Philo T. Farnsworth (1907-1971), a television pioneer, experimented in the 1920s to develop the image dissector system that was eventually perfected to the degree that RCA was forced to purchase rights to Farnsworth's patents. This was the first time RCA was the purchaser instead of the seller of such rights. George Everson, one of Farnsworth's financial backers, has written the only detailed biography of one of the last of the individual inventors to succeed in an age of business-dominated research.