Word: farnsworth
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Deciding who got those assignments took some creative thought. Elmer-DeWitt was determined to find writers who brought a special expertise to their subject and could also produce graceful prose. NEIL POSTMAN for example, who wrote on TV pioneer Philo Farnsworth, is the author of Amusing Ourselves to Death, an acclaimed study of the impact of television on society. RICHARD RHODES, who profiled nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi, wrote a Pulitzer-prizewinning tome on the making of the atom bomb. Paleoanthropologist DONALD JOHANSON, who discovered the fossil called Lucy, had a long and bumpy relationship with the Leakey family and used...
...century will also be remembered for its brilliant tinkerers. The ability to transcend gravity, brought about by folks from the Wright brothers to Robert Goddard, affected the way we live as much as Einstein's ability to figure out what gravity actually is. Philo Farnsworth's ability to turn electrons into television images was likewise as influential as figuring out what electrons actually are. Indeed, our century may be noted most for those who went out to their garages (metaphorically, at least) and helped bring us televisions and transistors, plastics and penicillin, computers and the World Wide...
Often it was hard to pick one person to credit for a particular advance. Some cases involved famous rivalries, such as Farnsworth vs. Vladimir Zworykin over inventing television, or Jonas Salk vs. Albert Sabin over developing a polio vaccine. Other cases, such as the creation of the atom bomb or the computer, involved a series of contributions. Although there is a danger in personalizing history, there is also an advantage. By choosing the people we feel were most responsible for key breakthroughs, and then exploring their relations and rivalries, we hope to convey the human excitement that makes real...
...refer, of course, to Philo Taylor Farnsworth. The "of course" is meant as a joke, since almost no one outside the industry has ever heard of him. But we ought not to let the century expire without attempting to make amends...
...Farnsworth was born in 1906 near Beaver City, Utah, a community settled by his grandfather (in 1856) under instructions from Brigham Young himself. When Farnsworth was 12, his family moved to a ranch in Rigby, Idaho, which was four miles from the nearest high school, thus necessitating his daily horseback rides. Because he was intrigued with the electron and electricity, he persuaded his chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, to give him special instruction and to allow him to audit a senior course. You could read about great scientists from now until the 22nd century and not find another instance where...