Origins of a Forgotten Innovator

Transcript

When we're talking about Farnsworth, there is a lot of known facts and known data and history there. When we're talking about Tonsen Brown, it gets a little bit more challenging. They pulled the curtain when he started to work for the United States government. >> When you pull the curtain open and peer in, it's still black, >> right? As you have found out as you attempted to research this. But where does his story start? >> Towns and Brown was born in 1905.

He showed the same kind of natural capacity for all things electrical that Phoorth had begun to demonstrate when he had access to electricity at age 11. Towns and Brown would have had access at a much younger age because of his family's means. He was building radios at a very young age. There was a story published in one of the newspapers about Towns and Brown maybe 10 years old has built a wireless set. He had a fascination, I think, with the possibilities of of space travel and of advanced communications as