Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV

Paul Schatzkin

5.0 (3)
HISTORY
UPDATED WEEKLY

Over 100 weeks, we're going to countdown to the Centennial of Video on Sept 7, 2027 by recounting the 100 Top Moments in the First 100 Years of Television.

3D AGO

E24: Countdown #83: Candid Camera

For one hundred 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 was invented. ____________ Before Survivor, before The Real World, before all The Real Housewives and The Celebrity Apprentice, there was Allen Funt. Allen Funt's concept for a television show was deceptively simple: what would people do if they didn’t know they were being watched by a hidden camera? From that simple premise On August 10, 1948, Allen Funt brought an entirely new kind of program to the ABC-TV network. Candid Camera was unscripted, unrehearsed, and genuinely real. Decades later, the genre Funt pioneered would morph into the "everybody knows there are cameras" format now known as "reality" TV. _________ Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television: https://amz.run/6ag1 Chapters (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: Alan Funt's Candid Camera(00:08:24) - 100 Years of Television

9 min
JAN 25

E23: Countdown #84 "Mr. Television"

When he was only 12 years old, an aspiring vaudeville performer named Mendel Berlinger decided he needed a more ethnically palatable stage name. In 1920, he changed his name to Milton Berle and continued to refine his comic persona on radio. Milton Berle was a fairly well known when NBC started migrating much of its radio programming to television. In the summer of 1948, when Texaco Star Theater began a trial run on television, audience response to Berle was so overwhelming the network made him the permanent emcee when the program started its regular run that fall. Berle’s elastic face, flamboyant costumes, and rapid-fire comedy were perfectly suited to the new medium. Television needed a breakout star, and it wasn't long before Milton Berle started calling himself "Mr. Television." Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television: https://amz.run/6ag1 Chapters (00:00:00) - We Should Have Laughed at Edison(00:00:21) - 100 Years of Television: Mr. Television(00:08:15) - 100 Years of Television

9 min
JAN 18

E22: Countdown #85: CATV

For one hundred 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 was invented. ____________ In 1947 Ed and Grace Parsons, the owners of a radio station in Astoria, Oregon, attended the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters in Chicago. It was Grace who saw her first television set there, and persuaded Ed to purchase one and bring it home to Astoria. The only problem was: Astoria is 125 miles from stations in either Seattle or Portland, that were beginning to broadcast TV. The solution? Put an antenna on the highest roof in town and distribute the signal via coaxial cable. Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television: https://amz.run/6ag1 Chapters (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: Countdown to 100(00:07:32) - 100 Years of Television: The Top 100 Milestones

8 min
JAN 11

E21: Countdown #86: Meet The Press

For one hundred 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 was invented. In this week's episode, we meet Martha Rountree, the first woman to host a news and public affairs program on television and the creator of Meet The Press – the longest running program in broadcast history. Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television: https://amz.run/6ag1 Chapters (00:00:00) - We laughed at Edison(00:00:21) - Meet the Press: 100 Years of Television(00:07:27) - 100 Years of Television

8 min
JAN 4

E20: Countdown #87: Say Kids, What Time Is It?

For one hundred 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 was invented. On December 27, 1947 a genial thirty-year-old man with wavy dark hair and a broad smile, wearing a fringed cowboy shirt and a bolo tie, looked into a television camera at WNBC Studio 3A in Rockefeller Center and called out, "Say kids, what time is it?" Across the stage, about 40 children between the ages of 4 and 10 responded enthusiastically... "It's Howdy Doody Time!" Children's programming had arrived on television. - - - - - Visit: 100 Years of Television Read: The Boy Who Invented Television Chapters (00:00:00) - We Should Have Laughed at Edison(00:00:21) - 100 Years of Television: Howdy Doody(00:07:41) - 100 Years of Television

9 min
12/28/2025

E19: Countdown #88: "The Phones Lit Up!"

On the evening of May 7, 1947, RCA-made, Image Orthicon-powered television cameras came to life at NBC’s Studio 9-H in Rockefeller Center — the same studio where, a decade earlier, Maestro Arturo Toscanini had made NBC a cultural force with live broadcasts of the NBC Symphony⁠. ⁠1 The new show was called Kraft Television Theatre, and represented a turning point for the new medium in two respects. First, it was live theater, like Broadway on the air. It was not filmed, canned, or recycled from radio. Kraft Television Theater was written and produced for TV, performed live by marquee actors, and broadcast into American living rooms in real time. I was also American advertising’s first serious foray into the new realm of television. 1 And where, three decades later, Saturday Night Live would launch another five decades of comedy history.

12 min
12/21/2025

E18: Countdown #89: "Eye" Can See Clearly Now

After the 'false dawn' of 1939-1941, one of television's first steps out of its postwar crib was the telecast of the Joe Louis vs. Billy Conn heavyweight title fight on June 19, 1946. What makes the event noteworthy is not the fight itself (Louis knocked Conn out in the 8th round to retain his title) but the camera tube that NBC used for the first time for this particular broadcast: the Image Orthicon. Chapters (00:00:00) - We Should Have Laughed at Edison(00:00:20) - 100 Years of Television: The Image Orthicon(00:07:37) - Top 100 Milestones in the First 100 Years of Television(00:08:58) - 100 Years of Television

10 min
12/14/2025

E17: Countdown #90: Television Goes To War (1941-1945)

For one hundred 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 was invented. Television was deemed ready for the public consumption with the adoption of signal standards in March, 1941 (Countdown #92 – Standards) and made it's first tentative steps toward commercialization with advertising that summer (Countdown #91 – Bulova Time). It all came to a screeching halt when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Most histories of television will draw a blank line through World War II, implying that the industry went into suspended animation from 1941 until 1946. But the race for television going into 1940s fed directly into war effort. And when the fighting finally ended, the war effort would, in turn, supercharge television's assault on the nation’s airwaves. Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television: https://amz.run/6ag1 Chapters (00:00:00) - We Should Have Laughed at Edison(00:00:20) - 100 Years of Television: The Role Television Played in the War(00:12:02) - 100 Years of Television: The Top 100 Milestones

13 min

TRAILER

E0: Introducing Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV

To have right idea is one thing; to have the right idea and make it work is everything. --Roger Penrose You've probably never hear of Philo T. Farnsworth. Maybe it's time you did. We take our screen-based 2st century for granted, but the long-neglected fact is that every video screen on the planet can trace its origins to a sketch that Farnsworth drew for his high school science teacher in 1922 - when he was all of 14 years old. On September 7, 1927, Farnsworth conducted the first successful experiment with an all-electronic television system based on the sketch that he'd drawn five years earlier. That nobody had come up with a similar viable idea – least of the well-financed scientists an engineers of industry who were chasing the same dream – is a testament to how far Farnsworth was "ahead of his time" (actually, Farnsworth was precisely of his time; it's just that most of his contemporaries were still stuck in the 19th century). The same year that Farnsworth conducted his first successful demonstration of electronic video, he applied for patents for his inventions. Those patents were granted in 1930, and he spent most of that decade fending off challenges to them. By the end of the decade he had compiled a portfolio of more than 100 patents, all of them essential to the new medium when it came out of hibernation after World War II. That Farnsworth's name is not more familiar is one of the great oddities of our tech-dominated culture. That oversight can be corrected by celebrating the Centennial of Television come September 7, 2027. To "countdown" to that date (and raise global awareness along the way), we'll be posting the "Top 100 Milestones from the First 100 Years of Television" here in podcast form and on the web at tvcentennial.com It's going to be fun journey and we're going to introduce a lot of other intriguing characters along the way. Won't you join us?

09/06/2025

•

6 min

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

Over 100 weeks, we're going to countdown to the Centennial of Video on Sept 7, 2027 by recounting the 100 Top Moments in the First 100 Years of Television.

Creator

Paul Schatzkin
Years Active

2025 - 2026
Episodes

25
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2025
Show Website

Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV