1906-1971

American Inventor

Philo T. Farnsworth is one of several individuals who invented the television, although his role in the development of the television camera is sometimes overlooked. He was a lifelong inventor and was the holder of 165 patents during his lifetime.

Once the transmission of sound by radio was accomplished in the early twentieth century, it was not difficult to imagine transmitting a series of pictures that would be interpreted as a moving picture by the viewer. Indeed, the first steps in this direction were achieved in the eighteenth century. A primitive facsimile transmission line operated between Paris and Lyons, France, between 1865 and 1870. In 1884, Dr. Paul Nipkow (1860-1940) of Berlin received a patent for a picture transmission system based on a two spinning perforated disks. Light from the scene being transmitted would pass through one of the spinning holes and be collected by...