Journalist and biographer Daniel Stashower, who wrote "Teller of Tales," the Edgar Award-winning biography of A. Conan Doyle (about the creator of Sherlock Holmes), conceived his latest book, "The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television," because of a story told by his grandmother and of his own memories of her favorite cousin.
Stashower's grandmother remembered that when she was only 7, Hugo Gernsback would come to her family's home with a box of Schraff's chocolates under his arm, making seemingly wild predictions about a device he called a "telephot."
In his thick German accent, Gernsback would say, "Hildegarde, fix your hair. It won't be long before the caller can see your face over the telephone wires."
Stashower's grandmother lived in Cleveland at the time, and Gernsback often traveled through Ohio on his way from New York to Chicago, looking for radio equipment. (Stashower calls Gernsback a pioneer of "science fiction" — a term he may have coined.)
"Gernsback owned a large stable of scientific magazines," Stashower said during a telephone interview. "One of the things he wrote about was television and Philo Farnsworth."
Farnsworth was initially written about in a 1921 edition of Gernsback's Science and Invention magazine, when he entered an invention contest hoping to win $25. (It was the same year Farnsworth would begin thinking about television.)
Back when the automobile was still a relatively new mode of transportation, Science and Invention solicited would-be inventors to submit ideas "to enhance the safety and comfort of the modern automobile" by preventing auto theft, which was running rampant in New York City.
Farnsworth, a native Utahn, was a young teenager living on his parents' farm in Rigby, Idaho — and he had only seen a few cars. But after reading about the contest, he began to think about an antitheft device.
The idea came to him one day while he was plowing the potato field, using three horses. Lost in thought, he dropped the reins, putting the horses out of balance with the plough, a potentially dangerous situation. Farnsworth's father ran and caught the reins, while his son, who didn't even notice the danger he was in, said, "I've got it! I really think it will work!"
He explained to his father that he had come up with an auto-antitheft device based on magnetizing metals — both the ignition and the car key. So, he mailed off his idea to Science and Invention, and a few months later, Gernsback announced him as the winner of the cash prize.
Farnsworth, who still wore knickers, used the money to buy his first pair of long pants.
"I love that story!" said Stashower.
A later edition of Science and Invention magazine has Gernsback trying to teach his readers to build their own TV set. "I realized that I didn't know the name of the inventor of television," Stashower said. "So the recognition for Philo Farnsworth and his accomplishment are long overdue. It was like Edward Howard Armstrong, who, in 1923, figured out a form of radio transmission known as frequency modulation, or FM. Armstrong never got what he deserved either."
Stashower was struck by the fact that everyone else who was doing television research thought the key was mechanical in nature. "It seems to me that almost every country in the world has its own inventor of television. Kenjiro Takayanagi of Japan, Rene Barthelemy of France, Dionys von Milhaly of Hungary, Boris Rosing of Russia and John Logie Baird of Great Britain.
"All these men, including Vladimir Zworykin and RCA, did very important work — but it was Farnsworth who had the vision, and against all odds, he nailed down the crucial patent.
"He once said he was 'like a speedboat among juggernauts, but speedboats eventually ran out of gas.' Philo Farnsworth eventually just wore himself out."
Other inventors were initially going in the wrong direction, Stashower said. "The world and most of the big research firms were pursuing the mechanical idea — using a large floating disc — but Farnsworth, even as a teenager, knew this would never work. He knew that television must not have any moving parts, but he didn't have the resources to put it into practice.
"He had some incredibly bad luck, and in 1941 when he finally reached an accommodation with RCA, America went to war. His crucial patents only had 17 years to run. With all due credit to others, Farnsworth got there first."
Stashower is convinced that Farnsworth's greatest contribution was the glass tube, "the beating heart of the television camera," which did not exist at the time. "It was Cliff Gardner, his brother-in-law, who said, 'I'll do that.' In a short time, he had learned glass blowing and was doing it. Farnsworth and his family just did the impossible."
RCA chief David Sarnoff is another fascinating character in this drama, Stashower said. "Part dreamer and part bean counter, he caused a lot of grief for Farnsworth. There are two schools of thought on Sarnoff — he was either a ruthless robber baron or a business genius.
"Farnsworth got in his way. It would have been a lot easier if the two of them had reached an accommodation earlier. But RCA had never paid a patent fee to an outside inventor. The only exception in 50 years was Philo Farnsworth."
E-mail: dennis@desnews.com