September 7, 2002

4:25 AM

Television celebrates its 75th anniversary today. Invented by a 14 year-old boy in Utah by the name of Philo T. Farnsworth, the first TV images as we know them were transmitted 75 years ago today. Hard to believe that our most pervasive modern media is still really in its infancy. What changes will our personal video delivery infrastructure undergo over the next 75 years, I wonder?
posted by johnnyace (30 comments total)

Funny, I always thought it was Logie Baird. Reading the page I just linked to, it seems it wasn't even his idea...
posted by etc at 4:55 AM on September 7, 2002

Yet again it seems Americans are trying to steal an invention's credit. Since I was at school all books said that TV was invented by scottish John Logie Baird in 1925 (being the first TV images transmitted 77 years ago) and perfected by Vladimir Zworykin, a russian living in the US, in 1931. This is too similar to the fact that many American books credit cinema to Thomas Edison instead of the Lumiere brothers.
posted by edsousa at 5:18 AM on September 7, 2002

The Edison/Lumiere thing is tricky (I was researching the same point just now), since I think it hinges on an important by tiny technical development (the ratcheting mechanism that holds the film for a fraction of a second, which was invented by one of the brothers at home with a migraine and, hearing his wife's sewing machine in the other room, realising that the same mechanism could be used to solve the problem they were having with film).

There's also William Friese-Greene.

When a number of people were working on similar problems, they'd come up with their solutions at the same time (I remember a curious fact that the light bulb was invented independantly at exactly the same time in Scotland, though I don't remember the name of the inventor and Edison was certainly the first to patent; not to mention the claims of supporters of Henry Woodward).

The problem with the Farnsworth pieces is that they don't mention Logie Baird at all, as far as I can tell, which is simply mendacious.
posted by Grangousier at 5:34 AM on September 7, 2002

In a recent New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell discussed the concept of the "lone inventor" using Farnsworth as an example.
posted by Mapes at 5:55 AM on September 7, 2002

looks very much to me like another hard day down at the ministry of truth johnny.
posted by johnnyboy at 6:31 AM on September 7, 2002

As I understand it, Farnsworth was the guy who came up with the idea of building the picture out of lines on the screen. There had been working prototypes of moving-picture-transmission mechanism before, but they were mechanical, and clumsy, and not practical for actually putting in everybody's home.
posted by hob at 6:45 AM on September 7, 2002

Unca Cecil knows all, tells all.

Basically, with TV it's not all cut and dried, and you are all right. I like the part where Farnsworth never cashes in on his advancements, and ends up a bitter old crank:

Commercial broadcasting, from which Farnsworth had long believed he would garner a fortune, began in 1941, with Bulova paying NBC $4.00 for one minute of commercial time. However, WWII intervened, and all television broadcasting was banned in the US in April, 1942. By the time commercial television was again viable, Farnsworth's patent had passed into the public domain, and when the boom on TV sets for the home came in the late 40's, Farnsworth's name was no longer mentioned as the inventor of the set. He tried to go into manufacturing, but was unsuccessful, and eventually had a nervous breakdown. According to his wife, "he wouldn't even allow the word television to be used in our home. When the Encyclopedia Americana asked him to do the article on television, he just threw the letter in the wastebasket. I was very worried that we might lose him altogether."
posted by planetkyoto at 6:55 AM on September 7, 2002

Then again, Farnsworth had better luck than Rudolph Diesel, allegedly one of the first victims of Big Oil and Big Car Manufacturers.
posted by edsousa at 7:30 AM on September 7, 2002

Grangousier: I think you're thinking of Joseph Swan w/r/t the lightbulb, who successfully sued Edison for patent violation. But the Party invented the helicopter, didn't it?
posted by riviera at 7:32 AM on September 7, 2002

Almost a century of television history to contemplate, and you guys are arguing over who invented the thing. MeFites never cease to amaze me.

"...come September 7, 2002, we want everybody who turns on a television set to know that date is the anniversary of the day..."

"Please note: due to circumstances beyond our control, the plans for festivities ..on Sept 7 have been put on hold until further notice."

Until when? September 8th? That just cracks me up.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:11 AM on September 7, 2002

riviera: Not sure. The story I remember is that someone came up with the exact same thing as Edison, chronologically a bit before him, but got to the patent office slightly too late. Which is fair enough, to be honest. I need my complete collection of Look and Learns, it would be in there.

Yes, the helicopter was designed by Big Brother himself. Also the jet engine.
posted by Grangousier at 8:38 AM on September 7, 2002

'Almost a century of television history to contemplate, and you guys are arguing over who invented the thing. '

There is nothing more important that preventing American's from rewriting history.

Was the BBC the first TV broadcaster? I know that they were 1 or 2 years ahead of NBC.
posted by RobertLoch at 8:45 AM on September 7, 2002

There's a lot of things more important than preventing anyone from rewriting history. History is rewritten daily, and trying to stop that is like holding your breath because mommy won't let you have another cookie.

History is written by the victors of the moment. Truth is not. Truth writes itself on the metaphorical undersides of bridges and bathroom stalls of what we perceive to be history.

"History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth."
- E.L. Doctorow
posted by ZachsMind at 9:15 AM on September 7, 2002

RobertLoch, edsousa: steal credit | rewriting history

When I look at a television, I'm not looking at a mechanical product. I'm not using a mechanical computer to post this message, nor am I using a mechanical data transmission system to send it. Oh, I'm sure I could have used the mechanical forms, but the electronic forms survived, and became the superior invention.

John Logie Baird and Vladimir Zworykin worked on mechanical television for years, and were the first to successfully send an image (if you could call it that). The problem was, creation of the image and broadcast was very expensive and unweildy in the mechanical form. Philo created the modern television system, and thus commercial television. Oh, and Zworykin is credited with his "fixes" that allowed television to be electronic, AFTER visiting Philo's lab....

The invention that made it all possible is Philo's. And, he made nothing on it, because of a big American Corporation.

Uhoh.....where's fold_and_mutilate? I seem to be channeling....
posted by dwivian at 9:51 AM on September 7, 2002

'and trying to stop that is like holding your breath because mommy won't let you have another cookie.'

(Yawn)

I'm sorry, I didn't realise that it was childish to fight for a principle.

History is not only written by the victors, and to say that it is, is to insult every journalist, writer and historian that has ever lived.

You say that there are more important things than preventing people from rewriting history. What you mean people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin.. 40 million+ murders between them? Haven't all the world worst regimes, in the early stages of their development, attempted to rewrite history? Is it really so unimportant, trying to stop them. Shall we just sit by and watch the books burn?

Many people have died holding their breath in the hope of getting a cookie. Don't insult their memory.
posted by RobertLoch at 9:54 AM on September 7, 2002

I can't believe no one has mentioned David Sarnoff's (head of RCA at the time) attempt to ensure that Farnsworth never got credit for his invention. Which explains why Philo was so bitter about it.

The most interesting story for me was that the US made its television guidelines before World War II and enough sets had been sold that after the war they kept the standards. The British hadn't sold many sets before World War II and therefor changed the standards for lines after the war. That's why US sets have roughly 450 lines and British sets roughly 600.

The another television ancedote was how a British station was broadcasting some movie when WWII started and therefor had to stop. When they returned to the air after the war, the first thing they showed was the movie that was interupted with some wry comment along the lines of "as we were saying before we were interrupted."
posted by drezdn at 10:16 AM on September 7, 2002

It was a Mickey Mouse cartoon, I think, irony-lovers.
posted by Grangousier at 10:17 AM on September 7, 2002

For what it is worth, the BBC was broadcasting the first experimental television play, The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, starting 14 July 1930. I can't find what the system was (mechanical or electronic). On 22 August 1932 they began a regular televised broadcast, and on 28 July 1933 had the first female broadcaster.

As you might note, all of this was before 1941 and NBC (and CBS, btw), or 1939 and RCA (New York World's Fair, and the Princeton/Columbia baseball game). And, even the Japanese were toying with broadcast television in 1935, beating RCA. Nobody is rewriting history -- we just acknowledge Philo T. Farnsworth as the guy that figured out the scanning system that produces the scan lines I'm watching right now, with the Texas A&M / Pitt game on.
posted by dwivian at 10:25 AM on September 7, 2002

I highly recommend a book called Tube: The Invention of Television, by David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher. It gives you a good chronology of who came up with which developments.

Farnsworth was the first to demonstrate electronic television, moving beyond Baird's system which was mechanical. Zworykin, as far as I can recall (haven't picked up the book in a month or so) did some early work on mechanical television and then made lots of refinements of Farnsworth's work (under the aegis of RCA.)

The story of the color wars is almost as interesting as the race to develop workable electronic television. Worth a read.

And Farnsworth didn't come up with the idea of scanning -- that had been around (in mechanical form) since the late 19th century, I believe, with the invention of the Nipkow disk. Farnsworth DID make it electronic and came up with the idea of using AC carrier current as the pulse to synchronize the scanning, as far as I know. (posting from work -- can't...reach...home...library.)
posted by Vidiot at 10:47 AM on September 7, 2002

Well, anyway.

It's quite stupid to simply say "this guy came up with it" when in fact, many other people did as well, and ideas all feed off of eachother.

It also annoyed me that they mentioned that "even the screen you're reading this was based on his ideas" when, in fact, I was reading it off the LCD in my laptop...
posted by delmoi at 11:07 AM on September 7, 2002

Vidiot: I'll freely admit my understanding of the mechanical technology is a bit lacking... my initial read must have been in error, as I thought that the way the disk worked, versus electron scanning, were different. But, I'm with delmoi -- I read an LCD anyway... *grin*
posted by dwivian at 12:06 PM on September 7, 2002

Here's an easy-to-digest page with all of the major players in early TV and a revealing page about David Sarnoff. A great history of the way men like Sarnoff manipulated the FCC's precursor and corralled broadcasting for themselves is Rebels on the Air: An Alternative History of Radio in America by Jesse Walker, an editor at Reason. He makes a convincing case that a truly open and somewhat more anarchic model would have been far better for the public good than allowing the broadcast spectrum to be handed over to jerks like Sarnoff.
posted by mediareport at 12:24 PM on September 7, 2002

So we come up to the conclusion that Farnsworth invented electronic television along with Zworykin. That might be important, but it is different from inventing the first ever TV, despite how crude and unusable it was. Will our grandsons credit the invention of television to whoever invented TFT screens?

I am already imagining a moving documentary in History Channel on how this poor boy from Iowa became one of the major inventors of the XXth century and got ripped off. Sniff...
posted by edsousa at 12:33 PM on September 7, 2002

"History shall be kind to me, since I intend to write it" - Sir Winston Churchill
posted by Dreamghost at 1:13 PM on September 7, 2002

The whole Farnsworth thing about being cranky must be hereditary. I occasionally hang out with his grandson, who won't shut up about Philo.
posted by Nicolae Carpathia at 2:21 PM on September 7, 2002

dwivian: I thought that the way the disk worked, versus electron scanning, were different.

No, that's correct. Nipkow came up with the concept of scanning, but Farnsworth improved it and made it electronic instead of mechanical. (Before electron scanning, one had to painstakingly sync up your TV set's Nipkow disk to the camera's...Farnsworth's system transmits a sync pulse that syncs your receiver to the transmitter now.)

edsousa: I am already imagining a moving documentary in History Channel on how this poor boy from Iowa became one of the major inventors of the XXth century and got ripped off.

Yeah, a good one needs to be made. CNN (disclaimer: I work for 'em) did a segment last night on Farnsworth. Didn't see it though.
posted by Vidiot at 3:57 PM on September 7, 2002

Yes, the helicopter was designed by Big Brother himself. Also the jet engine.

I thought that was Leonardo da Vinci, and Frank Whittle respectively. Although I may be missing a joke here...
posted by inpHilltr8r at 2:31 AM on September 8, 2002

This is too similar to the fact that many American books credit cinema to Thomas Edison instead of the Lumiere brothers.

Not to mention L.A.A. Le Prince, whose success in taking moving pictures in 1888 is documented. Guinness accept the evidence of his surviving films (actually shot on paper) as the earliest known motion pictures, taken before Edison even had the idea of them. Friese-Greene is often mentioned, but I gather few if any of his films are still with us.

For what it is worth, the BBC was broadcasting the first experimental television play, The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, starting 14 July 1930. I can't find what the system was (mechanical or electronic).

It was mechanical. Marconi didn't get his electronic system (the one ultimately adopted by the BBC) together for a few years after that. I've seen an actual 1930 televisor (at a museum in York) and I'll be damned how anyone could make anything out on that tiny screen.

Regarding this, there's a nice web page here about the restoration of Baird's recordings of his own TV programs (there's also something about "The Man with the Flower in his Mouth"). He succeeded in recording them on disc but never achieved playback. Apparently the oldest surviving disc celebrates its own 75th anniversary on the 20th of this month.
posted by H.B. Death at 2:43 AM on September 8, 2002

I was reflecting more upon television's relative youth than recrediting its invention to Philo. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, even the geniuses, and I didn't mean to imply that Farnsworth alone created TV from an entirely blank slate without influence from anyone.

The fact that television technology itself is only 75 years old (three generations!) is what staggered me. The world noticeably shrunk a bit once it was possible to carry an electronic camera anywhere and remotely look through its lens, and television's impact on our society's culture is arguably the most profound in its modern history.

More interesting is the conjecture of video's future. Once television's infrastructure is completely digital (both the distribution and display technologies) and every program is available on demand, how will the medium change to accommodate our behavior? How will advertising survive without "guaranteed" viewership? How will episode formats evolve once free from the constraints of broadcast timeslots?
posted by johnnyace at 12:49 PM on September 9, 2002

Back in the 8-0's, I used to walk down Sansome St. in San Francisco on the way to work. At the corner of Pine, was a plaque claiming to be the place where he invented tee-vee. Memories fade after 17 years, anyone know if the plaque is still there?
posted by entrustNoOne at 5:44 PM on September 9, 2002