The son of a Mormon farmer, Farnsworth was born in 1906 in a single-room log cabin on an isolated homestead in Utah. The Farnsworth family farm had no radio, no telephone, and no electricity. Yet, motivated by the stories of scientists and inventors he read about in the science magazines of the day, young Philo set his sights on becoming an inventor. By his early teens, Farnsworth had become an inveterate tinkerer, able to repair broken farm equipment when no one else could. It was inevitable that when he read an article about a new idea -- for the transmission of pictures by radio waves -- that he would want to attempt it himself. One day while he was walking through a hay field, Farnsworth took note of the straight, parallel lines of the furrows and envisioned a system of scanning a visual image line by line and transmitting it to a remote screen. He soon sketched a diagram for an early television camera tube. It was 1921 and Farnsworth was only fourteen years old.
Farnsworth went on to college to pursue his studies of electrical engineering but was forced to quit after two years due to the death of his father. Even so, he soon managed to persuade a group of California investors to set him up in his own research lab where, in 1927, he produced the first all-electronic television image and later patented his invention. While Farnsworth's invention was a landmark, it was also the beginning of a struggle against an immense corporate power that would consume much of his life.
"Oh, 'what price glory!'" -Lee de Forest, on the Armstrong tragedy
By the spring of 1923, the Radio Corporation of America had put the finishing touches on a magnificent broadcasting tower on the roof of the Aeolian Hall, twenty-one stories above West 42nd Street in New York City. At the very top of the tower, above a cross-arm that stretched thirty-six feet across, stood a globe fashioned from strips of iron. It measured perhaps five feet in diameter, and the strips of iron were widely spaced in the manner of a hollow, loosely wound ball of yarn. The tower, along with a second broadcasting mast nearby, was intended as a statement of RCA's dominance of the radio industry, throwing a long shadow across Fifth Avenue.
On May 15 of that year, a tall, somewhat lanky man named Edwin Howard Armstrong could be seen climbing the tower's 115-foot access ladder. Armstrong wore a dark suit, a pair of glossy leather shoes, a silk tie, and a gray fedora pulled low against a stiff crosswind. Earlier, he had swung upside down by his legs from the tower's cross-arm. Now, scramblin ... read full excerpt from The Boy Genius and the Mogul ebook
Microsoft Reader is the first product to include ClearType™ display technology. ClearType greatly improves resolution on LCD screens to deliver a print-like display. Microsoft Reader also pays strict attention to the traditions and benefits of good typography. It offers a clean, uncluttered layout; ample margins; proper spacing, leading and kerning; plus powerful tools for book marking, highlighting and annotation.
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98 platforms, Microsoft Windows NT4 SP6, Microsoft Windows 2000 platforms, Microsoft Windows XP, and Microsoft Windows Me. Processor: Pentium 75 or higher microprocessor Memory: 16 MB RAM Hard Disk: Approximately 19 MB free hard drive space (Microsoft Reader is 3.6 MB, but additional hard disk space is required for installation) Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 with Service Pack 1 or higher MS Reader for Pocket PC Operating System: Pocket PC 2002 / 2003 Memory: 2.236 MB free RAM Additional Software: Microsoft ActiveSync® 3.5 or later MS Reader for Tablet PC Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition - Microsoft Reader for Tablet PC will not work on any other operating system or device.
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 98 platforms, Microsoft Windows NT4 SP6, Microsoft Windows 2000 platforms, Microsoft Windows XP, and Microsoft Windows Me. Processor: Pentium 75 or higher microprocessor Memory: 16 MB RAM Hard Disk: Approximately 19 MB free hard drive space (Microsoft Reader is 3.6 MB, but additional hard disk space is required for installation) Browser: Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 with Service Pack 1 or higher
MS Reader for Pocket PC
Operating System: Pocket PC 2002 / 2003 Memory: 2.236 MB free RAM Additional Software: Microsoft ActiveSync® 3.5 or later
MS Reader for Tablet PC
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition - Microsoft Reader for Tablet PC will not work on any other operating system or device.
Many publishers require powerful copy protection for their eBook titles. In order for you to be able to purchase and download eBook titles that have been secured for distribution, you first need to activate your Microsoft Reader. Just as a credit card typically must be activated by a bank before use, your Microsoft Reader needs to be activated before you can purchase and read eBooks packaged for secure distribution.
Microsoft Reader requires Internet Explorer 4.01 or later be installed on the user's PC or laptop, but the user is not required to use Internet Explorer as his or her browser. (Netscape, for example, can be used as the browser and Microsoft Reader will continue to function normally.) Microsoft Reader takes advantage of some of the underlying components within IE during activation and provides the integrated bookstore directory.
