Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born in Indian Creek, Utah, on August 19, 1906. When Philo was twelve years old, Lewis and Serena Farnsworth moved their family to Rigby, Idaho. Although isolated, this small town possessed one attribute that would forever change Farnsworth's life: electricity.

Farnsworth soon found many interesting uses for this invisible energy, including building a motor to run his mother's washing machine. Inspired by the stories he read about famous inventors, Farnsworth soon sought advanced tutoring from his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman. One day, while plowing back and forth through a potato field, Farnsworth conceived his greatest invention.

He had recently read a magazine article about mechanical television, but even his young mind knew that a whirling disk-based system would prove to be impractical. However, there in that Idaho potato field he realized that an electron beam, scanning an image line by...