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Early television enthusiasts:

Whether you're a Farnsworth lover, a Sarnoff fan or both, you'll probably find the presentation interesting at the New Jersey Antique Radio Club's meeting this month - AND no matter where you live, you'll be able to attend!

At the February NJARC meeting we'll be featuring our first formal streaming video webcast. (Although seemingly every kid with even a drop of geek blood flowing in their veins is already doing webcasts, this is a brand new feature at our club.)

The evening's talk will be "The Farnsworth Invention: What Matters About Fact and Fiction" presented by Dr. Alexander Magoun, director of the David Sarnoff Library and Museum. You're invited to "tune in" at www.njarc.org (http://www.njarc.org). The broadcast will start at 7:30 PM Eastern Standard Time and Alex's presentation will begin at about 8:00.

We're really looking forward to this event. We hope you'll join us and we hope you'll enjoy it. If you attend the meeting via the web, please let us know how you liked it!

--Dave Sica
Website administrator for NJARC

http://www.njarc.org/images/musicbox-sign.jpg

http://www.njarc.org/images/musicbox1.jpg

Who is that scary man under that Music Box neon sign?

Sal Brisindi

Tonight! 8:00 PM.

With regards to the NJARC club and their fine presentation via ustream.com, I did see the play last Friday and wrote this review for our DVHRC newsletter. Too late for the NJARC discussion. As with all reviews, it is just one persons opinion for your consideration.


"The Farnsworth Invention"
The Music Box Theatre, Manhattan, NY
A theatre review by Dave Abramson

Our editor was surprised a few weeks ago by the beautiful Alison with tickets to see this play. We met in Manhattan on a rainy night to see a play that has either outraged or enlightened the viewer. It is a theatrical presentation of the invention of television as told by the two principals of the quest, Philo Farnsworth and David Sarnoff. This play is only 14 years in the making, first as a possible movie and now a play.

I submit this review as your editor with a broadcasting background as a director and as a student of the history of the era. I write this review as a director only. The history of all of this is a bit clouded by the doubtful facts of the time.

Much has been already written about this play from many sides. Is it history? Is it drama? The historians among us have had fits over it's telling of the pure history of the invention of televison if read literally. The dramatists among us have have been beside themselves with the dialog between Sarnoff and Farnsworth as written by Aaron Sorkin.
The chief offender on the surface is Sorkins re-creation of scenes that never existed but were written in his telling of the story. And why were they included?

Facts portrayed in out-of-sequence time lines. Episodes that did not portray what really happened. An alcohohlic inventor. A device that had a "light problem". Corporate espionage and deception. They all do contribute to the storytelling...by Sarnoff.

As a director, I see what Sorkin is going for and what you have to do is watch as the play unfolds. His play is not pure history...ever. It is told clearly from Sarnoff's point of view of his own history, his own ego and what he constructed as his legacy. On stage, Sarnoff is in charge as only he would have it. Mogul or storyteller, it makes no difference. This play is his telling of the invention of television as he sees it. Even the classic Titianic episode is included in his mind and future legacy, but be gladdend that Farnsworth jabs him in the play a few lines later to pop that balloon and expose the fraud.

This play is "Televison History According to Sarnoff" and all the inventions and patents it got for RCA. Farnsworth is in the play only to be squashed by Sarnoff's vision of who invented radio and televison. Zworkin is there to fill in the facts in Sarnoff's mind and intrigue. Armstrong and his FM were yet to be delt with .. The Sorkin history in this play changes nothing in Farnsworth's legacy in the end...only if you study it.

I must give credit to Sorkin for writing the epilog to this play to sum up the fiction and facts. Near the end, Sarnoff says "I burned down his house before he burned mine down". Fiction of course, but the true story.

A clever writer giving us an entertaining Broadway play. The real history, not the Sarnoff telling, is for you to find.

Dave Abramson