No TV, Son!

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Philo Puts His Phoot Down

“There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household, and I don’t want it in your intellectual diet.”
—Philo T. Farnsworth (1906-1971) inventor of television, to his son. Farnsworth conceived of what became the TV picture tube at age 14 while plowing a potato field in Rigby, Idaho, and had a working model of the “Image Dissector” at age 21. But Farnsworth was no fan of his creation. His son, Kent Farnsworth, recalls, “I suppose you could say that he felt he had created kind of a monster, a way for people to waste a lot of their lives.”

RELATED: The TIME 100—Most important people of the century, by Neil Postman (1999).

Editor’s Note: Can learn a lot plowing potatoes.
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