The Last Lone Inventor

Front Cover
HarperCollins, Oct 13, 2009 - Biography & Autobiography - 352 pages
A “cogent and elegant” chronicle of the young television pioneer and the corporate executive determined to steal his invention (Publishers Weekly).

Many men have laid claim to the title "father of television," but Philo T. Farnsworth is the true genius behind what may be the most influential invention of our time. In 1927, at only twenty years old, he created the first fully electronic television system, beating out inventors working on similar projects across the globe.

Driven by his obsession to demonstrate his idea, Farnsworth operated his own laboratory above a garage in San Francisco while filing for patents. The resulting publicity caught the attention of RCA tycoon David Sarnoff, who was driven by an obsession of his own: to control television in the same way he monopolized radio.

Based on original research, including interviews with Farnsworth family members, The Last Lone Inventor is the story of the epic struggle between two equally passionate adversaries whose clash symbolized a turning point in the culture of creativity.

About the author (2009)

To write THE LAST LONE INVENTOR, Evan I. Schwartz spent two years researching the life stories of Philo T. Farnsworth and David Sarnoff. He interviewed surviving Farnsworth family members, including Farnsworth's 93-year-old widow, and he visited document archives in six states.As a journalist, Evan has been covering information technology for 15 years. He is a former editor at BusinessWeek, where he covered software and digital media and was part of teams that produced 12 cover stories and won a National Magazine Award and a Computer Press Award. In recent years, he has written for The New York Times, WIRED, and MIT's Technology Review.Evan's first book, titled WEBONOMICS, published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, has ranked as Amazon.com's #1 bestselling business book and was chosen as a finalist for two major awards: The Global Business Book Award as well as the Computer Press Award. International editions have been published in eight countries.Evan's second book, DIGITAL DARWINISM, from the same publisher, also hit #1 on Amazon's business list shortly after its release, in June 1999. Now in its twelfth hardcover and first paperback printing in the U.S., it is available in the U.K., from Penguin, and has been translated into eight other languages. It too was named a finalist for the Computer Press Award for Non-Fiction Book of the Year.Evan holds a B.S. in computer science from Union College in Schenectady, New York, and lives with his family in Brookline, Mass.