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September 7, 2027 will mark 100 years from the day when electronic television made its first appearance on Earth.  To generate interest in the Centennial,  this website and accompanying podcast are going to Count Down the Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television over 100 weeks until September 7, 2027.
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There are three reasons why the name of Philo T. Farnsworth is not more familiar, despite his having invented what is arguably the most transformative technology of the 20^th Century, if not the entire millennium. 

First, Farnsworth rarely sought the spotlight, although he did enjoy what recognition he received.  A glowing profile in the October, 1936 edition of Collier’s Weekly described him as “an emerging force in the burgeoning television industry” – which was “destined to find its way into many American homes by Christmas 1937.”  This prediction reflected a common sentiment in the mid-30s that commercial television was “just around the corner” – a corner that turned out to be World War II.  And in 1939, biographer Durward Howard named 33-year-old Farnsworth one of “America’s Top Ten Young Men” alongside such household names as Lou Gehrig and Spencer Tracy.  

The Pretenders: RCA and Baird 

Second, there were numerous pretenders to the throne. Chief among those was RCA, David Sarnoff, and Vladimir Zworykin. Sarnoff wanted to be remembered as “the father of television,” and Zworykin was more than willing to go along.  In litigation with Farnsworth in the 1930s^⁠1, RCA tried to use Zworykin’s 1923 patent application to pry Farnsworth from his patents.  The litigation failed on all the counts that mattered, but RCA still managed to get that 1923 date into the historical record.

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At ~2:20 into this RCA-produced 1956 documentary, Zworykin and Sarnoff reminisce about how they fabricated their story of the origins of television.

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Across the Atlantic, the Brits still insist that John Logie Baird invented television, despite his reliance on a mechanical system that  Farnsworth rendered obsolete in 1927. Baird was compelled to license Farnsworth’s patents in 1934 in order to stay in the business, though he still lost out when the BBC began regular television programming with equipment from EMI – an RCA ally – in 1936

These and other competing claims have fueled the perception that that television was “too complex” to have been invented by any single individual.  

And while it is undeniable that television is a complex technology, there was one pivotal invention that made it possible, and one inventor who showed the rest of the world how it would ultimately be done. 

It Takes a Company

But the third and most compelling reason Philo Farnsworth’s name is not more familiar is that he was not survived by a company that could preserve his legacy. 

Think, for example, of Walt Disney, who died in 1966 but left behind a corporate legacy that has lasted for generations.  You might reasonably expect the same for the man who invented something as world-changing as television. 

Philo Farnsworth never wanted anything more than to be an inventor.  His idols were Edison, Bell, Marconi, and the other pivotal figures of 19^th century science and invention.  But by the time Farnsworth was able to set up a proper laboratory in 1926, the companies formed by his predecessors dominated a landscape that was already carved up among a handful of large companies like RCA, AT&T, General Electric, and Westinghouse. ^⁠2

As an independent operator with no manufacturing base to draw on, Farnsworth was always hard-pressed for funds.  There’s no question that television was a capital-intensive invention, but the fact that his patents were tied up in litigation stalled the prospect of collecting royalties on those patents.  Consequently, he frequently fought with his own investors over funding for his operations.

A Battle on Three Fronts

Farnsworth was embattled on three fronts:  

• His natural habitat was his laboratory, where he and his small but dedicated “lab gang” built daily improvements into the humming electronic gizmos on their workbenches.  The camaraderie also gave Farnsworth occasional opportunities to explore new frontiers.  

• He was much less comfortable in the depositions and legal proceedings required to defend his patents. 

• And then there were the frequent demands of his investors to cut back on his expenses that were financed out of their pockets or by selling stock in a company that had no revenue. 

The End of The Dream

It all came to a head in 1936, right after the patents for radar were abandoned, when Farnsworth’s principal investor, a man named Jess McCargar, stormed into the laboratory and fired the entire staff.  ^⁠3Farnsworth managed to persuade some to return, but he and his trailblazing operations never fully recovered. 

A resolution of sorts was arranged with the formation of Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation.  Investment bankers from New York arranged the acquisition of The Capehart Company, a  phonograph and jukebox manufacturer in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and with an IPO of $3 million (roughly $70 million in 2026 dollars), “FTR” began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 31, 1939.  

Farnsworth was never keen on the sort of enterprise he derided as “tacking on the shipping room door.” His instincts leaned toward building a pure “invention factory” like Thomas Edison once operated in Menlo Park, New Jersey.  But absent the revenue from patent royalties, manufacturing – first radios and phonographs, and televisions when the market finally opened – offered the soundest course for building a lasting enterprise 

By the time all the operations were relocated to Indiana, Farnsworth was suffering health issues from all the stress and retreated to a homestead in the woods of Maine.  There was not much more he could do personally to advance television, but he was starting to have other ideas that he needed time and space to explore.  

In addition to building a fully equipped private laboratory on his Maine property, he dammed up a stream and spent the war years fishing for trout – and for the mysteries of the universe his inventions had revealed to him. 

Though his thoughts were focused elsewhere, Farnsworth didn’t  ignore the war altogether.  He and his brothers started a wood mill and selectively logged the property for pine to make “boxes for bullets” that were shipped to the front. 

I Want Nothing to Do With It 

In 1941, he was invited to join a secret project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. “I think they’re going to build an atomic bomb,” Farnsworth said to his wife, “and I want nothing to do with it”. That made him the most renowned scientist of the day who did NOT participate in the Manhattan Project. 

In Fort Wayne, the company that now bore his name produced military communications and radar equipment worth more than $100-million over the course of the war. But the company took on too much debt to acquire the added capacity. When the war ended and the economy returned to a peace-time footing, FTR was slow to retool its operations or shore up its balance sheet.  By 1949, the company that had been formed to meet the demand for televisions with products branded for its namesake inventor was on the verge of bankruptcy – just as the industry he had created was taking off. 

Farnsworth returned to Fort Wayne to lend whatever support he could to restoring the company, but it was already too late.  Rather than file for Chapter 11, the Board of Directors accepted an offer for acquisition from the International Telephone and Telegraph Company for what amounted to pennies on the dollar. 

On February 7, 1949, the ticker symbol “FTR” quietly vanished from the New York Stock Exchange, and  Philo Farnsworth spent the remainder of his career as an employee of ITT.

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¹ That “Zworykin invented the Iconoscope for RCA in 1923” is still found in accounts of TV’s origins, though the statement is loaded with historical inaccuracies: Zworykin was not working at RCA in 1923, he did not have a working Iconoscope until the early thirties, and the patent office ruled in 1935 that the device that he did disclose in 1923 was inoperable.  Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…

² See the footnote re: the Consent Decree of 1926 in #88, Kraft Television Theater.

³ See Countdown #90, TV In In Trenches

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