The Centennial of Television 

is less than three years away: 

September 7, 2027

Since asserting its cultural dominance in the middle of the 20th century, television has delivered countless memorable moments.  Among them: 

 

    • The Army/McCarthy hearings in 1954.  

    • The Kennedy assassination in 1963.  

    • The Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964. 

    • Neil Armstrong taking “one giant leap for mankind” in 1969.  

But our collective experience of these and countless other events would not have been possible without the medium of television itself. 

That makes the moment of its arrival on Earth nearly 100 years ago not only the most important event in television history, but a pivotal moment in human evolution. 

The idea of merging motion pictures with radio captivated scientists and engineers for decades.  But it was not until a teenager on a farm in Idaho named Philo T. Farnsworth applied the Nobel Prize -winning theories of Albert Einstein to devise a way to trap light in an empty jar and transmit it, one-line-at-a-time on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons, that television as we know it became a reality. 

In the winter of 1922, Farnsworth drew a sketch of his idea for his high school science teacher. Every one of the billions of video screens on the planet today can trace its origins to that sketch. 

Six years later, with modest funding, and building everything he needed from scratch in a loft above a garage in San Francisco, Farnsworth recorded the arrival of television in his laboratory journal the night of September 7, 1927. 

In 1930 he obtained the essential patents on which the television industry was built in the decades that followed. 

An opportunity to commemorate this epic event looms in the not-too-distant future.  We have less than three years to plan the Centennial, to give the advent of video the attention it deserves – and celebrate the once-in-a-century genius who “breathed life into all of our living room dreams.”

The planning for this celebration is already underway.  For more information, please visit 

tvcentennial.com
This event is being organized by The Waterstar Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit organization

or contact

author@farnovision.com