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Revisiting Author Donald Godfrey & his book on Philo T. Farnsworth On Thursday's Access Utah

  Philo T. Farnsworth (1906–1971) has been called the "forgotten father of television." He grew up in Utah and southern Idaho, and was described as a genius by those who knew and worked with him. With only a high school education, Farnsworth drew his first television schematic for his high school teacher in Rigby, Idaho. Subsequent claims and litigation notwithstanding, he was the first to transmit a television image.

 

Farnsworth filed ten patents between 1927 and 1929 for camera tubes (transmitting), circuitry, and the cathode ray tube (viewing). After his early years as an inventor in San Francisco, he worked as an engineer, doing battle with RCA in the 1930s over patent rights, formed the Farnsworth Television Company in the 1940s, and worked for IT&T after their purchase of the Farnsworth enterprises.

Every television set sold utilized at least six of his basic patents. Because of endless legal wrangling with RCA over patent rights, he received very little financial reward for his television patents. Donald Godfrey examines the genius and the failures in the life of Philo Farnsworth as he struggled to be both inventor and entrepreneur.

Donald G. Godfrey is an electronic media educator, a professional broadcaster, and a historian. He is a Past President of the national Broadcast Education Association (BEA); served as President of the National Council of Communication Associations (CCA); and a Past-Editor of the "Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media." He was founding Chair for the BEA Festival of Media Arts and the BEA Research & Symposium Committees. He was Curator of the CBS-KIRO Milo Ryan Phonoarchive, a CBS Radio News World War II archive, today at the National Archive, Washington, D.C.

Dr. Godfrey is past Director and Founder of the ASU Walter Cronkite School of Journalism Doctoral Program. He received his degrees from Weber State University, the University of Oregon and the University of Washington. Dr. Godfrey retired in 2012, Professor Emeritus, after twenty-four years on the faculty of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University and forty-two years in teaching and research.

His academic research includes refereed publications in all the major journals of the discipline. He has written and edited several books. Dr. Godfrey says his greatest reward is still teaching, “I simply enjoy watching my students grow.” His professional interests include electronic media history and the history of the American and Canadian West.

Tom Williams worked as a part-time UPR announcer for a few years and joined Utah Public Radio full-time in 1996. He is a proud graduate of Uintah High School in Vernal and Utah State University (B. A. in Liberal Arts and Master of Business Administration.) He grew up in a family that regularly discussed everything from opera to religion to politics. He is interested in just about everything and loves to engage people in conversation, so you could say he has found the perfect job as host “Access Utah.” He and his wife Becky, live in Logan.