SALT LAKE CITY, May 2: Elma Gardner “Pem” Farnsworth, who helped her husband, Philo T. Farnsworth, develop the television and was among the first people whose images were transmitted on TV, has died at age 98.
Her death on Thursday was confirmed by Mary Rippley, assistant director of nursing at Avalon Care Center in Bountiful, where Farnsworth lived.
Farnsworth, who married the young inventor in 1926, worked by her husband’s side in his laboratories and fought for decades to assure his place in history.
Other inventors had 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 on Sept 7, 1927, in his lab, when the inventor sent the image of a horizontal line to a receiver in the next room.—AP
