Philo Farnsworth

While attending college, Philo Farnsworth met Elma “Pem” Gardner whom he married on May 27, 1926. The couple had four sons: Russell, Kent, Philo, and Kenneth.

The inventor’s final years were difficult. He battled depression for years and eventually became addicted to alcohol. He died on March 11, 1971, in Salt Lake City, Utah, after suffering from pneumonia.

Philo T. Farnsworth was born on August 19, 1906 to parents Serena Amanda Bastian and Lewis Edwin Farnsworth as one of their five children in Utah, the US. He had two brothers and two sisters, including a sister named Agnes.

He developed an interest in electronics after his first telephonic conversation with an out-of-state family member. He won the first prize of $25 in a pulp-magazine contest by inventing a magnetized car lock.

He excelled in physics and chemistry at the Rigby High School. While studying there, he once provided his teacher with diagrams and sketches covering many blackboards to show how the electronic television system could be accomplished practically.

Farnsworth then attended the Brigham Young High School and graduated from there in 1924. His father died while he was still in high school and young Philo assumed the responsibility of sustaining his family.

Later on, he studied at the Brigham Young University and earned the Junior Radio-Trician certification from the National Radio Institute.

In September 1927, Philo Farnsworth's camera tube transmitted its first picture to a receiver kept in another room of the laboratory. Over the next two years, he worked on improving his techniques and transmitted the first ever live human images via his television system.

In 1931, David Sarnoff of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) offered Farnsworth US$100,000 for his patents but the latter declined. In the month of June that year, he, along with his family, moved to Philadelphia where he joined the Philco Company.

In 1932, Philo Farnsworth met John Logie Baird, an inventor who had given the first ever public demonstration of a working TV system using an electro-mechanical imaging system. Baird, who was seeking to create the electronic television receivers, demonstrated his mechanical system to Farnsworth.

In 1934, the American inventor sailed to Europe and secured an agreement with the Goerz-Bosch-Fernseh in Germany.

He then returned to his laboratory to continue his research. By the year 1936, his company was regularly transmitting entertainment programs on an experimental basis. The same year, Farnsworth, while working with the biologists at University of Pennsylvania, developed a method of sterilizing milk using radio waves. He also invented a fog-penetrating beam for airplanes and ships.

During his time at the International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Philo Farnsworth served in the basement laboratory—“the cave"—located on the Pontiac Street in Fort Wayne. There he introduced several breakthrough concepts such as a defense early warning signal, radar calibration equipment, submarine detection devices, and an infrared telescope.