Utah Rep. Rob Bishop tells visitors to the nation’s capitol that the statue of Utah native Philo Farnsworth shows him holding a “sausage.” And state Rep. Adam Gardiner thinks Farnsworth spent “much of his life” in Idaho. (“Utah legislator wants TV inventor’s statue out of U.S. Capital,” Salt Lake Tribune, Aug. 8.)
For Mr. Bishop’s seemingly empty Philo Farnsworth data bank, the “sausage” Farnsworth holds is a bronze representation of what he called an “image dissector tube,” the first ever device to translated images into electronic signals. In other words, the miraculous invention that made electronic television possible.