Philo Farnsworth

Electronics pioneer – celebrated with a new t-shirt design!

Philo T Farnsworth (1906 -1971) is likely best known for two things. First, he was the inventor of the fully electronic display which is the basis of cathode ray tubes – he invented the all-electronic television¹. Second, his name is the inspiration for Prof Farnsworth from Futurama.

What’s less well known is his work on nuclear fusion.

Biography

Born on a farm in Utah, he was by any measure a genius. Some people express surprise that the son of a farmer could be the man who invented television, but then he had the sort of mind that makes the best of the opportunities presented to him. The farm his family moved to happened to have some disused electrical equipment which he was free to investigate. From this and with a like-minded friend he learned about electronics and electricity and became one of the pioneers of what was, in the 1920s, a young field.

Electronics and electrical power

Like all geniuses, Farnsworth didn’t concentrate on one invention. By the time he died in 1971 he had patents in several fields, including light sensors, amplifiers and nuclear fusion.

His work on fusion reactors didn’t result in limitless free energy, as you may have noticed. But the reactor has had applications for the generation of neutrons. Why do we need neutrons? Most of us don’t need them, which is why they don’t sell them as such at Waitrose². However, they are needed in nuclear power, medical neutron radiography, material inspection and to stimulate gamma radiation among other things.

The exact model shown in the t-shirt design, the Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor – is no longer used. After over 50 years, it should be assumed that progress has been made in this field, and indeed there has. Benchtop fusors have been made for demonstration purposes and there is a fusor hobbyist network whose website has far more information on these devices.

What we have is a striking patent image from Farnsworth’s 1968 patent. I used the techniques used previously to strip the background from the image and make a file suitable for uploading onto a t-shirt in Gelato.

I also put this design on a sweatshirt, mainly to see how that would look and if it would sell.

1. John Logie Baird’s earlier system used a mechanical spinning disk at its core. This imparted limitations on the line count and frame rate because the holes in the disk determined both these values. The size, weight and durability of this system and the wear and tear on the parts meant that this pioneering system could never achieve the resolution people were used to in the cinema. ↩︎
2. Neutrons are at the core of almost all atoms, so Waitrose do sell them, but mixed up with protons and electrons to form fresh ziti and other everyday essentials. ↩︎