May 25, 2025
Meet The Biographer
In which Paul Schatzkin waxes on from ‘the place where it happened’

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Get On My Corner is a new history-documentary web series that visits corners of our world where history was made and the inventions that shaped our lives first took root.
In late May 2025, Farnsworth biographer Paul Schatzkin flew out to San Francisco to sit with Aaron and Pablo, the hosts of GOMC, to sit across the street from 202 Green Street and talk at length about the world-changing things that happened there between 1926 and 1931.
With “angel funding” from investors associated with the Crocker Bank, Philo Farnsworth set up a laboratory on the second floor of this building which still stands. On September 7, 1927 he conducted the world’s first successful test of an all-electronic television system. He continued to work at that address until he moved his operations to Philadelphia in 1931.
This conversation is edited down to about 30 fact-and-fiction-busting minutes. If you’re not at all familiar with the Farnsworth story, it’s as good a place to start as any:
An while we’re on the subject of 202 Green Street, here’s a proposal for how the space could be converted into a lasting testament to the events that happened there.
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