10 World-Changing Inventions That Were Total Rip-Offs

10. A 21-Year-Old Came Up With TV (And RCA Nabbed It)

Philo Taylor Farnsworth was a genius. Like, an actual genius. By the time he he died this guy had 165 patents to his name, but his most influential invention started life when he was just fifteen years old. That's when Farnsworth (no relation to the Futurama characters of the same name, because they are fictional, c'mon) first came up with the idea of an image dissector. That piece of technology wound up being crucial in developing the first television set, which Farnsworth did in 1927, at the tender age of 21. He was young, naïve, possibly a little foolish €“ whatever the reason, he allowed a fellow engineer by the name of Vladimir Zworykin into his lab. Zworykin had been working on a similar idea to his friend. However his idea had been rejected by the patent office back in 1923; it was only after nabbing some of Farnsworth's ideas that he got his TV to work, quickly securing his right to the invention in 1930 and selling it to entertainment giants RCA. Farnsworth fought them in the courts and eventually became entitled to some of the royalties for his invention, but never got proper credit.