Each time I open your newspaper I cannot help but think that the Legislature needs better things to do. In the latest issue, Adam Gardiner, of West Jordan, wants Philo Farnsworth’s statue removed from the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol in favor of Martha Hughes Cannon, the first woman in the U.S. elected to a state Senate seat.
Now, while I have no quarrel with Sen. Cannon’s achievement, I cannot place it above what Farnsworth invented as to its impacts on the world in communication and technology.
I remember going to the state fair as a young boy. I witnessed a demonstration put on by a man named Philo Farnsworth wherein he transmitted an image of the people from a camera to a round black and white cathode ray tube. He predicted that this item would some day provide entertainment and communication to the world. I understand that Farnsworth sold the rights to the invention to the RCA Corporation for $150. RCA developed the concept and it is what it is today in the world of communications, technology and data.
To diminish this significant contribution to a secondary position should be out of the question in my view.
Harry W. Patrick
Millcreek