Philo T. Farnsworth Dies
June 1971 Radio-Electronics

June 1971 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Note that the obituary of sorts for Philo Taylor Farnsworth, which appeared in the June 1971 edition of Radio-Electronics magazine, specifically states that he was responsible for the development of the electronic television system, as opposed to the simple television system. That is because the earliest television schemes were as much - if not more - mechanical than electronic (see "Television Forges Ahead" in the March 1930 issue of Radio News). Philo invented the "image dissector" detector tube used in his video camera. Reconstructing the image with a cathode ray tube is a simple matter compared to first detecting the image. After his company was swallowed up by International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), he stayed on as a researcher and developed the long persistence CRT that came in really handy for radar plan position indicator (PPI) displays.

Philo T. Farnsworth Obituary

Philo T. Farnsworth, one of the fathers of electronic television, died March 11 in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was 64.

At the age of six he decided he would be an inventor and he first fulfilled that aim when, as a 15-year-old high-school boy he described a complete system for sending pictures through the air. Six years later his first patent covering the complete electronic television system was filed.

Dr. Farnsworth was awarded the basic patents on electronic television, and is the inventor of the basic principles of the camera tubes now known as Image Orthicon and Image Dissector, both widely used today. He made the first public demonstration in the world of electronic TV at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, for 10 days during the summer of 1935.

The firm he founded, Farnsworth Radio & TV Corporation, later became part of the International Telephone and Telegraph System. He was president and technical director of this corporation until his retirement in 1967.