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If you are asking yourself, "Who is Philo Farnsworth and what is his name doing among these luminaries?" don't feel too badly. Of all of the great inventors of the 20th century, Farnsworth is among the most obscure. Yet his invention, the television, is among the most ubiquitous.
Farnsworth was a most unlikely genius. The son of Iowa farmers, Farnsworth had to travel by horse to get to high school. At the age of 14, though, Farnsworth not only came up with the idea for television, he had worked out most of the technical details.
In 1928, while still just 22, Farnsworth would receive his first patent for his television. It would be many years before he would be able to fully enjoy the fruits of his invention. He became embroiled in a lengthy legal dispute with RCA, which claimed that their employee, Vladimir Zworykin, had invented television first. It wasn't until 1934, after years of litigation, that the US Patent Office sided with Farnsworth.
Ironically, as television became an almost universal appliance, Farnsworth objected to his own children watching.
"There's nothing on it worthwhile, and we're not going to watch it in this household," he told them. "And I don't want it in your intellectual diet."
Farnsworth's genius wasn't limited to television. He earned over 300 patents in his life, including the first simple electron microscope and the first cold cathode-ray tube.
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