The Farnsworth Invention - An Ode to Innovation
Why does a blog on entrepreneurship and innovation focus on a play? Because no play has ever captured the drama of innovation better than The Farnsworth Invention soon to be opening at the Music Box Theatre in New York.
It’s 1929. Two ambitious visionaries race against each other to invent a device called “television.” Separated by two thousand miles, each knows that if he stops working, even for a moment, the other will gain the edge. Who will unlock the key to the greatest innovation of the 20th century: the ruthless media mogul, or the self-taught Idaho farm boy?
The answer comes to compelling life in The Farnsworth Invention, the new play from Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, directed by two-time Tony® Award winner Des McAnuff.
The promotional materials suggest that this is a battle between the last individualistic inventor and the most voracious corporate raider of the early Twentieth Century. That might be true in part, but anyone who has worked to bring new businesses and products to success knows that you need brilliance in both the technology and the marketplace. The tragedy for both these men was that they battled rather than collaborated. Why that was true is one of the subtle messages of the play.
As the promotional material explains:
In 1928, Philo T. Farnsworth demonstrated electronic television from his lab in San Francisco, using a cathode ray tube on the receiver end. On the camera end, he used an “image dissector” to record an image electronically, one tiny portion at a time. The image dissector would later become the cornerstone for further electronic television development. Meanwhile across the country, Vladimir Zworykin was working for RCA to develop his “iconoscope,” a similar model for scanning images electronically.
In contrast, David Sarnoff understood the power of the technology to transform the lives of the audience. The Time 100 has an excellent biography of Sarnoff:
Sarnoff … saw the potential of the iconoscope, a proto-television patented by Vladimir Zworykin in 1923. Within five years Sarnoff had set up a special NBC station called b2xbs to experiment with what came to be known as television. In 1941 NBC started commercial telecasting from station WNBT in New York City, but once again progress was delayed by war. Sarnoff served as communications consultant for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who later named him a brigadier general. The title stuck. And in the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Sarnoff became known as "the General."
Both Sarnoff and Farnsworth were driven, titanic leaders. Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant script cheats in his narration to make the audience feel better about the predictable outcome from the clash of these cultures. This is a wonderful play, with brilliant dialogue and strong performances. For any entrepreneur who has struggled to be understood by friends and family, the Farnsworth Invention is a must see.
Support literate theatre and the beauty of innovation. See this play.
