Utah native Philo Farnsworth had come home to receive the plaudits of the Utah Broadcasters Association for his vital contributions to their industry.
Association President Arch Madsen presented a scroll, which Farnsworth accepted "as a trustee for the persons who helped me on the way up."The odyssey of television, a technology that would literally change the world, involved many inventors. But the basic concept of electronic television began in the fertile mind of a young boy from Utah. The essential concepts of the technology were outlined in drawings that 14-year-old Philo discussed with a high school chemistry teacher in Rigby, Idaho. That teacher, Justin Tolman, was in the audience in 1953 when Farnsworth received the congratulations of the Salt Lake association.
Even earlier, as a small boy living a routine Utah farm life, Farnsworth displayed the inventive bent that would dominate his life, keeping him glued to a task through countless experiments until he got the desired results.
He was born Aug. 19, 1906, in a log cabin in the area of Indian Creek near Beaver. The cabin had been built by his paternal grandfather, whose name he inherited. His parents were Lewis Edwin and Serena Amanda Bastian Farnsworth.
When he was 3, his father took him to see a train. Although frightened of the mechanical monster, the boy was fascinated when the engineer invited him into the cab to see what made it go. Back home, the little boy asked for paper and a pencil and drew detailed pictures of the train's mechanisms, giving his parents a demonstration of the photographic memory with which he had been gifted.
Fascinated by such wonders as the Bell telephone and Edison's gramophone, he became intrigued with inventors and how their works evolved.
With items gleaned from the family farm, he created a "perpetual motion" machine. It didn't produce electricity, but it did demonstrate his precocious talent for mechanical detail and a thirst for knowledge, according to a biography written by his wife, Elma "Pem" Gardner Farnsworth.
Young Farnsworth raised orphan sheep to earn enough money for a bicycle. His grandmother persuaded him to buy a violin instead and he became a proficient musician, even though on at least one occasion he had to defend his interest in this "sissy" pastime with his fists.
The Farnsworth family eventually moved to Rigby, which also claims Philo as a native son. A sign outside the town today proclaims it the "home of the father of television." In the attic of one of several houses where they lived, young Philo found a treasure - a stack of radio, popular science and other semi-technical magazines left by the former tenant. He became familiar with Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and he figured out, to the amazement of older men in the family, how to fix the vintage Delco electrical system that powered the farm. He won $25 in a contest to improve automobiles with an idea to magnetize the ignition, which would then only respond to a key likewise magnetized. The idea was to prevent car thefts.
In 1919, he read an article postulating the possibility of sending pictures, as well as sound, over wires. With each exposure to the world of science, his "romance with the electron" was becoming more firmly entrenched.
By 1924, the Farnsworth family had moved to Provo, where he attended Brigham Young University when he could raise the tuition. One of the ways he found to make money was to build crystal radio sets in the basement of a local boarding house. His partner was his future brother-in-law, Cliff Gardner. They sold all the radios they could build, but by the time they replaced parts and supplies, they didn't make much.
Cliff's sister Pem became Farnsworth's steady date. After a period of courtship, he called her one day and told her to be prepared for a wedding in three days. He had found supporters interested in his ideas about television and he was headed for California. He wanted Pem beside him.
To this point, his ideas had met with disbelief, skepticism and "just plain insulting ridicule." To have someone believe in the possibilities as he saw them - and to put up $6,000 to back their belief - was an opportunity not to be missed.
In San Francisco, Farnsworth went to work in an upstairs loft lab at 202 Green St. The work was exacting and every step of the multiple complex components had to be developed from the ground up.
"Young Farnsworth at this time looked much older than his 19 years," wrote one of his early partners, George Everson. "He was of moderate height and slight build and gave the impression of being undernourished. There was a nervous tension about him that was probably the result of financial worry and frustration in not making headway in his scientific pursuits."
Finally, the plodding, detailed work began to show results. On Sept. 7, 1927, when Farnsworth was 21, the first complete television system from transmitter to receiver was tested. Anxiously, he and his little group of scientists turned on their set. A simple line was replicated on the screen. A year later, Farnsworth demonstrated his two-dimensional picture transmission for a news conference. He was becoming a public figure.
Everson notified their other partner, Les Gorrell, by wire simply that "The damn thing works."
While scientists in several labs were experimenting with television, most were working on ways to create an image mechanically. Farnsworth's idea was based on electronics - a method of manipulating electrons in a vacuum tube, changing a visual image into a stream of electrical current. Transmitted to another vacuum tube in a receiver, the current would be turned back into the original visual image.
He had dreams for his invention. He believed it would bring nations of the world closer together as they learned more about each other. He believed it would end illiteracy. Ultimately, as people around the globe tuned in to TV, he was disappointed in some of the uses made of his brainchild.
He also was disappointed in his dreams of making rightful claim to the technology and reaping the financial rewards for years of painstaking scientific research. Almost immediately, he and his associates were in court defending patents related to the work. An RCA scientist challenged his claim to the "paternity" of television.
In the end, the court was swayed by the original drawings Farns-worth had made and showed to his chemistry teacher years before. He won the case, but in the end, he lost out in the frantic, cutthroat effort to get television to an eager public. Many of his inventions remained vital to the industry and he sold his patented materials to other companies, but his own company to manufacture and market television sets was a financial failure. The existing big radio companies, with the money to expand into the new technology and the political clout to get federal sanctions, won the battle for market dominance.
But without Farnsworth's contributions to the science, even today's sophisticated television sets would remain "nothing but a box," a fellow scientist wrote.
Frustrated with his inability to carve a niche in the commercialization of television, Farnsworth turned his hand to other scientific pursuits. For years, he engaged in nuclear fission research, then ITT withdrew its support from that undertaking.
In 1966, ill and once again thwarted in his work, he returned to Utah, but his was a mind that could not be still. For a time, he resumed direction of nuclear fission experimentation at BYU. He also put his energies and resources into proposals for research toward controlling life-threatening viruses and to providing safe, effective means of waste disposal.
Farnsworth died on March 11, 1971, with many goals unmet. A world forever changed by the culmination of a young boy's dreams has not always credited Farns-worth with his contributions. "History has badly neglected a man whose name should be said in the same breath as Bell and Edison," wrote Gregory C. Thompson of the University of Utah library system.
But in May 1990 his home state belatedly honored this native son with a place in the halls of the nation's capital. A statue of Philo Farnsworth was dedicated as Utah's second contribution to the national gallery of outstanding Americans in the Capitol Building.