September 7, 2026
ARTICLE & PODCAST LINK: https://farnovision.com/wp/countdown/260907/
On September 7, 1927, a simple line of light flickered onto a screen in a San Francisco laboratory—and television was born. Now, on its 99th anniversary, Paul Schatzkin, author of The Boy Who Invented Television, takes us back to that extraordinary moment and the remarkable young inventor behind it, Philo T. Farnsworth.
Paul connects Farnsworth’s breakthrough to the screen-filled world we live in today—from television and video games to smartphones and everything that has followed—and asks why such a transformative figure has largely disappeared from our cultural memory. With exactly one year to go until television’s centennial, it’s a fascinating reminder of just how much of our world can be traced back to one young man, one astonishing idea—and one flickering image nearly a century ago.
