1906-1971
Television Pioneer

The Importance of Technology.

The real pioneers of television were not entertainers or financiers; they were scientists. One of the most important was Philo Farnsworth, who when only a teenager designed the basic system needed to transfer moving pictures over the air waves.

High-School Prodigy.

Farnsworth was fifteen years old, and a high-school student, when he read of the research being carried out in the Soviet Union by Boris Rosing on transmitting moving images by electricity. He quickly designed a schematic drawing of the required system. Farnsworth entered Brigham Young University the next year and remained for two years until the death of his father. A San Francisco banker named William H. Crocker built a laboratory for Farnsworth so that he could continue his research into the practical development of his television system.

Patents and Corporations.

Farnsworth developed his laboratory into the...