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1984
Philo Taylor Farnsworth was not a Fort Wayne native — he was born in a log cabin at Beaver, Utah, in 1906, and transmitted his first electronic television image in San Francisco in 1927 — but the company that carried his name and his laboratory was Fort Wayne's: he founded the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation here in 1938, lived on East State Boulevard, and ran the works until International Telephone and Telegraph absorbed it. The National Inventors Hall of Fame inducted him in 1984, thirteen years after his death, for the electronic television system. The honors around the induction tell the same belated-recognition story: a United States postage stamp bearing his likeness in 1983, a posthumous Emmy honor from the Television Academy in 1977, and induction into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 2013. The television story itself — what Fort Wayne may and may not claim about the invention — is weighed in the Business and Stories sections; the ledger entry is the 1984 induction and the Fort Wayne working years, 1938 onward, that are its local ground.
Sources:
- National Inventors Hall of Fame, inductee roster — Philo T. Farnsworth, inducted 1984.
- Philo T. and Elma G. Farnsworth papers, finding aid, Utah State University (carried by Archives West) — the Fort Wayne corporation of 1938, the 1977 Emmy, the 1983 stamp, the 1984 induction.
- Investor's Business Daily, profile of Philo Farnsworth — the 1984 National Inventors Hall of Fame induction and the Television Academy Hall of Fame, 2013.