Philo Taylor Farnsworth (August 19, 1906 – March 11, 1971) was an American inventor who received the first patent for television from the United States Government. He also created a video camera tube and an image dissector. He made and sold a working television system with a receiver and camera. He produced this system through the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation from 1938 to 1951 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Later in life, Farnsworth invented a small nuclear fusion device called the Farnsworth Fusor, which used a method called inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC). This device did not work well for making nuclear power, but it could be used to create neutrons. The design of this device inspired other fusion ideas, such as the Polywell reactor concept. Farnsworth held 300 patents, most of which were related to radio and television.

Early life

Farnsworth was born on August 19, 1906, as the oldest of five children to Lewis Edwin Farnsworth and Serena Amanda Bastian, who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They lived in a small log cabin built by Lewis’ father in Manderfield, near Beaver, Utah. Farnsworth’s maternal grandfather, Jacob Bastian, was a Mormon immigrant from Denmark. In 1918, the family moved to a 240-acre (1.0 square kilometer) ranch near Rigby, Idaho, owned by a relative. His father earned extra income by hauling goods with a horse-drawn wagon. Farnsworth was excited to discover that his new home had electricity, powered by a Delco generator that provided light and operated farm machinery. He was a fast learner in mechanical and electrical technology and fixed the generator. He found a broken electric motor among items left behind by previous tenants, rewound the motor’s parts, and converted his mother’s hand-powered washing machine into an electric one. He became interested in electronics after his first telephone call to a distant relative and found a large collection of technology magazines in the attic. He won $25 in a magazine contest for inventing a magnetized car lock. Farnsworth was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At Rigby High School, Farnsworth excelled in chemistry and physics. He asked his science teacher, Justin Tolman, for advice about an electronic television system he was thinking about. He drew detailed sketches on blackboards to explain how it could work, and Tolman encouraged him to continue developing his ideas. One of these drawings was later used in a legal case about patents between Farnsworth and RCA.

In 1923, the family moved to Provo, Utah, and Farnsworth attended Brigham Young High School that fall. His father died of pneumonia in January 1924 at age 58, and Farnsworth took on the responsibility of supporting his family while finishing high school. After graduating in June 1924, he applied to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where he scored the nation’s second-highest on entrance tests. However, he planned to focus on his television projects and learned that the government would own his patents if he stayed in the military. He left the academy after a few months under a rule allowing the eldest child in a fatherless family to leave service to care for their family. He returned to Provo and enrolled at Brigham Young University, though the faculty did not permit him to take advanced science classes. He attended anyway, used the university’s research labs, and earned a Junior Radio-Trician certification from the National Radio Institute in 1925. While in college, he met Elma “Pem” Gardner, a student from Provo High School, whom he later married.

While working, Farnsworth’s sister Agnes managed the family home and a second-floor boarding house with help from a cousin. Later, the family moved into half of a duplex, with family friends the Gardners living in the other half when it became available. He became close friends with Pem’s brother, Cliff Gardner, who shared his interest in electronics. The two moved to Salt Lake City to start a radio repair business, but it failed, and Gardner returned to Provo.

Farnsworth stayed in Salt Lake City and met Leslie Gorrell and George Everson, two philanthropists from San Francisco who were raising money for a community campaign. They agreed to fund Farnsworth’s early television research with $6,000 and helped set up a laboratory in Los Angeles for his experiments.

Farnsworth married Pem on May 27, 1926, and the couple traveled to Berkeley, California, by train. They rented a house at 2910 Derby Street, where Farnsworth applied for his first television patent. It was granted on August 26, 1930. By that time, they had moved to San Francisco, where Farnsworth established a new lab at 202 Green Street.

Career

After arriving in California, Farnsworth was ready to share his models and drawings with a patent attorney who was well-known for his knowledge of electrophysics. Everson and Gorrell believed Farnsworth should apply for patents for his designs. This decision was important later when disputes with RCA happened. At that time, most television systems used image scanning devices called "rasterizers" that used spinning "Nipkow disks." These disks had holes arranged in spiral patterns that swept across images in short arcs, focusing light onto photosensitive elements to create electrical signals that matched changes in light intensity. Farnsworth saw problems with these mechanical systems and believed an all-electronic scanning system could produce better images for transmission.

On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube sent its first image, a straight line, to a receiver in another room of his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. In 1984, Pem Farnsworth remembered her husband breaking the silence in his lab by saying, "There you are – electronic television!" The image came from a glass slide lit by an arc lamp. Because the design needed very bright light, the source had to be extremely bright. By 1928, Farnsworth improved the system enough to demonstrate it to the press. His backers wanted to see money from the invention, so the first image shown was a dollar sign. In 1929, the system was improved by removing a motor-generator, making the television system completely electronic. That same year, Farnsworth transmitted the first live human images with his system, including a 3.5-inch image of his wife Elma ("Pem") with her eyes closed (possibly because of the bright lighting needed).

Before Farnsworth's work, many inventors had created electromechanical television systems. However, Farnsworth designed and built the first working all-electronic television system, using electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices. He first showed his system to the press on September 3, 1928, and to the public at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on August 25, 1934.

In 1930, RCA hired Vladimir K. Zworykin, who had tried but failed to develop his own all-electronic television system at Westinghouse since 1923. Before leaving Westinghouse, Zworykin visited Farnsworth's lab and was impressed by the Image Dissector. He reportedly had his team copy the device for testing. Later, Zworykin shifted focus to the Iconoscope. In the 1970s, Zworykin said, "Farnsworth was closer to modern video cameras than anyone else because he used cathode-ray tubes for transmission. But he didn’t have a mosaic of light elements or storage, so picture quality was low. Still, he was proud and stuck to his method." Farnsworth's patent number 2,087,683 for the Image Dissector (filed April 26, 1933) included a "charge storage plate" invented by Tihanyi in 1928 and a "low velocity" method of electron scanning. Other patents, numbers 2,140,695 and 2,233,888, described a "charge storage dissector" and "charge storage amplifier."

In 1931, David Sarnoff of RCA offered to buy Farnsworth's patents for $100,000, but only if Farnsworth became an RCA employee. Farnsworth refused. That year, Farnsworth joined Philco and moved to Philadelphia with his family. RCA later filed a lawsuit claiming Zworykin’s 1923 patent had priority over Farnsworth’s design, but could not prove Zworykin had created a working transmitter tube before 1931. Farnsworth had lost two earlier legal battles to Zworykin but won this one. In 1934, the U.S. Patent Office ruled in Farnsworth’s favor, giving him priority for inventing the image dissector. RCA lost an appeal but continued legal battles for years until Sarnoff agreed to pay Farnsworth royalties.

In 1932, while in England to raise money for his legal fights with RCA, Farnsworth met John Logie Baird, a Scottish inventor who had demonstrated the first public working television system in 1926 using mechanical methods. Baird showed Farnsworth his mechanical system.

In May 1933, Philco ended its partnership with Farnsworth because, according to Everson, Farnsworth’s goal of building a broad patent structure through research did not match Philco’s production plans. Everson said the decision was mutual and friendly. Farnsworth opened a new lab at 127 East Mermaid Lane in Philadelphia and held his first public exhibition at the Franklin Institute in 1934.

After traveling to Europe in 1934, Farnsworth made a deal with Goerz-Bosch-Fernseh in Germany. Some image dissector cameras were used to broadcast the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin.

Returning to his lab, by 1936 Farnsworth’s company regularly transmitted entertainment programs experimentally. That year, while working with University of Pennsylvania biologists, he developed a method to sterilize milk using radio waves. He also invented a fog-penetrating beam for ships and airplanes.

In 1936, Collier’s Weekly highlighted Farnsworth’s work, calling it "amazing" and noting that a 19-year-old boy from Utah had helped create a television system that might soon reach homes.

In 1938, Farnsworth founded the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with E. A. Nicholas as president and Farnsworth as director of research. In September 1939, after a long legal battle, RCA agreed to a licensing deal for Farnsworth’s 1927 patent, paying $1 million. RCA then sold electronic television cameras to the public after showcasing them at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.

Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation was bought by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) in 1951. At ITT, Farnsworth worked in a basement lab called "the cave" on Pontiac Street in Fort Wayne. He introduced breakthrough ideas, including early warning signals for defense, submarine detection devices, radar calibration equipment, and an infrared telescope. Art Resler, an ITT photographer, said, "Philo was a very deep person—tough to engage in conversation, because he was always thinking about what he could do next." One of Farnsworth’s most important contributions at ITT was the PPI Pro.

Inventions

Farnsworth discovered the principle of the image dissector during the summer of 1921, shortly before his 15th birthday. He showed the first working version on September 7, 1927, after turning 21 the previous August. A farm boy, he got the idea of scanning an image as a series of lines from the back-and-forth motion used to plow a field. In a legal case over patents in 1934, decided in February 1935, his high school chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, presented a sketch of a blackboard drawing Farnsworth had shown him in spring 1922. Farnsworth won the case; RCA appealed the decision in 1936 and lost. Farnsworth received money from RCA, but he never became wealthy. The video camera tube developed from the combined work of Farnsworth, Zworykin, and others was used in all television cameras until the late 20th century, when other technologies like charge-coupled devices became available.

Farnsworth also created the "image oscillite," a cathode ray tube that displayed images captured by the image dissector.

Farnsworth called his device an image dissector because it changed individual parts of an image into electricity one at a time. He used cesium, a material that releases electrons when exposed to light, instead of spinning disks.

In 1984, Farnsworth was added to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

The Farnsworth fusor is a machine designed by Farnsworth to create nuclear fusion. Unlike most fusion systems that slowly heat a magnetically confined plasma, the fusor sends high-temperature ions directly into a reaction chamber, avoiding much complexity.

When the Farnsworth fusor was introduced to the fusion research community in the late 1960s, it was the first device clearly showing it could produce fusion reactions. At the time, there was hope it could quickly become a practical power source. However, like other fusion experiments, turning it into a power source has been difficult. Despite this, the fusor became a useful neutron source and is now made commercially for this purpose.

At the time of his death, Farnsworth held 300 U.S. and foreign patents. His inventions helped create radar, infrared night vision devices, the electron microscope, the baby incubator, the gastroscope, and the astronomical telescope.

TV appearance

Although he was responsible for the technology, Farnsworth appeared only once on a television program. On July 3, 1957, he was a mystery guest ("Doctor X") on the CBS quiz show I've Got A Secret. He answered questions from the panel as they could not guess his secret ("I invented electronic television."). For stumping the panel, he received $80 and a carton of Winston cigarettes. Host Garry Moore then spent a few minutes discussing with Farnsworth his research on projects such as an early analog high-definition television system, flat-screen receivers, and fusion power. Farnsworth said, "There had been attempts to create a television system using mechanical disks and rotating mirrors and vibrating mirrors—all mechanical. My contribution was to remove the moving parts and make the thing entirely electronic, and that was the concept I had when I was just a freshman in high school in the Spring of 1921 at age 14."

A letter to the editor of the Idaho Falls Post Register disputed that Farnsworth had made only one television appearance. Roy Southwick claimed, "…I interviewed Mr. [Philo] Farnsworth back in 1953—the first day KID-TV went on the air." KID-TV, which later became KIDK-TV, was then located near the Rigby area where Farnsworth grew up.

Legacy

In 1967, Farnsworth received an honorary degree from Brigham Young University, a school he had briefly attended after finishing high school at Brigham Young High School. In 2006, Farnsworth was awarded the Eagle Scout honor posthumously after it was found that he had earned it but never received it. His wife, Pem, accepted the award on his behalf, though she passed away four months later. Farnsworth was also posthumously inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia Hall of Fame in 2006. In 2013, he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame. He is also recognized in the Hall of Fame of the Indiana Broadcast Pioneers, which notes that his company owned and operated WGL radio in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

A bronze statue of Philo T. Farnsworth, representing Utah, was displayed in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol from 1990 until 2018. In 2018, the Utah State Legislature voted to replace the statue with one of Martha Hughes Cannon, despite public opposition. The new statue was officially placed in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall in December 2024 and stands alongside a statue of Brigham Young, both representing Utah. Another statue of Farnsworth is located in the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City.

A historical marker in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania, honors Farnsworth’s work in television during the 1930s. It states that he led early experiments in live local TV broadcasting from his station W3XPF, which was located at that site. A plaque in San Francisco, placed in 1981, recognizes Farnsworth as “The Genius of Green Street” for his research at his laboratory on Green Street. In 2008, a statue of Farnsworth was installed at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in San Francisco. A plaque near his former home in Fort Wayne, Indiana, also honors his contributions. Farnsworth is featured in the “Inventor’s Circle” at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT. A 1983 U.S. postage stamp was dedicated to him. In 2011, he was inducted into the San Francisco Hall of Fame by Mayor Gavin Newsom. His television-related work, including a TV tube he developed, is displayed at the Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum in Rigby, Idaho.

The Philo T. Farnsworth Award is a Primetime Engineering Emmy given to organizations that have greatly influenced television and broadcast engineering. A separate event called the Philo Awards is an annual competition in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Michigan that recognizes community media efforts. A streaming service named Philo, based in San Francisco, is named after him. Farnsworth Peak in Utah is a location for many TV and radio transmitters. The “Farnsworth Steps” in San Francisco are a set of stairs leading from Willard Street to Edgewood Avenue. Several buildings and streets in Brownfield, Maine, are named for Farnsworth. A school in Rigby, Idaho, is named after him, while another school in Utah is named after his cousin with the same name.

In the 1999 TV show Sports Night, a character discusses Farnsworth’s invention of television. The 1989 film UHF features a character named Philo in his honor. In the 1992 TV show Beakman’s World, a guest scientist named Philo T. Farnsworth explains his inventions. A novel titled Human Amusements includes a fictional version of Farnsworth. The Futurama character Professor Farnsworth is inspired by the real inventor. The novel Carter Beats the Devil and the play The Farnsworth Invention also focus on Farnsworth’s work. The TV show Warehouse 13 features a device called “The Farnsworth.” A video game called Trenched includes a character named Vladimir Farnsworth. In the movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a character admires Farnsworth as an inventor. At the 2025 Primetime Emmy Awards, host Nate Bargatze portrayed Farnsworth in a skit.

Fort Wayne sites

In 2010, the former Farnsworth factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana, was demolished, removing the "cave," where many of Farnsworth's inventions were first developed, and where radio and television receivers and transmitters, television tubes, and radio-phonographs were produced using the Farnsworth, Capehart, and Panamuse brand names. The facility was located at 3702 E. Pontiac St.

Also that year, more items from the Farnsworth factory were added to the Fort Wayne History Center's collection, including a radio-phonograph and three table-top radios from the 1940s, as well as advertising and product information from the 1930s to the 1950s.

Farnsworth's Fort Wayne residence from 1948 to 1967, later known as the Philo T. Farnsworth Television Museum, is located at 734 E. State Blvd, on the southwest corner of E. State and St. Joseph Blvds. The residence is marked by an Indiana state historical marker and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Marion, Indiana factory

In addition to Fort Wayne, Farnsworth operated a factory in Marion, Indiana, that made shortwave radios used by American soldiers during World War II. After the war, RCA bought the factory, which was located at 3301 S. Adams St.