Philo T. Farnsworth Memorial

This bronze figure commemorates Philo T. Farnsworth, the man credited with inventing the world's first fully functional, all-electronic television system. At the age of just twenty-one, while working in a laboratory at Green and Sansome Streets, Farnsworth successfully transmitted the first electronic image on September 7, 1927. His breakthrough, which he called an image dissector, replaced the unstable mechanical systems of the time with a vacuum tube that used an electron beam to scan images line by line. This technology was inspired by the simple, parallel furrows he observed while plowing his parents' potato farm as a teenager in Idaho. The statue stands here in the Presidio to honor his immense impact on how the world experiences information and entertainment.