The boy who helped invent television

Could you imagine life without the Internet or television? How about life without electricity? The inventor of television didn’t have electricity in his house until he was 12 years old. Philo Farnsworth was born in the United States in 1906. He lived with his family in a log cabin on a farm. As he grew up, he became very interested in motors and radio technology. In 1918 his family moved to a large farm. In the attic of the old farmhouse, he found a large collection of Popular Science magazines. He read them often and learnt about magnetism, electricity and radio. He also learnt how to build different things. He built a motor for his mother’s hand-operated washing machine, making it electric. He also learnt to repair the generator on the farm whenever it broke down. He also learnt about something called ‘television’ at the time. It didn’t exist yet, but scientists were trying to find a way to turn radio into pictures. One day young Philo was ploughing the fields on his farm. When he stopped to look at the field, the lines on the ground gave him an idea. An image could be broken down and made into individual lines. They would be put together again on a screen so people could see the image. After high school Philo moved to California and found investors. After a couple of years, he had a working model of the world’s first electronic television. In 1926 Scottish engineer John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television system. The first televisions broadcast only in black and white images. By the 1970s colour television was in most houses. Without the invention of television, the world would be a very different place.