“To have the right idea is one thing.
To have the right idea and make it work is everything.”
– Roger Penrose
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Having the right idea and making it work – that is what Philo T. Farnsworth did nearly 100 years ago. You are gazing now at the results of that serendipity.
Every video screen on the planet – including the one you are looking at now – can trace its origins to a sketch that 14-year-old Philo T. Farnsworth drew for his high school science teacher in 1922:
The idea embodied in this sketch was demonstrated for the first time on a workbench in San Francisco on September 7, 1927. That achievement was recreated for the 50th anniversary in 1977:
Now we have a little more than three years to organize the Centennial of that historic occasion. So let’s talk about creating…
PHILO T. FARNSWORTH DAY
SEPTEMBER 7, 2027
… to commemorate the first 100 years of video – and give this seminal genius the recognition he has long been denied.
With our giant flat panel displays and handheld computers, from Netflix to TikTok, we take video entirely for granted today – unaware of what a breakthrough it was in its time.
After the introduction of motion pictures and radio, there was no question that moving pictures would one day fly through the air. But the earliest attempts to achieve that dream used 19th century solutions to what was clearly a 20th century problem.
It was not until Philo Farnsworth applied the theories of Albert Einstein* to the challenge that the world of screens we now live in became possible. By conceiving and building an entirely electronic video system in the 1920s, Farnsworth achieved an epic breakthrough in what humans could do to with quantum forces and particles.
That we are not more familiar with Farnsworth – or how he changed the world – is one of the oddities of history and a culture that reveres innovation.
Now, with the Centennial of the first all-electronic video transmission still three years away (as of this posting on Sept 7, 2024), we have the time necessary to make the big deal out of this story that it deserves to be.
Will you join the crusade?
For more information, contact the sponsors or visit farnovision.com
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*Einstein is most often associated with E=mc2 and the atomic bomb. What is lost to history is that his first theories made television possible decades before anybody figured out how to split an atom. When discussing his Oscar-winning feature Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan likes to say “we live in Oppenheimer’s world…” But unless we all have an atomic bomb in our living room, we actually live in Farnsworth’s world – and Christopher Nolan made the wrong damn movie!