Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr.

Thomas Toliver Goldsmith Jr. (1910 to 2009) was an American television pioneer and physicist, born in Greenville, South Carolina. After a physics degree at Furman University and a doctorate at Cornell, where he built an oscilloscope for his research, he became director of research and later vice president at DuMont Laboratories, chaired the National Television System Committee synchronization panel and served as chief engineer of the DuMont station WTTG in Washington. With Estle Ray Mann he filed a 1947 patent, granted in 1948, for the Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device, a missile game inspired by radar displays and the first patent for an electronic game. He held five patents for television production and broadcasting and taught physics at Furman from 1966.