This brilliant American, though not as well-recognized as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison, was responsible for developing his idea of TV in 1922. There were others who were trying to transmit images though whirling disks  and mirrors — a mechanical process. Fransworth had realized that images could be transmitted by electronic means. His chemistry teacher Tolman inspired him. Mechanical transmission of short-distance has been made possible by Britain’s John Braid in 1934. Zworykin of Westinghouse  was already doing mechanical TV research. But it was Fransworth who first thought of electronic transmission. He explained how to focus the image to be transmitted on the photo-electronic surface of a vaccum tube. Each point of the image, under proper control, would spin off electrons corresponding to the intensity of light trained on a particular spot. He figured out how to change the light-waves from an undulating to electronic zig-zag pattern that could oscillate two million times per second.

Fransworth established financial partnership with Everson and Gorell, the two businessmen from San Francisco to set up a research laboratory in Los Angeles. In 1926, Mott Smith, an authority on electro-physics endorsed the idea as scientifically sound. They asked the attorneys to begin a patent search. Fransworth was further assisted by Crocker National Bank to set up a laboratory in a San Francisco loft. Framsworth and his handful of commercial assistants transmitted a black-triangle on Septenber 7, 1927, which was followed by the transmission of a dollar sign three months later to their bankers.