The Philo T. Farnsworth Award is a non-competitive award presented as part of the Primetime Engineering Emmy
Awards to "an agency, company or institution whose contributions over time have significantly impacted
television technology and engineering". Named for Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of the first fully working
all-electronic television system and receiver, the winner is selected by a jury of television engineers
from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences' Engineering Emmy Awards Committee who consider "all engineering
developments which have proven their efficacy during the awards year and determines which, if any, merit
recognition with an Engineering Emmy statuette". The award was first presented at the 55th Primetime Engineering
Emmy Awards ceremony in September 2003. The motion picture equipment company Panavision was selected as the
inaugural recipient for its work in developing "specialty camera items, cranes and dollies, video assists, 35
mm optics, cameras, lighting, trucks and grips". Since then, another 15 agencies, companies and institutions
have received the award; none have won more than once.
The Wright brothers – Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912) – were American aviation pioneers generally credited with
inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained
flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina. The brothers were also the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.