"When Farnsworth had finalized the plans for his television system and drawn detailed diagrams, he filed for his first patent. The application was submitted on January 7th, 1927, and to the extent that these documents disclosed an invention that would work, that date is the official date that television was invented. Still, the patents could not be officially granted until the device had been proven to work, or 'reduced to practice.' And that was still a long way off.
"On September 7, 1927 the system was ready to be tested...In one room, Cliff Gardner dropped the glass slide between the Image Dissector and a hot, bright, carbon arc lamp, and the Information Age was born: In the other room Phil, Pem and George watched the face of the receiver as it flickered and bounced for a moment. When the system settled down, all present could see the straight-line image shimmering boldly in an eerie electronic hue on the bottom of Farnsworth's magic tubes. When Cliff rotated the slide, everybody could see the image on the receiver rotate as well, clearly proving that they were witnessing visual intelligence being transmitted from one place to another.
"Later that evening, Philo T. Farnsworth recorded the arrival of true video with a simple scientific statement in his laboratory journal when he wrote, 'The received line picture was evident this time.'
"But in a telegram to Les Gorrell in Los Angeles, George Everson put it much more succinctly: 'The damned thing works!' "
--- The Farnsworth ChroniclesBefore Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971), experiments in television used an electromechanical system. As a teenage Mormon farmboy in 1922 Idaho, he discovered a way to use electrons to generate a signal and eventually developed the IMAGE DISSECTOR, an all-electronic television camera tube. He later said he got the idea for the moving lines of pictures from the rows of crops he once farmed. Well, fellow inventor Vladimir Zworkykin, RCA, and RCA's David Sarnoff got into a patent fight with Farnsworth. Eventually, Farnsworth won and RCA paid him off with a pittance. After inventing "a number of breakthrough concepts, including a defense early warning system, submarine detection devices, radar calibration equipment, and an infrared telescope," he invested his money into his own company and eventually went bankrupt. Suffering from depression since the death of his infant son years earlier, Farnsworth developed pneumonia and died in 1971. His widow, Elma Gardner "Penn" Farnsworth, who died in 2006 at the age of 98, "fought for decades to assure Farnsworth's place in history."
"I know that God exists. I know that I have never invented anything. I have been a medium by which these things were given to the culture as fast as the culture could earn them. I give all the credit to God."
--- Philo T. Farnsworth
Farnsworth's Image Dissector - IEEE Virtual Museum
Electronic Television - IEEE Virtual Museum
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