The Last Lone Inventor

The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television by Evan I. Schwartz, Harper Perennial, 2003. 

Electronic versus Mechanical: 

Philo T. Farnsworth invented television. His basic innovation was to make it purely electronic, in contrast with the other efforts at the time, which were partly mechanical. His competitors all used mechanical devices and so were too slow to change the image quickly enough so that the eye would perceive continuous motion. Farnsworth’s device used electromagnetic fields to change the direction of a beam of electrons. The direction was varied periodically, so that the electron beam would hit the phosphor screen row by row, and from left to right within each row. Farnsworth invented not only the television receiver, but also the television camera, which he called the “Image Dissector”. Farnsworth first communicated his ideas in 1922, when he drew a sketch of his Image Dissector for his high school chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman. 

San Francisco Laboratory : 

Farnsworth created a laboratory in San Francisco and hired some assistants to help him build his television cameras and receivers. 

Filing Patents:

Farnsworth filed a patent application in 1927. In 1930 the U.S. Patent Office issued Farnsworth two patents, one for his television camera and one for his television receiver.

Radio Corporation of America : 

The author describes how David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation of America, tried to steal Farnsworth’s invention. Sarnoff wanted to have a monopoly on television. In April 1930, Vladimir K. Zworykin of RCA visited the San Francisco laboratory of Philo T. Farnsworth and said of Farnsworth’s Image Dissector, “This is a beautiful instrument. I wish I had invented it myself”. Back at RCA, Zworykin built television equipment similar to what he had seen in Farnsworth’s laboratory. At the patent interference trial several years later, Zworykin claimed that when he had said these words back in 1930, he was merely being polite. 

Congressional Testimony: 

In December 1930, Farnsworth testified at the Federal Radio Commission in Washington, D.C. He explained why his invention of electronic television was superior to the mechanical spinning disk efforts of other inventors. 

Patent Interference Trial:

There was a trial regarding who had invented television, Philo T. Farnsworth versus Vladimir K. Zworykin of RCA. In 1935 the U.S. Patent Office awarded priority of invention to Philo T. Farnsworth. 

Philco:

In 1931, Philco, a manufacturer of radios headquartered in Philadephia, funded a new laboratory of Farnsworth in Philadelphia called “Television Laboratories”. In 1933, Philco withdrew its support for Farnsworth, and Farnsworth left to create his own laboratory in Philadelphia. 

Patent Licensing Royalties: 

In 1939, RCA agreed to license the television patents of Farnsworth for one million dollars plus royalties on every television sold. Due to the 17-year period prescribed by law, Farnsworth patents expired in 1947. Now that TV had finally become widespread, Farnsworth was no longer able to collect royalties from RCA. So he never made much money from his invention.