What I’m Blogging

At the end of the summer there are certain ritual observances that cultures engage in. The Scots have highland games. New Agers and First Nations mark the passage of the sun into autumn. Parents of Little League sons, mark summer’s end with endurance marathon play ’til you drop baseball tournaments.

…short of lightning’s electromagnetic discharge, we play on…

These playoffs are a two day affair where the victors are rewarded with an ever increasing number of games to be played in strict succession. In the big league they might have a double header and play two games in a single day, in the flurry of little league playoffs we can easily do three to determine who shall pull the sword of victory from the stone.

For the boys, it’s a day of hanging out with their friends, talking like twelve year olds, and consuming fast food. In short it’s heaven. For the parents, it’s getting up early, driving, followed by sitting all day on a metal bench, yelling for our sons to “do like you can! ”

The weather plays a key factor. This year it is cold,gray and overcast. Rain threatens on the horizon, but the threat is empty. There are no rain delays in the playoffs, and short of lightning’s electromagnetic discharge, we play on. Somewhere in the drizzle of the of the second game at the bottom of the fourth inning, one finds oneself praying for defeat. Defeat means elimination and a trip to the warmth of hearth and home. Inwardly we hope for an end, outwardly we clutch our coffee cup tightly in our hands, sucking what heat is left into our numb fingers and offer encouragement to our team “like you can son, like you can.”

It was on this day in 1927 that a man named Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted the first ever all-electronic television picture in history. Farnsworth had gotten the idea for television when he was just fourteen, living on a potato farm in Idaho. His high school science teacher had gotten him interested in electricity, and he studied electrical engineering in his spare time. One day, he was tilling a potato field, walking with the horse back and forth, when he suddenly had a vision of a machine that could break an image down, line by line, and then reconstruct it on a screen.

…There you are, electronic television…

Several years later, he got some investors together and set up a laboratory in San Francisco. And it was there, on this day, that he pointed his Image Dissector at a picture of a single line and turned on the receiver, which showed the same picture of a single line. Farnsworth then rotated the picture 90 degrees, and the people watching the receiver saw it rotate. When the demonstration was complete, Farnsworth said, “There you are, electronic television.”

Unfortunately, Farnsworth never got much credit for his invention. He turned down offers from both RCA and General Electric because he wanted to be an independent. But he had little business expertise, and instead of spending his time developing television for a mass audience, he got bogged down in a series of lawsuits. He sank into a depression and became addicted to alcohol and prescription medicines. He spent time in a mental hospital and underwent electroshock therapy.

He never owned a television himself and refused to let his children watch it.