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.
You wrote:
>>>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. ≤≤≤
You need to familiarize yourself with the actual story. What you describe, what the play portrays, is not what happened at all. In actuality, Farnsworth showed Zworykin his secrets for THREE DAYS and still WON all of his litigation with RCA. The play depicts an outcome that is the absolute opposite of what really happened.
So your assumption about “science being done in the open” is actually valid, and the play’s suggestion that such openess caused Farnsworth’s ruination is a complete fabrication.
Try http://thefarnsworthinvention.com
–PS
The play portrays RCA as the victor, when, as a matter of record, Farnsworth was awarded the patent.
Farnsworth was open in the Zworykin 3-day marathon tour (1930) of the television lab in SF, You must realize, in the lab on Green St. they had invented television three years ago and were up to their ears in working models of television …3 years! Why should they worry about someone beating them to the finish line?
Try http://thefarnsworthinvention.com or
http://philotfarnsworth.com
Kent
Actually, the play was pretty clear on the point that Farnsworth’s patent survives the litigation. But the play has Farnsworth saying that he doesn’t think anyone will choose to license it from him rather than RCA. So – clear on the law, and on the upshot that RCA succeeds as licensor of its own patent.
RCA lost the litigation, fine, but won the commercial battle.
>>>RCA lost the litigation, fine, but won the commercial battle.<<
Then why doesn’t the play portray it that way, instead of reversing the verdict in pivotal litigation and then equivocating on that result?
Because that would force the playwright to treat Farnsworth as the victor, and by the end of the second act he had too much invested in casting Sarnoff in that light.
By the time RCA “won the commercial battle,” Farnsworth had moved on to other things… and no, he did not draw any sketches in a bar while watching Apollo 11 lift off…