This is from the episode of I've Got a Secret from July 3, 1957. The panel has to guess a man's secret and his secret is that he invented electronic television. That's because the man is Dr. Philo T. Farnsworth. In addition to TV, he also invented or co-invented the electron microscope, incubators for babies and the system used by Air Traffic Controllers to stop planes from running into one another. An amazing person…and one who somehow managed to not reap many financial rewards for all his brilliance. On this show, as you'll see, all he gets is $80 and a carton of Winston Cigarettes which is about as much as he made off some of his inventions.
A couple of the questions asked by the panelists seem to me to be examples of a practice on some game shows (especially Goodman-Todman game shows) called gambitting. That was when the producers planted innocent questions with the panel that they thought would be funny to an audience that knew what the panelist didn't know. Bill Cullen, for instance, asks Dr. Farnsworth if his invention might be painful when used. I'm pretty sure they didn't tell Cullen what the secret was but it's likely they told him to ask that question in order to get a laugh. In fact, you'll notice they wait until after he asks it to buzz him and end his questioning. This was done a lot on panel shows in the fifties, though it was curtailed around '58 when the quiz show scandals broke. Shows like What's My Line? and I've Got a Secret weren't rigged — and of course, no one won any large sums of cash on them — but the producers were afraid that the public wouldn't understand if it got out that the panelists were being briefed in any way.
Anyway, here's Dr. Farnsworth. This isn't a particularly funny segment but how often do you get to see a genuine American genius? I mean, since I'm not on TV very often.