Seventeen · ages 15-18

The Picture in the Furrows

The idea: an invention's most important evidence was a teacher's memory of a fifteen-year-old's blackboard drawing.

Read it

Who is in this book

Tara a child of the Green Listens longest, speaks last

Every recurring character has a short tune, so you can tell who is on stage before a word is said. The tunes play only when you tap, and the Reading Access sound switch turns them off.

The Honest Page

Which parts of this story are on record, which are legend — and what does nobody know?

Record

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was born on 19 August 1906 near Beaver, Utah, and grew up partly on a farm near Rigby, Idaho. Source
On 7 September 1927, in San Francisco, his team transmitted the image of a straight line with an all-electronic system. He was twenty-one. Source
In a 1934 patent interference proceeding against RCA, his former chemistry teacher, Justin Tolman, testified and reproduced from memory a sketch Farnsworth had made for him in 1922. The patent office ruled for Farnsworth. Source
Vladimir Zworykin of RCA had filed a patent application for an electronic camera tube in 1923. Source

Legend

That the idea came to him all at once while harrowing a potato field at fourteen. It is his own account, told for decades; nobody else saw it. Source
That he learned it all from a pile of science magazines found in the attic. The attic is part of the family story; what he read there is not recorded. Source
That an early demonstration for his backers showed a dollar sign. It is told in accounts of the laboratory; no recording or photograph of it survives. Source
That watching the 1969 Moon landing made it all worthwhile for him. His wife Pem told it years later; she is the only source. Source

Nobody knows

What exactly was on the blackboard in 1922. The original drawing does not survive; the slate in this story stands for Tolman's copy, made from memory twelve years later. Source

Tara’s sentence

The case stops where Tara speaks. Write the sentence you would have said. It stays on this device.

Ring the hammer for someone

Pick this book for someone younger. The link carries only the book, and it will wait for them on the Green.

Across the Table → For the grown-up: the story in three lines, one question to ask, and one thing to do together.