farnovision

TeeVee in the 1930's: Paramount Newsreel Footage

Apparently this outfit has obtained the rights to show this footage, originally released in 1936 by Paramount's "Eyes and Ears of the World" newsreel service.  It's a good reflection of how TeeVee looked and worked in its formative years.  Click the image to open the page with the video: 

 

 (I think the date that appears on this opening screen shot is wrong, my recollection is this newsreel was shot/released in 1936.  But whothehell really knows...?

Oops

via wesleyvaclav.blogspot.com

We made it through just the first half of the the 2-hour performance before heading to Cool Basil at 8801 University in Clive for some Thai food that was better than anything The Farnsworth Invention served up on 42nd Street in Des Moines.

We weren't the only people who bailed out after the first half of The Farnsworth Invention [pictured at the left, courtesy of Steve Gibbons of The Playhouse]. We were told by The Playhouse staff before the performance that it wasn't sold out, and a number of disgruntled customers joined us in leaving at intermission.

Was it the play, or the performance? It's not like it's an easy script to master. Without top notch performances, it's going to be hard for the subject material to hold audience attention...

The Last Inventor: Philo T. Farnsworth

Nice bio at Ancestry Magazine online:

But in other ways, Farnsworth’s achievements have gone largely unnoticed. He is said to be "one of the greatest, yet least publicized scientists of our generation." In an age where technology seems to grow from a team of engineers in a corporate plant, we find it difficult to believe that one great mind full of bright ideas could conceive of such an idea of television in a hay field at the young age of fourteen.

Philo Farnsworth’s name, after a lifetime of hard work but often unrecognized success, deserves to be forever linked with the title, father of television. For, indeed, that is who he is.

The Other Tragedy

Originally a screenplay, Aaron Sorkin's "The Farnsworth Invention" might best be suited for the medium that is its subject. The invention -- one that Sorkin knows something about, having created "The West Wing" -- is television.

Except for the title character -- Philo Farnsworth, a

Ads by Google

Hit the ground soaring.
Put HR in the corporate driver's seat with HR Exec Programs at U-M.
execed.bus.umich.edu

250 Free Business Cards
Full-Color Design and Printing. Chosen by 19,000,000 Customers!
www.Vistaprint.com

Free Cover Letter Sample
Find Cover Letter Tips & Career Advice. Search Job Postings.
careers.msn.com

visionary Idaho farm boy who never quite grew up -- no one here resembles a fully drawn human. Such is the burden of exposition that makes the cathode ray and a patent fight the stuff of high drama.

via www.allbusiness.com

Which assessment affirms one of the points that I've been trying to make all along: if Aaron Sorkin can't make these characters engaging, then maybe it was a lost cause all along.

Buzz Aldrin to accept Emmy for NASA moon broadcast - NewsFlash - NJ.com

Aldrin and Philo T. Farnsworth, together again for the first time:

The TV academy said Tuesday that Aldrin, part of the 1969 moon mission, will accept the Philo T. Farnsworth Award on behalf of NASA at the Emmy engineering awards on Saturday. The honor, named for TV inventor Farnsworth, recognizes an agency, company or institution whose contributions affected the state of TV technology and engineering.

Who Knew?

This is the first we're hearing about a new series of postage stamps honoring early television stars having their "first day of issue" in Rigby, Idaho: 

Tuesday morning at the Philo T. Farnsworth TV and Pioneer Museum in Rigby, a rare event happened. The newest postage stamps were unveiled and they're commemorating TV classics.

A sheet of twenty 44 cent first class stamps celebrating shows like "I Love Lucy" and "Hopalong Cassidy" and "The Ed Sullivan Show" are now on sale.

Rigby Postmaster Gordon Cole says it's a big honor to have Rigby chosen as a location to unveil these commemorative stamps.

Gordon Cole: "This doesn't happen everyday. These are usually quite big events and to have one in Rigby is really a treat. The reason why we picked Rigby is because Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of the television, we thought it was fitting that we honor him because without him these shows wouldn't be possible."

Its Only Numbers, Right?

So I learn from my Google Alerts this morning that there will be a new "children's book" biography of our man Farnsworth released on September 8, 2009.  It's called The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth and according to the synopsis at Amazon.com:

Plowing a potato field in 1920, a 14-year-old farm boy from Idaho saw in the parallel rows of overturned earth a way to “make pictures fly through the air.” This boy was not a magician; he was a scientific genius and just eight years later he made his brainstorm in the potato field a reality by transmitting the world’s first television image.

I realize this is being pretty picky, but with all the research that's out there now, you'd think we could get the dates and intervals straight.  To whit:  The "date of conception" -- that moment in the potato field -- has been pretty well pegged to the summer of 1921, the summer before Philo cajoled his way into Justin Tolman's senior chemistry class; the subsequent disclosure -- the prophetic drawing that showed up years later in the litigation -- was later that school year,  during the winter of 1922. 

So the potato field inspiration was 1921, and the "first picture" was indisputably 1927 -- that would be SIX years later, not 8. 

And I'm sure the Logie Baird gang will have a great time with that "world's first television image."  Sometimes you do need the qualifier "electronic," even though that subsequently became synonymous with television, period.

But, hey, why should children care about little details like actual dates and numbers.  Those things are so... analog.

This Seems Appropriate

TV Academy to honor NASA for televising the Apollo 11 moon walk:
 

The space agency will receive the Philo T. Farnsworth Award in honor of the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing and the innovations behind the broadcast of the first moonwalk.

The "Philo T. Farnsworth Award" is a special Emmy that the TV Academy bestows on for "Outstanding Tecnical Achievement by a Corporation" or some such thing.  Aside from the obvious irony in such that designation, Farnsworth himself believed that televising that "giant leap for mankind" was one of the highlights of his own experience.  Linking NASA with the guy whose invention made it all possible seems entirely appropriate.

"This Has Made It All Worthwhile"

That's what Philo T. Farnsworth said to his wife as they sat in their living room on July 20, 1969, and watched Neil Armstrong take "one giant leap for mankind."  Watched.  Because of the thing that he invented 40+ years earlier. 

It's been said before, but bears repeating: amazing as the moon landing / walk were, the truly amazing thing was that a billion people were able to watch the whole thing unfold from their living rooms.

"The Farnsworth" Gets a Slot in "Warehouse 13"

I haven't watched it yet, but I'm recording episodes of a new SciFi (now "Syfy Network") Channel Series called "Warehouse 13."  It's an action-adventure thing essentially constructed around the concept of the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

As described in to WIRED,the show is about...

...a cavernous warehouse filled with weird artifacts stored over the past century by the federal government. Rumpled manager Artie, played by Saul Rubinek welcomes the agents with an array of antique gizmos. Their mission: Track down a sinister artifact each week and bring the relic back to South Dakota for safekeeping.

“Making the pilot, we had this notion that Artie is like Q in the James Bond world,” says producer David Simkins, checking in from the Warehouse set in Toronto.

“Artie hands out the gadgets,” Los Angeles show-runner Jack Kenny adds. “Creating this show, ’steampunk’ was our mantra.”

Appropriately enough, one of Artie's gizmos is a video communicator dubbed "The Farnsworth:"

“This is basically a video cellphone and it was invented by Philo Farnsworth, the unrecognized inventor of television,” Simkins says. “We imagined that Philo invented it one weekend in 1929, it worked, and it’s been in the warehouse ever since. One reason they still use it is that the technology is so old, no one can hack it. It’s not digital. I don’t even know what it runs on but it’s untraceable because the Farnsworth exists totally off the grid.”

These guys know their obscure 20th century scientists.  Another one of the featured geegaws is "The Tesla Gun:"

We say this little ray gun was invented by Thomas Edison’s great rival, Nikola Tesla,” Simkins says. “It’s basically a stun gun, like a Taser: There’s an electrical charge, you aim it, it fires.” Kenny adds: “And the Tesla destroys immediate short-term memory.”

That one looks to me like a hack saw frame with some tubes welded on top.  I guess that's the definition of "steampunk" -- a concept I'd not heard of until now which I may decide to find endlessly fascinating.