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.

9H AGO

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 Marta 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
12/07/2025

E16: Countdown #91: Bulova Time (1941)

"It was a big goddammed deal!" 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, commercial television finally arrives in the United States on July 1, 1941 with a 10-second ad for Bulova watches broadcast before a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball game. With the airing of that first Bulova commercial in 1941, let’s back up for a second and revisit the purpose of this project, which is unashamedly dedicated to commemorating the invention of television and recognizing its actual inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth The merit of Farnsworth’s achievement is a source of endless debate – and often outright dismissal – among the few who care to give the topic any consideration at all. But the point to all ths is: Farnsworth’s first electronic video transmission on September 7, 1927 – how ever crude it was – was actually some kind of big goddammed deal, and not just another link in a long chain of inventions that led to formal television service in starting 1936 or 1939 or 1941. There is sure to be lots of pushback on that assertion from those that still cling to the orthodoxy that 'television was to complex..." to be invented by any single individual. But a closer examination of the actual record shows that without Farnsworth's contributions, we'd all still be staring at our radios. Episode post: https://farnovision.com/wp/countdown/91 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(00:04:55) - 100 Years of Television

10 min
11/30/2025

E15: Countdown #92: Standards

Despite RCA's plunge at the New York World's Fair in the spring of 1939, the FCC proceeded cautiously before setting signal standards for the U.S. television industry. The National Television System Committee (NTSC) was formed in March 1940, and did not deliver a set of standards until March, 1941. When the NTSC standards were finally settled, they adopted a standard 20% sharper than what RCA was using, which sent the company back to the drawing boards. Chapters (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: The Standards(00:08:10) - 100 Years of Television

9 min
11/23/2025

E14: Countdown #93: Play Ball!

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 Countdown #93, we recount the first live telecasts of America's "National Pastime" in the summer of 1939 – a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Dodgers at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. The games were covered by two cameras: one was fixed on the upper deck behind the batter’s box, the other was stationed behind the visiting team’s dugout along the first-base line. Over the ensuing decades, the revenue generated from television would reshape the economics of not only baseball, but all of America’s major sports. Web Edition: https://bitl.to/5MSZ Visit: https://100YearsTV.com Read: The Boy Who Invented Television Chapters (00:00:00) - 100 Years of Television: The First Sports Event(00:06:46) - 100 Years of Television

8 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

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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

22
Rating

Clean
Copyright

© 2025
Show Website

Philo T. Farnsworth & 100 Years of TV