One little tendril runs out West from the Broadway stagehands strike: A play about Idaho native Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of TV.

Farnsworth – who grew up in Rigby, Idaho – was determined to invent the television even while working in his father's potato fields, the AP reports. He had his “eureka moment” at age 14.

Just six years later, he transmitted the image of a horizontal line from one room to another in his San Francisco lab. This was the first demonstration of electronic television, an instrument that could "transmit live moving images from here to there at the speed of light." At least, that's how the precocious young engineer (played by Jimmi Simpson) pitches his grand idea in "The Farnsworth Invention." Full post here.

Question: Television – vital communications technology or blight on society?

Cross-posted from Shawn Vestal's blog, The Falls.

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