Editorial: Elma who? earned her due

Wednesday, May 3, 2006 | 7:40 a.m.

One of the meanings of the word "bountiful" is ample, and our lives today are amply furnished with information and entertainment owing in no small part to a woman who died last week in the aptly named city where she retired, Bountiful, Utah.

Elma Gardner "Pem" Farnsworth was 98 when she died Thursday at a care center. For all of her adult life she was far too little known for the magnitude of the accomplishment she helped bring about. She worked alongside her husband, who had been intrigued by the science of scanning and transmitting images since he was a teenager.

In 1926 she married 20-year-old Philo T. Farnsworth, a fellow Utahn, and the next year they demonstrated a new way of transmitting images "that led to the electronic TV we know today," according to her obituary by the Associated Press.

Their first transmitted image - a horizontal line on a screen no larger than the palm of a hand - proved that in-home television was as viable as telephones.

Philo Farnsworth's statue stands in the U.S. Capitol, and in 1983 the U.S. Postal Service issued a 20-cent stamp in his honor. But according to Donald G. Godfrey, author of the book "Philo T. Farnsworth: The Father of Television," Philo gave equal credit to Elma.

It's impossible to overstate how the Farnsworths' invention changed world history. Civil rights, the Vietnam War, the 1960 presidential election (the first with televised candidate debates) and space exploration are just a tiny sampling of the events shaped by TV.

And now history should shape Elma and Philo Farnsworth, by awarding them a much higher profile.