Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round they all laughed when Edison recorded sound they all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly they told Marconi wireless was a phony it's the same old cry.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Welcome to 100 Years of Television.
This is episode number 10, countdown number 97, priority of invention for 100 weeks that started in October 2025. This podcast is going to recall the top 100 milestones in the first 100 Years of Television and video.
The countdown is pegged to culminate on September 7, 2027, the 100th anniversary of the day television as we know it was invented.
I'm Paul Schatzkin, author of the Boy who Invented Television, the definitive biography of Philo T. Farnsworth, who invented the world's first all electronic television system.
In the last episode, we explored the fate of Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, which was used to carry the audio portion of television broadcasts.
Today we're digging into the arcane world of patents governing electronic television, and we'll learn who, according to the US Patent Office, should be remembered for inventing it.
[00:01:38] Speaker C: In April 1934, the United States Patent Office held its final hearing in patent interference number 64027 on the issue of a transmitting apparatus for television.
The contenders in the case were Philo T. Farnsworth and the engineer spearheading RCA's television program, Vladimir K. Zwerkin.
At issue was Farnsworth's patent number 1331 980, which was first filed on January 7, 1927, eight months before 1 of his backers sent a telegram to another backer declaring the damn thing works.
On the other side of the case, RCA was defending an application that Zworkin had filed for a television system while he was employed by Westinghouse in 1923, which the patent Office would eventually rule did not work.
The point of contention between the parties was claim 15 of the Farnsworth patent, which describes an apparatus for television which comprises means for forming an electrical image and means for scanning the electrical image.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: And producing a train of electrical energy in accordance with the intensity of the electrical image being scanned.
This paragraph, first composed by Farnsworth patent attorney Donald Lippincott in 1927, is the legal language that announces the arrival of electronic video on the planet.
It is the introduction of the term electrical image that describes how Farnsworth's image dissector tube was able to scan the electrons rather than the light.
In other words, claim 15 is the indispensable principle that made television, as we have come to know it, possible.
The case actually began some years earlier.
In 1930, seven years after applying for his patent, Zworkin visited Farnsworth's laboratory in San Francisco.
At the time, Zwarken was still employed by Westinghouse and was given a three day tour of Farnsworth's operations with the understanding that Westinghouse was interested in in taking a license for Farnsworth's patents.
When Zwerkin was handed a freshly fabricated image dissector tube, everybody present heard him say, this is a beautiful instrument. I wish I had invented it.
Four years later, in patent litigation, RCA tried to make the case that he had.
And while it's true that Zworkin did have a working camera tube by 1934 called the Iconoscope, the record shows that it was not the same device he had applied for a patent for in 1923.
But that did not stop RCA from making the case.
But the company's evidence was slim, to put it mildly.
Farnsworth's case was supported by extensive laboratory records, including the historic note that the received line picture was evident this time from the evening of September 7, 1927.
RCA, on the other hand, was unable to produce any meaningful documentation of Zworikin's case.
They could not produce a tube from 1923, 1924 or 1925.
There were some vague verbal accounts, but those were dismissed by the patent examiners as unreliable, having been influenced by later events or knowledge.
In other words, when it mattered most, RCA was unable to produce any evidence that would support Zworkin's claim to have created an electrical image in a working camera tube in 1923.
Unable to produce much evidence of their own, RCA tried instead to derail Farnsworth's testimony that he had first conceived of the image dissector as as a high school freshman. Farnsworth's story stood in stark contrast to Zworkin's extensive credentials, his education and his years of service with companies like Westinghouse and RCA.
Unfortunately for RCA's attorneys, Farnsworth clearly recalled discussing his ideas with his high school science teacher in rigby, Idaho. In 1922, a team of attorneys representing both sides of the case ventured out to Salt Lake City, Utah and tracked down Justin Tolman, who produced a sketch that Farnsworth himself had drawn for him.
Tolman's recollection and the sketch that he produced were not instrumental in the patent Office's deliberations, only because Tolman was not an expert in the field. But that did not preclude a decisive decision in Farnsworth's favor.
In its final ruling rendered on July 22, 1935, the patent examiners ruled that Zworkin had no right to make the case because his 1923 application lacked any language that described the pivotal electrical image included in Farnsworth's patent.
After a few more pages of legal discourse, the decision ends with an unequivocal priority of invention is awarded to Philo T. Farnsworth.
Unfortunately, this resounding proclamation was followed by one more little sentence that said limit of appeal August 22, 1935.
In other words, RCA could still appeal the case, and the company waited the full six months to file their appeal, which was then not heard until January 1936.
The patent office took two more months to consider the appeal, finally upholding the original decision in March 1936.
After the initial appeal was denied, RCA still had an option to take the case to civil court and took another six months before deciding not to.
This news was welcomed by the beleaguered Farnsworth camp, but there was little cause for celebration, for the pattern was clearly drawn.
Farnsworth's entanglements with RCA would go on for years and place the future of television in a perpetual state of suspended animation.
This brings us to the end of number 97 in the countdown of the top 100 milestones in the first 100 years of television.
Stay tuned for the next episode where we take television to Germany for the Olympics in Berlin in the summer of 1936.
Thanks for listening to 100 Years of Television, a two year countdown to the centennial of television on September 7, 2027.
For more, just aim a gizmo to 100yearstv.com this podcast was written, recorded, edited, engineered and uploaded by me, Paul Schatzkin and is a production of Farnovision.com if television was invented by somebody named Farnsworth, why don't we call it Farnovision?
[00:09:26] Speaker A: They all said we never would be happy. They laughed at us and how but how we got the laughs out now.
