5 Things You Didn’t Know About: Philo T. Farnsworth
The first thing that you may not know about Philo T. Farnsworth is just exactly who the heck he is. The short answer is that he is the title character of Aaron Sorkin’s new play The Farnsworth Invention which opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre. The longer version involves the idea of a 14 year old boy, the inventor of the television and the decade long battle for the right to make that claim.
Farnsworth’s first laboratory devoted to the idea of developing an electronic television was at 1339 New Hampshire Ave. – in Hollywood.
Believing that the future of television, and a great deal of potential revenue, lay in demonstrating the effectiveness of day-to-day television broadcasting, Farnsworth built a broadcast studio in Philadelphia with a special transmitter and a 100-foot tower that could blanket the metropolitan area with experimental television signals. The station operated under an FCC license with the call letters W3XPF.
Because of the unusual infrared sensitivity of the Image Dissector tube, the heart of Farnsworth’s invention, the color red was televised as white. To combat this peculiarity, blue makeup was applied around the lips and eyes of television performers to make them appear normal.
On January 7, 1927 Farnsworth submitted an application for his first patent which included plans and detailed drawings for his television system; by 1939 he had obtained more than 100 patents.
The Emmy Award, the award given out by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, gets its name from the term “Immy”. “Immy” was a nickname given to the Image Orthicon tube which is essentially a design and patent of Philo Farnsworth.
