PHILO FARNSWORTH "POPULAR SCIENCE" 1938 PARAMOUNT PICTURES PRESENTED BY JOHN J. HUNT
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ม.ค. 2025
- PHILO FARNSWORTH
INVENTOR OF TELEVISION
PRESENTED BY
JOHN J. HUNT
In 1938 Paramount Pictures produced this short film for audiences in its theaters so they could learn about this new medium called Television.
Many scientists were working on the electronic science behind sending pictures and sound through the airwaves, but their pictures up until Farnsworth were mushy and not sharp. In 1927 Farnsworth patented his Image Dissector tube, which organized the electronic impulses into 250 lines across the TV screen, offering a clear picture.
Farnsworth was born in a log cabin in Beaver, Utah, and he said later he designed his dissector tube to shoot electronic impulses at the TV screen from behind in a top to bottom scan of 250 lines each line like howing a row of corn, go to the end and go back again. 250 times a second. That patent was for his new video camera.
Farnsworth was later able to prove his patent infringement case against RCA and the notorious David Sarnoff by bringing his old High School science teacher into court who wrote the formula for his dissector tube on the blackboard and said this was the formula his student had written on the blackboard when he was thirteen.
RCA had to pay Farnsworth a fee for each TV they manufactured.
There is a book titled _The Boy Who Invented Television_ which was condensed from an early series of web articles of Farnsworth’s life. I recommend the book. When radio was still a rarity, Farnsworth conceptualized dissecting a scene into picture elements by an array of photo sensors, transmitting the elements serially and reassembling the elements on a photo screen at a distant location. Farnsworth’s system concept was completely electronic. At the time Farnsworth came up with his concept other inventors such as Baird were pursuing scanning scenes mechanically with perforated discs. What is remarkable is that Farnsworth came up with the idea for his system while he was a high school student. Though Farnsworth was a young student his plans for his television system were quite detailed and practical.
Farnsworth was a farmer who said that he got the idea for television while he was working in the field the rows of crops made him visualize the different beams of light and the television tube
It’s a fad that’ll never catch on.
Dang sending pictures through the air?? The next thing you will be telling me is that a man walked on the moon and we carry telephones around in our pockets. FAKES I SAY FAKES!!!
"The internet? Is that thing still around?" Homer Simpson
The early history of television is absolutely fascinating. If we want to observe how technology evolves from the lab and workbench to popular culture, this is the topic.
If you ask someone from Britain "who invented television?" the answer would be John Logie Baird. If you ask an American. they will say Philo T Farnsworth.
Both answers are correct, although Farnsworth invented the first electronic system. However Baird did meet Farnsworth, and he (Baird) went on to produce the world's first electronic colour (or color if you are American) system, in 1943, using the Telechrome tube for display.
Awesome video. Thanks for posting.
Good news!
The credit at the for Paramount Pictures. Little did they know in 1936
Originally seen as a segment of "Popular Science" {narrated by Gayne Whitman}.
My dad worked for Capehart-Farnsworth (Ft. Wayne, IN) in the 50s. C-F was later acquired by ITT.
I was planning to reedit this tape to correct the mistakes, but having my house burn down in the Palisades fire I don't think I'll get to it anytime soon.
For everyone who has watched or commented on this video, I am grateful it has reached so many eyeballs. I have posted almost 50 videos on this platform and none of them has gotten the viewers that this short tape has gotten. I’m wondering why?
And for all the critics, you’re correct. I digitized the video whose format was 4:3 and transformed it into 16:9, so the frame is stretched. Sorry about that. But the information is intact and shows Farnsworth working on his revolutionary TV system.
When you have a name like Philo Farnsworth, everything you do is bound to be good! He could have been one of the greatest Poets or a General to huge armies, or a Lover extraordinary, but he chose to bring us TV! I wonder, when he died, did he go to Heaven, or Hell? Maybe just onto the airways, forever.
Or, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth.
The inventor of television was Vladimir I. Zworykin. He was roughly contemporaneous with Farnsworth.
RCA had to capitulate and license its iconoscope technology from Farnsworth. It was a bitter battle between Farnsworth and Sarnoff and one of the few times RCA was beaten in a patent battle. It was a Pyrrhic victory for Farnsworth who was a much better dreamer than business person. Farnsworth went on to head Capehart who was better known for record players and jukeboxes than televisions.
What was that saying, "History is written by the victor" (unintended pun). Farnsworth was first, but RCA was bigger and more ruthless. It all caught up with them though as others have stated. The same was true of FM radio, Armstrong developed it, RCA Changed it to get around the patent, Armstrong committed suicide and his wife fought the battle and later won. To borrow another phrase "Might is not right."
Funny is that Indiana was a major location for RCA (especially the Indianapolis area and Bloomington, where Farnsworth migrated to Fort Wayne Indiana and eventually his company got purchased by ITT. Never knew we had so much technology here.
@ Thanks for adding the detail. It is interesting that up through the 1960s electronics was often virtual cottage industry scattered across the US. RCA used to manufacture tape recorders in rural south east Ohio. Upstate New York was originally a leading manufacturer of transistors. The southern shores of the Great Lakes had a very lively communications and electronics industry. One of the first voice radio broadcasts took place from the yacht Thelma on Lake Erie near Toledo as the progress of a regatta was relayed to shore. The first telephone multiplexed carrier circuit went through Maumee, Ohio. As mentioned above, RCA and Capehart were in Indiana.
Nope! His system didn't work, and was proven to not work, especially without some of Farnsworth's design elements. I believe it even went to court where RCA lost and had to pay to use Farnsworth's designs, which infuriated the CEO who at one time went as far as creating a legal team to try to steal his work. Sarnoff was a patent thief, Zworkin was close but couldn't make his design work in reality. Philo even gave him a tour of his labs and demonstrations of his work, even discussing theory with him. It would have been better for everyone if Sarnoff would have just licensed the patents.
@@Oldbmwr100rs Thanks. I didn’t realize that Farnsworth had given Zworykin access to Farnsworth’s lab. Talk about inviting in the wolf to the henhouse. History kind of repeated in similarity when Xerox showed off their work on the Alto and 8810 at PARC to Steve Jobs and then shortly thereafter Apple released the Lisa with a rather similar graphic interface and mouse. The Lisa was reportedly originally intended to be a text based system without a mouse. Xerox never really capitalized on their revolutionary computing developments. Similarly, Farnsworth while successful never really capitalized on his television work to the extent he should have.
I still prefer watching the radio.
Boy. Now that's analog. Very nearly mechanical. Genius is what it is.
Great video. Too bad you included watermarked pictures at the end.
Yeah, I'm going to reedit because the year is wrong as well. It was made in 1938.
03:24 - A rabbit, "for distant reproduction!"... (?)
Colorizing completely ruins this video and confuses the historical context. The television at that time was monochrome and showing color treated images on the screens is ridiculous.
Plus, the 4:3 "Academy" format was stretched, at least in my TH-cam-viewer, the iOS app. Weird to see "16:9 WS" images on a television, in the context of the very beginning of television broadcasts.
Yep, leave the image alone. It was filmed as 4:3 monochrome so leave it that way! While there was colour film in those days, it was scarce and expensive.
I think it is a film about television, there was no video recorders in 30's
@@MrYerak5 Not on tape. There was some experimentation with putting video on a record. Didn't really go anywhere.
@@MrYerak5 Of course it was film, nobody said otherwise. The issue is the way some people try to "improve" old films by colourizing it and making it 16:9 instead of 4:3. Leave it alone and show it as the film gods intended!
"Good news, everyone!" 😄
Yes, that character was named after Philo.
@@Oldbmwr100rs Also the character "Philo" in Weird Al Yankovic's movie "UHF" was named after Farnsworth.
They colorized the black & white TV picture.
Say his name.
Mr. Farnsworth later swore that he would never have such a ridiculous time wasting, mind numbing device in his living room.
1939, not 1936
Okay, we're both wrong. The "Popular Science" segment was shown in 1938, Episode J8 - 3
Guess what? Television wasn't widescreen then. People didn't look like dwarves. Bad job.
Was he a Marrom? The religion Of Utah ?
Did you mean “Mormon”? If so, Worst Misspelling Ever..
@@tomdis8637 You've never watched Futurama, have you?
He was a Latter-Day Saint, otherwise known at the time as a Mormon.
Mumps