Unfortunately, Farnsworth was not the only practitioner in the field who expected to reap rich rewards. He ended up battling with RCA over patent rights and won. With the Farnsworth Company, he managed to make $2.5 million before he sold the company to International Telephone and Telegraph; however, the money was soon gone due to free spending.

Worn out by trying to obtain funding to perfect his inventions, and weakened by illness, Farnsworth died in debt in 1971 at the age of sixty-four.

In addition to television, Farnsworth's experiments also contributed to the development of radar, electron microscopes, incubators for newborn infants, and guidance systems for aircraft.

See: Elma G. Farnsworth, A Distant Vision (1990).

Kristine Lyn Holbrook