Your Mama Invented Television

The original television probably wouldn't impress your average 21st-century American, who is used to all manner of razzle-dazz and flippety-flupp in the delivery of passive, couch-slumping entertainment. No, the first TV was a humble device, nothing more than a telephone attached to a small easel that held a pad of paper. The caller would call to tell an acquaintance about something that had happened, and while he verbally described the scene the answering party drew it up on the pad of paper. It was a rather stupid invention, but it was all they had back then and was wildly popular because it was new. Everyone marveled at the "Fourteenth Wonder of the World" (everything was a "Wonder of the World" back then, even Tommy Smothers) but social critics warned that the television would be the end of us all, with youths aimlessly doodling away the days and sending dirty pictures back and forth by way of description.

But after a few years, America's love affair with television began to wane, and by the mid-1930's Americans began to feel the seven-year itch for new technology. Many thought it would come in the form of a talking train, and a series of popular books were written on the subject. But the powers-that-be knew they had to get the ball rolling on a new, improved television, unless they wanted to continue running all over to hell and back every election year, shaking hands with every sweaty yokel that crawled out from under a rock somewhere. No chance! The talking train would have to wait. The time had come for television.

No one knew this better than President Roosevelt, and he wasted no time shining the big, lightbulb-shaped searchlight into the sky, signaling for all of the inventors to come out of their basements and backyard sheds and insane asylums and come to their country's aid.

Roosevelt gathered all of the nation's inventors together in a large hall that smelled strongly of cabbage, which everyone blamed on the room but all knew was the stink of the inventors themselves. They were given their mission, to re-invent television, and the inventors took to it with relish in their hair. Right off the bat they formed inventing teams, which they gave tough-sounding names like "The Genius Gang" and "The Eureka Dukes" and they invented chants that they used to taunt the other inventing teams. Before long there was a tug-of-war and a sack race to determine exactly which inventing team was the best, and within a week the President had to send in the National Guard to break it up because the inventors weren't getting any inventing done. But by that time the inventors were entrenched in a bitter clan war, and operatives from the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency had to be sent in to infiltrate the gangs and break them up by starting rumors about who exactly was stinking the place up like cabbage.

The government then wisely sent the inventors on their separate ways, and hunkered in to hope for the best.

The early returns were not promising, as most of the inventions that were submitted revolved around grafting telephones to sundry household devices, such as a hat rack and an ironing board, with the notable exception of one inventor who somehow managed to build a working telephone inside of a live pig.

Several other inventions of lasting importance were created during this quest for television, however, by inventors who either didn't understand the assignment or who thought the easel-pad television worked fine. And though the patent office was at first disappointed to receive them, inventions such as the burp-counting clock and disease flypaper would eventually have profound effects on American life.

The first invention that the office received which came anywhere close to improving on the original television was Monasto Farbie's Dream Beam Television. Farbie was an RCA employee of sub-normal IQ, who nonetheless did quite well in life by smiling constantly and only opening his mouth to agree with what more important people were saying. Farbie's invention involved a complex series of mirrors and magnifying glasses designed to shoot images over a distance of up to nine feet. It didn't even do that well, but being that it was the only new patent submitted with the word "Television" actually in the name, it was seen as a step in the right direction.

Out of this mess appeared Solace Mertz, an inventor from Idaho who hadn't been present at the President's meeting because he'd spent that weekend trapped in a box. Mertz arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, with a fully functioning television camera and screen in tow. When asked where he came up with the idea, Mertz told a long, detailed story about a dream he'd had one night where hyper-intelligent panda bears had come down out of a flying cocoanut and taught him how to make a television.

No one present knew what to say after he finished his story, except the CIA, who acted quickly by kicking Mertz in the teeth and telling him that if he didn't go along they'd tell everyone that he had married his cousin. Which was true, though Mertz had cleverly avoided detection for years by marrying all three of his cousins, so that nobody could say for certain which one he was married to and curious parties eventually got confused and gave up.

Roosevelt then quickly announced that Farbie had invented the television, and the nation was spared the embarrassment of awarding medals and honorary degrees to some Moonie who talked to panda bears. Everyone was happy: Farbie was famous, the nation had a new reason not to clean out their rain gutters, and politicians never had to go to West Virginia again. Mertz returned to his humble Idahoan life and lived quietly for years, until the night the panda bears returned to his dream and told him how build a ray gun that could remotely induce a cerebral hemorrhage in a head of state, which is a story for another column.

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