“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.
In the 1920s, while the great minds of science wrestled with 19th century solutions to a 20th century problem, a teenager plowing a field in Idaho dreamed of trapping light and transmitting it one-line-at-a-time on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons.
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:
An effort is now under way to celebrate that achievement. We have a little more than three years to organize the Centennial of that historic occasion. So it’s not too soon to start planning
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.
To foster this initiative a non-profit organization –The Waterstar Foundation – has been formed.
Our first, modest, short-term goal is to obtain sufficient funding to mount an international social media campaign to promote awareness of the coming anniversary.
Then, if adequate funding can can be secured, then the big goal will be to acquire the building in San Francisco where television was invented and convert part of it into an exhibit/museum that celebrates the history of video technology. Ideally, the museum would open its doors to global acclaim on September 7, 2027.
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.
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.
We have three years to correct that oversight.
Will you join the crusade?
For more information, contact the sponsors, follow our Facebook Page or sign up for the TVCentennial e-newsletter:
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*Or whatever we decide to call it…
**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!
Subject: Vision Across Time — Project Pegasus, Plasma, and the Continuing Human Quest
Dear Mr. Schatzkin,
Thank you for your ongoing work in preserving and honoring the legacy of Philo Farnsworth. Your reflections on television as the culmination of a 4,000-year quest for vision — from the oracles of antiquity to the electron beams of the 20th century — are deeply resonant.
I wanted to bring to your attention the work of Andrew D. Basiago, an attorney and government whistleblower who claims to have participated in Project Pegasus, a classified U.S. time-space exploration program in the early 1970s. According to Basiago, he was one of several child participants trained to teleport and time travel using a variety of modalities — eight in total.
One of these involved a plasma confinement chamber developed by Dr. Stirling Colgate, which allowed for temporal relocation. The chamber was reportedly located at the Kitchell Memorial Presbyterian Church in New Jersey, in a brick building that today functions as a daycare center. I’ve written to Pastor Hannah Faye Allred about the current use of the building and the site’s historical significance.
In 1972, Andrew was sent from that location to November 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he witnessed President Abraham Lincoln shortly before the Gettysburg Address. When the Quantum Field Effect wore off, he returned to the present — still wearing a pair of shoes and a coat gifted to him by Civil War hero John Lawrence Burns. This suggests that physical objects can traverse time with the traveler — raising intriguing possibilities, such as returning to President Lincoln again.
I’ve also reached out to the Newtown, Connecticut Police Department and to Rabbi Praver, who was a first responder at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, to share this information about Andrew’s time travel activities. I felt it was important that those engaged in community and spiritual healing be aware of the technological frontiers — and perhaps metaphysical dimensions — being explored through these experiences.
Andrew is an associate of Alfred Lambremont Webre, a Canadian attorney and futurist. Their contact information is available online:
• Andrew Basiago: [email protected]
• Alfred Webre: [email protected]
Andrew ran for President in 2016 and has announced his intention to run again in 2028. His proposals are freely available online, and whatever one thinks of his extraordinary claims, they are supported by a deep commitment to constitutional governance, disclosure, and technological transparency.
I found it especially intriguing that plasma played such a central role in the reported time travel experiments. It reminds me of the transition from cathode ray tubes to plasma televisions — and the fact that the human body contains trace deuterium, the same isotope used in fusion reactors. The thematic connections between plasma, energy, and consciousness continue to deepen.
I thought these ideas might interest you, especially in the context of your work tracing humanity’s long quest to project its vision across time and space.
With warm regards and appreciation for your work,