asked his teacher if he had any reason to believe the principles involved were scientifically unsound. Awestruck, Tolman shook his head and encouraged Farnsworth to just “study like the devil and keep mum.”

Farnsworth’s next major obstacle was more practical than theoretical. He was broke. While established inventors working on television prototypes oversaw entire teams of scientists and engineers in well-equipped, corporate-funded laboratories, Farnsworth labored alone in the family attic piecing together whatever odds and ends he could salvage from Rigby’s junkyards and auto shops. And unlike his competitors, the teenage freshman had to ask his mom’s permission to work past bedtime.

Money proved so tight for the entire family that Farnsworth senior moved his wife and younger children back to Provo. Philo dropped out of school, took correspondence courses, scraped by in various low-paying jobs, and joined the Navy in 1924. (Tired of “Fido” cracks, he dropped the
o
from his name and was henceforth Phil Farnsworth.) That same year his father passed away, and Farnsworth was granted an honorable discharge to care for his grieving mother in Provo.

Utah beckoned for another reason: Elma “Pem” Gardner, a spirited seventeen-year-old bombshell Farnsworth had fallen for who had a sharp mind and wasn’t put off by his impromptu soliloquies about the beauty of electromagnetic-wave transmissions. Pem was the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak period when Farnsworth, working as a street sweeper, constantly worried that at any moment another inventor would steal his thunder.

That seemed ever more likely in 1925. On June 13, Charles Francis Jenkins showcased his Radiovisor, which transmitted synchronized sound and pictures from a radio station in the nation’s capital. Jenkins had already established his engineering bona fides by helping to invent the Vitascope, a film projector marketed under Thomas Edison’s name. (Predictably, there was a spat over patent rights, which resulted in a $2,500 settlement to Jenkins.)

Around the same time Jenkins was rolling out the Radiovisor in Washington, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird was introducing something similar in England. On January 26, 1926, Baird repeated for the media in his London laboratory a demonstration he’d given staff members months earlier, broadcasting live images on his Televisor. That Baird didn’t harm anyone in the process was achievement enough; a one-man safety hazard, Baird had blown up a previous lab and nearly electrocuted himself in the process. As a young inventor, he reportedly caused a blackout in Glasgow after overwhelming the power supply by using large surges of electricity to convert graphite into diamonds. But despite their breakthroughs, Jenkins and Baird relied on a form of mechanical television that produced hazy images. Even Paul Nipkow had long abandoned the outdated technology.

Farnsworth’s own luck changed in the spring of 1926 when two wealthy businessmen, George Everson and Leslie Gorrell, hired him as a temporary office boy. Impressed by his work ethic and intelligence, they asked Farnsworth his future plans. He entrusted them with his television idea, and after consulting with various engineers to confirm that the lad wasn’t an absolute loon, they ponied up a $6,000 investment.

The day after their May 26, 1926, wedding, Phil and Pem Farnsworth left Utah for Los Angeles, where Phil could access the California Institute of Technology’s superb research library and be close to Hollywood. From the get-go he recognized television’s entertainment potential.

Phil and Pem’s apartment doubled as home and lab. What, exactly, was going on in there baffled their fellow tenants. Farnsworth kept the curtains drawn, worked long hours, looked gaunt and mildly possessed whenever he emerged, and was constantly hauling strange coils, tubes, hoses, liquids, and glass bottles inside. Finally his neighbors came to the reasonable conclusion that the Farnsworths were bootleggers and alerted authorities, prompting a surprise visit by the LAPD. “They’re doing somethin’ kooky they call electric vision,” one officer told another after searching the premises, “but they ain’t got no still.”

Of greater concern to Farnsworth was a visit from Everson and Gorrell inquiring how their money had been spent. After forewarning them that numerous kinks needed ironing out, Farnsworth began his presentation. He connected the image dissector to the reception tube, gathered everyone in the lab around for the historic moment, and flipped on the generator. The humming machine soon began to make alarming pops and hissing noises. Acrid-smelling smoke filled the room, and Farnsworth made a dash toward the generator, but it was too late. Months of work and possibly a life’s dream sat in flames before him.

Everson and Gorrell didn’t lose hope. Although unable to contribute more capital themselves, they eventually convinced a notoriously skeptical San Francisco banker named J. J. Fagan and his colleagues to offer $25,000 for 60 percent ownership in the enterprise. Farnsworth’s elation was tempered only by the minor humiliation of needing Everson to serve as his legal guardian in the deal; Farnsworth, only twenty, wasn’t old enough to sign the partnership contract on his own.

Fagan’s investors gave Farnsworth a one-year deadline and requested he move closer to their offices, so in September 1926, Pem and Phil once more packed up their belongings and relocated to San Francisco.
They rented a home to live in and a loft at 202 Green Street, where Farnsworth and his two assistants—Pem and her brother Cliff—would work.

On January 7, 1927, Farnsworth filed a patent for his electronic “Television System” to protect the idea, but he still hadn’t constructed a functioning model. With pressure mounting, he needed extra hands. He brought in his geologist cousin, Arthur Crawford, to find the perfect chemical element for the screen (cesium initially won out), followed by his sister Agnes and Pem’s sister Ruth as part-time helpers.

That September they tested the entire system—but this time just for themselves, no audience. Cliff placed a drawing of a triangle in front of the image dissector in one room while the rest of the team watched the receiving tube in another. A line appeared. Not the whole figure, but one clearly defined side. “That’s it, folks!” Farnsworth cried out. “There you have electronic television.” He repeated the show for Everson, who then wired Gorrell in Los Angeles:
THE DAMNED THING WORKS
.

Everson recommended to Farnsworth that, for his demonstration to Fagan and others, he produce something slightly more advanced than a single straight line. Farnsworth obliged. When the eager bankers huddled around the television screen to see what image Cliff was holding in the other room, up popped a dollar sign, eliciting bursts of laughter.

The men felt the moment had come for a press conference, but Farnsworth insisted on more time. To the investors’ dismay, the event wasn’t scheduled until Saturday, September 1, 1928, and only a handful of reporters bothered to show. Monday’s story in the
San Francisco Chronicle
, however, was picked up by newspapers across the country and later around the world.
S.F. MAN’S INVENTION TO REVOLUTIONIZE TELEVISION
, the headline proclaimed over a glowing article about the “young genius.” Farnsworth’s name was poised to become as famous as Ford, Edison, or Wright.

“Are you Farnsworth?” a policeman asked Phil the morning of October
28 while he and Pem were out playing tennis in a rare moment of relaxation. Phil said that he was.

“Well, you might want to get down to your laboratory right away,” the officer told him. “The place is on
fire
.”

The place was gone. What caused the blaze remains unknown, and fortunately the loft and equipment were fully insured. Farnsworth got the lab up and running again, but he lost months of time. His greater crisis was financial; just as his newly incorporated Television Laboratories was hitting its stride, Farnsworth’s backers pulled the financial plug. They wanted a major corporation to step in and offer them a return on their investment.

Meanwhile, buzz was growing around Farnsworth’s lab and a steady stream of celebrities and venerated scientists journeyed to 202 Green Street to see the wunderkind’s miracle machine. Movie star Douglas Fairbanks Jr. caused quite a stir when he and his Oscar-winning wife, Mary Pickford, stopped by, but Farnsworth most enjoyed kibitzing with fellow inventors such as Lee De Forest, a pioneering figure in radio, vacuum tubes, and electronics. Guglielmo Marconi also paid a visit.

Few guests expressed more interest than Vladimir Zworykin, head of Westinghouse Electric Corporation’s television research division, and Farnsworth believed that Westinghouse could be his savior. If the company agreed to a licensing arrangement, he would receive a percentage on every television camera and receiver set sold, netting him millions of dollars. Farnsworth hosted Zworykin for three days in mid-April 1930, answering every question and even inviting him to his house for dinner. Before Zworykin left San Francisco he picked up an image dissector in Farnsworth’s lab and said, “This is a beautiful instrument. I wish I had thought of it myself.” It was the highest compliment one inventor could extend to another.

No offer, however, was forthcoming. In fact, by the time Zworykin returned east, he was no longer employed by Westinghouse but had been hired by its sister corporation, RCA, at the behest of its president,
David Sarnoff. Sarnoff had promised Zworykin a million-dollar budget to bring television to the masses, just as RCA had done with radio, and he had sent Zworykin to snoop on Farnsworth.

Like Zworykin, Sarnoff was a Russian-born immigrant. He spoke only his native tongue when he left Minsk (now the capital of Belarus) for New York in 1900 at the age of nine. A quick study, he soon became fluent in English, shed his accent, and sold penny newspapers to support himself, his mother, and his ailing father. At the age of fourteen he had a chance encounter with Guglielmo Marconi, who admired the boy’s pluck and made him his personal errand boy.

Years later Sarnoff was promoted, becoming a full-time wireless telegraph operator at the American Marconi Company. Along with providing Sarnoff invaluable experience working within a corporate structure, the job proved auspicious for placing Sarnoff at the center of—as he would recount throughout his life—a disaster of unprecedented magnitude.

Just before 10:30
P.M.
on April 14, 1912, Sarnoff was manning American Marconi’s telegraph station atop the Wanamaker Building at Ninth Street and Broadway in New York when an urgent message beeped over the wires: “S.S.
Titanic
ran into iceberg. Sinking fast.” Twenty-one-year-old David Sarnoff was now the lone connection between Western civilization and the ships relaying updates about the doomed ocean liner and her 2,223 passengers. “I gave the information to the press associations and newspapers at once,” Sarnoff later said,