Mary Kay Carson - Who Invented Television?. Philo Farnsworth

COOL INVENTIONS!

IT SEEMS LIKE TELEVISIONS ARE EVERYWHERE, BUT DO YOU KNOW WHO INVENTED THE FIRST ONE? LEARN ABOUT PHILO FARNSWORTH'S LIFE AND HOW HE INVENTED THE TELEVISION. CREATE YOUR OWN CARTOON SHOW, TOO!

"THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN ON YOUR TELEVISION SET, THINK ABOUT THE BOY WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA."

"YOUNGER READERS WILL WANT TO READ MORE AFTER LEARNING ABOUT SOME OF OUR NATION'S GREAT INVENTORS. EASY-TO-READ AND INFORMATIVE, THIS SERIES MIGHT INSPIRE SOME FUTURE INVENTORS."

About the Author

Author Mary Kay Carson is a full-time science writer who has written more than forty books for young people and their teachers. In 2011, she received the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Children's Literature Award. She has her BS degree in biology.

designThe way something is put together.

electronicsThe parts and wires inside computers, radios, TVs, etc.

inventTo make something for the first time ever.

inventorA person who creates something new.

plowA farm tool that cuts and turns over soil.

Do you know who invented television? You might be surprised. One of TVs inventors was a kid. His name was Philo Farnsworth. He was only fourteen when he thought of a way to create TV pictures.

Philo T. Farnsworth was only a teenager when he began to think about inventing.

Farnsworth was born in a log cabin in Utah. His family moved to Idaho when he was eleven. Young Farnsworth drove a covered wagon to their new farm. A few years later the family moved again. This farm had something really new: electricity!

Farnsworth was born on August 19, 1906, in this log cabin.

Farnsworth learned to fix the farms electric machines. He read about electronics in magazines. He learned how wires and tubes made lights and radios. Farnsworth decided to be an inventor.

Magazines like these gave Farnsworth ideas about inventing.

Radio sends sound through the air. What invention could send pictures? Farnsworth got his idea for TV while watching a plow. It cut row after row into the field. The rows looked like lines on a page, or like a picture sliced into tiny strips.

When Farnsworth was a boy, horses, not tractors, pulled plows and other farm equipment.

Farnsworth drew this sketch of a television camera for his high school science teacher.

Farnsworth knew right away. He was right! Lines of light could send pictures from one place to another. But no one else understood his idea until he was in high school. Then Farnsworth told a teacher about it. Farnsworth even drew a TV camera.

Farnsworth works on an early TV camera.

Farnsworth kept working on his TV idea. When he was twenty, he built a TV system. It sent camera pictures to a TV in another room. One early TV picture he sent was a tiny dollar sign.

The first person on live TV was Farnsworths wife, Elma Pem Farnsworth. The bottom photo shows the lines of light on this TV image.

Farnsworth turns a dial on an early TV.

Other people worked on TV, too. In 1939 a company paid Farnsworth for his TV design. They added his invention to the work of others. By 1971, a TV had about 100 parts Farnsworth had invented.

Philo Farnsworths invention helped create the televisions we enjoy today.

This statue of Farnsworth is in Emancipation Hall in Washington, DC.