Orono, ME (NEWSCENTERMaine) -- Thompson Guernsey was a radio and television pioneer.
He grew up in Dover-Foxcroft and had a commercial radio license by the time he graduated with the University of Maine in 1926.
He ran WLBZ successfully for a number of years, but his mind was on the future.
He was developing New England's first commercial television station WIXG-TV in Boston.
"He had programming. He had a transmitter. He was doing everything a television station should do," said Fred Thompson who would serve as President of the Maine Broadcasting System for 22 years. "It was just that no one had a television--oops!"
He attracted 20th Century Fox as an investor for a final year, but when they pulled out, Guernsey was broke.
He went back to Dover-Foxcroft and developed his Guernsey TV Scope for which he would receive a patent.
"You peered into the large end of a megaphone-type arrangement and looked at this picture tub approximately one and a half inches in diameter," said Ed Guernsey for an article written by Fred Thompson for a broadcasting magazine.. "With no other reference in this dark viewing area the picture became as large as the imagination could conceive. It was really very effective."
It was also ahead of it's time.
Thompson Guernsey died in 1979 in Dover-Foxcroft.