Elma Farnsworth, 98; Aided Husband in Developing Television

Elma Gardner “Pem” Farnsworth, 98, who helped her husband, Philo T. Farnsworth, develop the television and was among the first people whose images were transmitted on TV, died April 27 of natural causes at a nursing home in Bountiful, Utah.

Farnsworth, who married the young inventor in 1926 in Utah, worked by her husband’s side in his laboratories and fought to assure his place in history after his 1971 death.

Other inventors demonstrated various developments in the 1920s, including mechanical transmission of images, but it was Farnsworth’s work that led to the electronic TV we know today.

His first TV transmission was Sept. 7, 1927, in his San Francisco lab, when the 21-year-old inventor sent the image of a horizontal line to a receiver in the next room.

According to the book “Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father of Television” by Donald G. Godfrey, the first human images transmitted by Farnsworth were of his wife and her brother Cliff Gardner. A 3 1/2 -inch-square image of his wife with her eyes closed was transmitted on Oct. 19, 1929, Gardner wrote.

But credit for the invention nearly escaped Farnsworth after RCA claimed the innovation was the work of its chief television engineer, Vladimir Zworykin. In 1935, the courts ruled on Farnsworth’s patent, naming him TV’s undisputed father. The decision was upheld on appeal, though Farnsworth continued to get little recognition.