The Styrous® Viewfinder: Philo T. Farnsworth ~ Nuclear Fusion & Captain Kangaroo

August 19, 2021

Philo T. Farnsworth ~ Nuclear Fusion & Captain Kangaroo

Letterman Digital Arts Center, San Francisco

(dome of the Palace of Fine Arts just behind it)

Today is the birthday of Philo Taylor Farnsworth. I can just hear you say, “Who the hell is Philo Farnsworth?” Ok, I’ll tell you. He is the father of what we now call The Television! His invention ushered in a new way of living as well as many characters that everyone came to love, the loveable Howdy Doody . . .

Howdy Doody -1947 - 1960

. . . Ed Sullivan . . .

Ed Sullivan Show - 1948 - 1971

, , , Desi and Lucy, . . .

I Love Lucy - 1951 -1957

. . . Ralph Kramden and his wife Alice . . .

The Honeymooners - 1955 - 1956

. . . and, of course, Captain Kangaroo.

From left: Dancing Bear, Bunny Rabbit,

Grandfather Clock, Mister Moose

and Mister Green Jeans.

Farnsworth is best known for his 1927 invention of the first fully functional and complete all-electronic television system complete with receiver and camera—which he produced commercially through the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation from 1938 to 1951, in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Philo T. Farnsworth - 1928
Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

However, he invented the tube in his laboratory at the foot of Telegraph Hill (link below), right here in San Francisco, California.

Plaque at the location of Farnsworth's

San Francisco laboratory on Green Street

photo by Adam Kliczek

I almost met him but we missed each other by 35 years; he was in his studio in the late twenties and I got there in the early sixties (Wilder link below). Timing is everything!

Farnsworth’s 202 Green Street lab - San Francisco

Philo T. Farnsworth Archives

In his later life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device, the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor, employing inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). The design of this device has been the inspiration for other fusion approaches, including the Polywell reactor concept. Farnsworth held 300 patents, mostly in radio and television.

Farnsworth was born in a small log cabin that was built by his granfather in Indian Springs near Beaver, Utah.

log cabin

Indian Springs ~ Beaver, Utah.

Philo T. Farnsworth Archives

When he was a kid he began tinkering with machines and developed an early interest in electronics after his first telephone conversation with a relative and after he discovered a large cache of technology magazines in the attic of a house they moved into. He won $25 in a pulp-magazine contest for inventing a magnetized car lock.

Farnsworth conceived of the idea for electronic television at the age of 14 while working on a farm. He observed the straight rows created by the horses as he plowed, and thought “he could build the image like a page of print and paint the image line after line . . . with the speed of the electron, this could be done so rapidly the eye would view it as a solid picture.”

According to his wife Pem, Farnsworth reasoned that by using an image dissector tube, he could manipulate electrons to “change a visual image into a stream of electrical current, transmit that to another vacuum tube at the receiver, and on a fluorescent screen turn the current back into the visual image again.” Farnsworth sketched his idea on the blackboard of his high school chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, and presented him with a drawing of it, which would prove invaluable years later during a 1935 patent suit ruling.

Farnsworth’s sketch for Justin Tolman

Philo in the Hall of Fame

When his family moved to Salt Lake City he became acquainted with Leslie Gorrell and George Everson, a pair of San Francisco philanthropists, They agreed to fund his early television research with an initial $6,000 in backing, and set up a laboratory in Los Angeles for Farnsworth to carry out his experiments. In 1974, Everson wrote a book, The Story of Television; The Life of Philo T. Farnsworth.

In 1926 he and his wife, Elma "Pem" Gardner, rented a house at 2910 Derby Street in Berkeley. He applied for his first television patent, which was granted on August 26, 1930. By that time they had moved across the bay to San Francisco, where Farnsworth set up his new lab at 202 Green Street.

Many inventors had built electromechanical television systems before his seminal contribution, but Farnsworth designed and built the world's first working all-electronic television system, employing electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices. He first demonstrated his system to the press on September 3, 1928, and to the public at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934.

Philo T. Farnsworth with early television camera - 1930's

J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

From the 1950s until his death, his major interest was nuclear fusion. In 1965 he patented an array of tubes, called "fusors," that produced a 30-second fusion reaction.

Philo T. Farnsworth died in Salt Lake City, Utah, of pneumonia on March 11, 1971, before he could complete his fusion work. He was 64 years old.

Farnsworth's wife, Pem, fought for decades after his death to assure his place in history. Farnsworth always gave her equal credit for creating television, saying, "my wife and I started this TV." She died on April 27, 2006, at age 98.