The Farnsworth Invention — an entire Broadway play about the history of communications. Of course it’s a stirring conflict between the beliefs of two men (a sort of Inherit the Wind for innovation) as well, but there’s an awful lot of talky communications history in there as well. So I completely enjoyed it.
What brings Philo T. Farnsworth down, what causes him to lose out to the wily David Sarnoff, is that he believes that science should be done in the open. He’s stuck with a problem in implementing television, and he’s delighted to see a fellow engineer show up in San Francisco who wants to talk to him. But the engineer turns out to be an RCA employee who then returns to the East Coast and succeeds in transmitting a clear picture- something that Farnsworth had been unable to do.
All the litigation that ensues is just a postscript to this visit – and indeed at the end of the multi-year case, writer Aaron Sorkin has Farnsworth and his fellow engineer take a quiet moment together to figure out what the final tricks were that made television work.
The hopeful element Sorkin inserts at the very conclusion of the play has Farnsworth thrilled by the possibilities of space travel. Farnsworth is in a bar, scribbling his latest thoughts on a cocktail napkin, and looks up, wide-eyed, to see Apollo 11 lifting off. He’s off to the next thing, inventing in the open.