4th Grade Essay Contest Winner for June 2017 - Rylee Jimenez
Congratulations to Rylee Jimenez, a fourth-grade student of Little Valley for winning the June 2017 Essay Contest sponsored by the Cotton Mission Chapter of Sons of Utah Pioneers! Rylee wrote about her ancestor, Philo T Farnsworth:
PHILO T. FARNSWORTH
Philo the TV guy - My Great Grandmother’s Cousin
Philo T. Farnsworth was born in a small log cabin near Beaver Utah. When I drive through Beaver on the way to my grandma’s house, I think of how small the town is now, and how much smaller it would have been back in the early 1900’s when Philo and his family lived there. When Philo was 12 years old, just three years older than I am now, his family moved to Rigby, Idaho to a relative’s 240-acre ranch, where his family earned extra money by hauling freight with a horse-drawn wagon. When I think of all the hard work it takes to run a ranch I have to wonder how did the farmboy become the inventor of the television?I learned that Philo was excited to find his new home in Idaho was wired for electricity, with a generator providing power for lighting and farm machinery. He learned to repair the generator, he found spare parts around the ranch to convert his mother’s hand-powered washing machine into an electric powered one. I bet this made his mother happy.
After his first telephone conversation with an out of state relative he was a told of a large stack of technology magazines in the attic of the family’s new home. He read them all! Maybe I am like him because I love to read also. Philo continue his education, he enjoyed chemistry and physics at Rigby high school. He asked his teacher for advice about an electronic television system he was thinking about. He provided the teacher with sketches and diagrams covering several blackboards to show how it might be accomplished electronically. He asked his teacher if he should go ahead with his ideas, and he was encouraged to do so.
So, that was the beginning of how a farm boy went on to invent the TV. I think a lot of people appreciate his invention, because almost everyone watches TV.
If a farmboy can invent a TV and change the world, I can do great things too, so can you.
