The Boy Genius and the Mogul The Untold Story of
Television -Daniel Stashower - Broadway | Hardcover | April 2002 | $24.95
New | 0-7679-0759-0 ABOUT THIS BOOK :The world remembers Edison, Ford, and
the Wright Brothers. But what about Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of
television, an innovation that did as much as any other to shape the
twentieth century? That question lies at the heart of The Boy Genius and
the Mogul, Daniel Stashower's captivating chronicle of television's true
inventor, the battle he faced to capitalize on his breakthrough, and the
powerful forces that resulted in the collapse of his dreams. The son of a
Mormon farmer, Farnsworth was born in 1906 in a single-room log cabin on
an isolated homestead in Utah. The Farnsworth family farm had no radio, no
telephone, and no electricity. Yet, motivated by the stories of scientists
and inventors he read about in the science magazines of the day, young
Philo set his sights on becoming an inventor. By his early teens,
Farnsworth had become an inveterate tinkerer, able to repair broken farm
equipment when no one else could. It was inevitable that when he read an
article about a new idea -- for the transmission of pictures by radio
waves--that he would want to attempt it himself. One day while he was
walking through a hay field, Farnsworth took note of the straight,
parallel lines of the furrows and envisioned a system of scanning a visual
image line by line and transmitting it to a remote screen. He soon
sketched a diagram for an early television camera tube. It was 1921 and
Farnsworth was only fourteen years old. Farnsworth went on to college to
pursue his studies of electrical engineering but was forced to quit after
two years due to the death of his father. Even so, he soon managed to
persuade a group of California investors to set him up in his own research
lab where, in 1927, he produced the first all-electronic television image
and later patented his invention. While Farnsworth's invention was a
landmark, it was also the beginning of a struggle against an immense
corporate power that would consume much of his life. That corporate power
was embodied by a legendary media mogul, RCA President and NBC founder
David Sarnoff, who claimed that his chief scientist had invented a
mechanism for television prior to Farnsworth's. Thus the boy genius and
the mogul were locked in a confrontation over who would control the future
of television technology and the vast fortune it represented. Farnsworth
was enormously outmatched by the media baron and his army of lawyers and
public relations people, and, by the 1940s, Farnsworth would be virtually
forgotten as television's actual inventor, while Sarnoff and his chief
scientist would receive the credit. Restoring Farnsworth to his rightful
place in history, The Boy Genius and the Mogul presents a vivid portrait
of a self-taught scientist whose brilliance allowed him to "capture
light in a bottle." A rich and dramatic story of one man’s
perseverance and the remarkable events leading up to the launch of
television as we know it, The Boy Genius and the Mogul shines new light on
a major turning point in American history. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY A journalist
whose articles have appeared in numerous national publications, including
the New York Times and Smithsonian magazine, DANIEL STASHOWER is also the
author of five mystery novels and Teller of Tales, the Edgar Award-winning
biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Stashower lives with his wife and son
in Bethesda, Maryland. |
NTA Telestudios LTD.
Vintage softcover booklet with 33 pages is titled "Questions
and Answers about Video Tape Commercials, January, 1960" from the
"NTA Telestudios LTD., 1481 Broadway, New York 36, NY". Black
and white real photos of video tapes, TV sets, cameras, lighting, studio
sets, and more. Features such products as Reynolds Aluminum, Kellogg's
Corn Flakes, with Ampex and RCA the sole manufacturers of tape recorders
at this time in 1960. Size is about 6 3/4" square.
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