DAVID SARNOFF
A pioneer in radio and television, David Sarnoff was an immigrant
who climbed the rungs of corporate America to head the Radio
Corporation of America (RCA). Born 27 February 1891, in Uzlian, in
the Russian province of Minsk, Sarnoff's early childhood years were
spent studying to be a rabbi, but when he emigrated to the United
States in 1900, he was forced to work to feed his mother, ailing
father, and siblings.
Learning early the value of self-promotion and publicity, Sarnoff
falsely advanced himself both as the sole hero who stayed by his
telegraph key for three days to receive information on the Titanic's
survivors and as the prescient prophet of broadcasting who predicted
the medium's rise in 1915. While later described by others as the
founder of both the Radio Corporation of American (RCA) and the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Sarnoff was neither. These
misconceptions were perpetuated because Sarnoff's later
accomplishments were so plentiful that any myth was believable.
Indeed, his foresight and corporate savvy led to many communication
developments, especially television.
Sarnoff began his career at age nine, selling Yiddish-language
newspapers shortly after arriving in New York. To better his
English, he picked up discarded English newspapers. By the time he
was ten, he had a fairly passable vocabulary. He also soon had his
own newsstand. During the day he attended grade school, while at
night he enrolled in classes at the Educational Alliance, an East
Side settlement house. At age 15, with his father's health
deteriorating, Sarnoff was forced to seek a full-time job.
He became a messenger for the Commercial Cable Company, the American
subsidiary of the British firm that controlled undersea cable
communication. The telegraph key lured him to the American Marconi
Company a few months later, where he was hired as an office boy.
Once there, he began his corporate rise, including being Marconi's
personal messenger when the inventor was in town. With Marconi's
endorsement, Sarnoff became a junior wireless telegraph operator
and, at age 17, volunteered for wireless duty at one of the
company's remote stations. There he studied the station's technical
library and took correspondence courses. Eighteen months later, he
was appointed manager of the station at Sea Gate, New York. He was
the youngest manager employed by Marconi. After volunteering as a
wireless operator for an Arctic seal expedition, he became operator
of the Marconi wireless purchased by the John Wanamaker department
stores. At night he continued his studies.
Then, on the evening of 14 April 1912, he heard the faint reports of
the Titanic disaster. One of a number of wireless operators
reporting the tragedy, Sarnoff would later claim he was the only one
remaining on air after President Taft ordered others to remain
silent. Another probably spurious claim was Sarnoff's assertion he
wrote his famous "Radio Music Box Memo" in 1915. The version so
often cited was actually written in 1920, when others were also
investigating and predicting broadcasting.
As his career thrived, Sarnoff's personal life also grew. On 4 July
1917, he married Lizette Hermant, following a closely supervised
courtship. Their 54-year marriage survived Sarnoff's occasional
philanderings and proved the bedrock of his life. They had three
sons: Robert, Edward, and Thomas. Robert succeeded his father as
RCA's president. In 1919, when British Marconi sold its American
Marconi assets to General Electric (GE) to form RCA, Sarnoff came on
board as commercial manager. Under the tutelage of Owen D. Young,
RCA's chair, Sarnoff was soon in charge of broadcasting as general
manager of RCA and was integral in the formation of NBC in 1926.
Again as Young's protégé, he negotiated the secret contracts with
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT and T) that led to NBC's
development. With the acquisition of AT and T's broadcasting assets,
RCA had two networks, the Red and the Blue, and they debuted in a
simulcast on 15 November 1926.
In 1927 Sarnoff was elected to RCA's board and during the summer of
1928, he became RCA's acting president when General James G.
Harbord, RCA's president, took a leave of absence to campaign for
Herbert Hoover. His eventual succession to that position was
assured. During the end of the decade Sarnoff negotiated successful
contracts to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) motion pictures, to
introduce radios as a permanent fixture in automobiles, and to
consolidate all radio manufacturing by the Victor company under
RCA's banner. On 3 January 1930, the 39-year-old Sarnoff became
RCA's president.
The next two years were pivotal in Sarnoff's life as the Department
of Justice sued GE and RCA for monopoly and restraint of trade.
Sarnoff led industry efforts to combat the government's suits that
would have destroyed RCA. The result was a consent decree in 1932
calling for RCA's divestiture from GE and the licensing of RCA's
patents to competitors. When GE freed RCA, Sarnoff was at the helm
and, for nearly the next three decades, he would oversee numerous
communications development, including television.
Sarnoff's interest in television began in the 1910s, when he became
aware of the theory of television. By 1923, he was convinced
television would be the next great step in mass communication. In
1929 Westinghouse engineer Vladimir Zworykin called on Sarnoff to
outline his concept of an electronic camera. Within the year,
Sarnoff underwrote Zworykin's efforts, and Zworykin headed the team
developing electronic television. As the Depression deepened,
Sarnoff bought television patents from inventors Charles Jenkins and
Lee De Forest, among others, but he could not acquire those patents
held by Philo Farnsworth. These he had to license, and in 1936, RCA
entered into a cross licensing agreement with Farnsworth. This
agreement solved the technological problems of television, and
establishing television's standards became Sarnoff's goal.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would set those
standards, but within the industry, efforts to reach consensus
failed. Other manufacturers, especially Philco, Dumont and Zenith,
fought adoption of RCA's standards as the industry norm. In 1936,
the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA) set up a technical
committee to seek agreement on industry standards, an action blessed
actively by Sarnoff and silently by the FCC. For more than five
years the committee would fight over standards. Sarnoff told the
RMA, standards or not, he would initiate television service at the
opening of the New York World's Fair on 20 April 1939, and he did.
Skirmishes continued for the next two years over standards, but
finally in May 1941 the FCC's National Television System Committee
(NTSC) set standards at 525 lines, interlaced, and 30 frames per
second. But rapid television development stalled as World War II
intervened. Sarnoff's attention then turned to devices, including
radar and sonar, that would help win the war.
During World War I Sarnoff had applied for a commission in naval
communications, only to be turned down, ostensibly because his
wireless job was considered essential to the war effort. Sarnoff
suspected anti-Semitism. Now as head of the world's largest
communication's firm, Sarnoff was made a brigadier general and
served as communication consultant to General Dwight Eisenhower.
After the war, with the death of RCA chair of the board, General
J.G. Harbord in 1947, General Sarnoff, as he preferred to be called,
was appointed chair and served in that capacity until his death in
1971.
After the war, RCA introduced monochrome television on a wide scale
to the American population, and the race for color television with
CBS was on. CBS picked up its pre-war experiments with a mechanical
system, which Sarnoff did not see initially as a threat because it
was incompatible with already approved black-and-white standards.
When CBS received approval for its system in 1951, Sarnoff
challenged the FCC's decision in the courts on the grounds it
contravened the opinions of the industry's technical leaders and
threatened the public's already $2-billion investment in television
sets. When the lower court refused to block the FCC ruling, Sarnoff
appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the FCC action as a
proper exercise of its regulatory power.
Sarnoff counterattacked through an FCC-granted authority for RCA to
field-test color developments. Demonstrations were carefully set for
maximum public exposure, and they were billed as "progress reports"
on compatible color. By then, the Korean War intervened in the
domestic color television battle and blunted introduction of CBS'
sets on a large scale. Monochrome still reigned, and Sarnoff
continued pressing the compatibility issue. In 1953 CBS abandoned
its color efforts as "economically foolish" in light of 25 million
incompatible monochrome sets already in use. The FCC was forced to
reconsider its earlier order, and on 17 December 1953, voted to
reverse itself and adopt standards along those proposed by RCA.
During the 1950s and 1960s Sarnoff's interests included not only
television but also satellites, rocketry, and computers.
At the same time he was battling CBS over color, Sarnoff's feud with
Edwin Howard Armstrong over FM radio's development and patents
continued. Sarnoff and Armstrong, once close friends, were
hopelessly alienated by the end of World War II. Their deadly feud
lasted for years, consumed numerous court challenges and ended in
Armstrong's suicide in 1954.
Sarnoff died in his sleep 12 December 1971, of cardiac arrest. At
his funeral he was eulogized as a visionary who had the capacity to
see into tomorrow and to make his visions work. His obituary began
on page one and ran nearly one full page in The New York Times and
aptly summed up his career in these words: "He was not an inventor,
nor was he a scientist. But he was a man of astounding vision who
was able to see with remarkable clarity the possibilities of
harnessing the electron."
DAVID SARNOFF. Born near Minsk, Russia, 27 February 1891. Attended
public schools, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.; studied electrical
engineering at Pratt Institute. Married: Lizette Hermant, 1917;
three sons. Joined Marconi Wireless Company, 1906-19, telegraph
operator, 1908, promoted to chief radio inspector and assistant
chief engineer, when Marconi was absorbed by Radio Corporation of
America (RCA), 1919-70, commercial manager; elected general manager,
RCA, 1921, vice president and general manager, 1922, executive vice
president, 1929, president, 1930; invested in development of
television during 1930s; chair of board, RCA, 1947-70; oversaw RCA's
manufacture of color television sets and NBC's color broadcasts.
Received 27 honorary degrees, including doctoral degrees from
Columbia University and New York University. Died in New York City,
12 December 1971.
A pioneer in radio and television, David Sarnoff was an immigrant
who climbed the rungs of corporate America to head the Radio
Corporation of America (RCA). Born 27 February 1891, in Uzlian, in
the Russian province of Minsk, Sarnoff's early childhood years were
spent studying to be a rabbi, but when he emigrated to the United
States in 1900, he was forced to work to feed his mother, ailing
father, and siblings.
Learning early the value of self-promotion and publicity, Sarnoff
falsely advanced himself both as the sole hero who stayed by his
telegraph key for three days to receive information on the Titanic's
survivors and as the prescient prophet of broadcasting who predicted
the medium's rise in 1915. While later described by others as the
founder of both the Radio Corporation of American (RCA) and the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Sarnoff was neither. These
misconceptions were perpetuated because Sarnoff's later
accomplishments were so plentiful that any myth was believable.
Indeed, his foresight and corporate savvy led to many communication
developments, especially television.
Sarnoff began his career at age nine, selling Yiddish-language
newspapers shortly after arriving in New York. To better his
English, he picked up discarded English newspapers. By the time he
was ten, he had a fairly passable vocabulary. He also soon had his
own newsstand. During the day he attended grade school, while at
night he enrolled in classes at the Educational Alliance, an East
Side settlement house. At age 15, with his father's health
deteriorating, Sarnoff was forced to seek a full-time job.
He became a messenger for the Commercial Cable Company, the American
subsidiary of the British firm that controlled undersea cable
communication. The telegraph key lured him to the American Marconi
Company a few months later, where he was hired as an office boy.
Once there, he began his corporate rise, including being Marconi's
personal messenger when the inventor was in town. With Marconi's
endorsement, Sarnoff became a junior wireless telegraph operator
and, at age 17, volunteered for wireless duty at one of the
company's remote stations. There he studied the station's technical
library and took correspondence courses. Eighteen months later, he
was appointed manager of the station at Sea Gate, New York. He was
the youngest manager employed by Marconi. After volunteering as a
wireless operator for an Arctic seal expedition, he became operator
of the Marconi wireless purchased by the John Wanamaker department
stores. At night he continued his studies.
Then, on the evening of 14 April 1912, he heard the faint reports of
the Titanic disaster. One of a number of wireless operators
reporting the tragedy, Sarnoff would later claim he was the only one
remaining on air after President Taft ordered others to remain
silent. Another probably spurious claim was Sarnoff's assertion he
wrote his famous "Radio Music Box Memo" in 1915. The version so
often cited was actually written in 1920, when others were also
investigating and predicting broadcasting.
As his career thrived, Sarnoff's personal life also grew. On 4 July
1917, he married Lizette Hermant, following a closely supervised
courtship. Their 54-year marriage survived Sarnoff's occasional
philanderings and proved the bedrock of his life. They had three
sons: Robert, Edward, and Thomas. Robert succeeded his father as
RCA's president. In 1919, when British Marconi sold its American
Marconi assets to General Electric (GE) to form RCA, Sarnoff came on
board as commercial manager. Under the tutelage of Owen D. Young,
RCA's chair, Sarnoff was soon in charge of broadcasting as general
manager of RCA and was integral in the formation of NBC in 1926.
Again as Young's protégé, he negotiated the secret contracts with
American Telephone and Telegraph (AT and T) that led to NBC's
development. With the acquisition of AT and T's broadcasting assets,
RCA had two networks, the Red and the Blue, and they debuted in a
simulcast on 15 November 1926.
In 1927 Sarnoff was elected to RCA's board and during the summer of
1928, he became RCA's acting president when General James G.
Harbord, RCA's president, took a leave of absence to campaign for
Herbert Hoover. His eventual succession to that position was
assured. During the end of the decade Sarnoff negotiated successful
contracts to form Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) motion pictures, to
introduce radios as a permanent fixture in automobiles, and to
consolidate all radio manufacturing by the Victor company under
RCA's banner. On 3 January 1930, the 39-year-old Sarnoff became
RCA's president.
The next two years were pivotal in Sarnoff's life as the Department
of Justice sued GE and RCA for monopoly and restraint of trade.
Sarnoff led industry efforts to combat the government's suits that
would have destroyed RCA. The result was a consent decree in 1932
calling for RCA's divestiture from GE and the licensing of RCA's
patents to competitors. When GE freed RCA, Sarnoff was at the helm
and, for nearly the next three decades, he would oversee numerous
communications development, including television.
Sarnoff's interest in television began in the 1910s, when he became
aware of the theory of television. By 1923, he was convinced
television would be the next great step in mass communication. In
1929 Westinghouse engineer Vladimir Zworykin called on Sarnoff to
outline his concept of an electronic camera. Within the year,
Sarnoff underwrote Zworykin's efforts, and Zworykin headed the team
developing electronic television. As the Depression deepened,
Sarnoff bought television patents from inventors Charles Jenkins and
Lee De Forest, among others, but he could not acquire those patents
held by Philo Farnsworth. These he had to license, and in 1936, RCA
entered into a cross licensing agreement with Farnsworth. This
agreement solved the technological problems of television, and
establishing television's standards became Sarnoff's goal.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) would set those
standards, but within the industry, efforts to reach consensus
failed. Other manufacturers, especially Philco, Dumont and Zenith,
fought adoption of RCA's standards as the industry norm. In 1936,
the Radio Manufacturers Association (RMA) set up a technical
committee to seek agreement on industry standards, an action blessed
actively by Sarnoff and silently by the FCC. For more than five
years the committee would fight over standards. Sarnoff told the
RMA, standards or not, he would initiate television service at the
opening of the New York World's Fair on 20 April 1939, and he did.
Skirmishes continued for the next two years over standards, but
finally in May 1941 the FCC's National Television System Committee
(NTSC) set standards at 525 lines, interlaced, and 30 frames per
second. But rapid television development stalled as World War II
intervened. Sarnoff's attention then turned to devices, including
radar and sonar, that would help win the war.
During World War I Sarnoff had applied for a commission in naval
communications, only to be turned down, ostensibly because his
wireless job was considered essential to the war effort. Sarnoff
suspected anti-Semitism. Now as head of the world's largest
communication's firm, Sarnoff was made a brigadier general and
served as communication consultant to General Dwight Eisenhower.
After the war, with the death of RCA chair of the board, General
J.G. Harbord in 1947, General Sarnoff, as he preferred to be called,
was appointed chair and served in that capacity until his death in
1971.
After the war, RCA introduced monochrome television on a wide scale
to the American population, and the race for color television with
CBS was on. CBS picked up its pre-war experiments with a mechanical
system, which Sarnoff did not see initially as a threat because it
was incompatible with already approved black-and-white standards.
When CBS received approval for its system in 1951, Sarnoff
challenged the FCC's decision in the courts on the grounds it
contravened the opinions of the industry's technical leaders and
threatened the public's already $2-billion investment in television
sets. When the lower court refused to block the FCC ruling, Sarnoff
appealed to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the FCC action as a
proper exercise of its regulatory power.
Sarnoff counterattacked through an FCC-granted authority for RCA to
field-test color developments. Demonstrations were carefully set for
maximum public exposure, and they were billed as "progress reports"
on compatible color. By then, the Korean War intervened in the
domestic color television battle and blunted introduction of CBS'
sets on a large scale. Monochrome still reigned, and Sarnoff
continued pressing the compatibility issue. In 1953 CBS abandoned
its color efforts as "economically foolish" in light of 25 million
incompatible monochrome sets already in use. The FCC was forced to
reconsider its earlier order, and on 17 December 1953, voted to
reverse itself and adopt standards along those proposed by RCA.
During the 1950s and 1960s Sarnoff's interests included not only
television but also satellites, rocketry, and computers.
At the same time he was battling CBS over color, Sarnoff's feud with
Edwin Howard Armstrong over FM radio's development and patents
continued. Sarnoff and Armstrong, once close friends, were
hopelessly alienated by the end of World War II. Their deadly feud
lasted for years, consumed numerous court challenges and ended in
Armstrong's suicide in 1954.
Sarnoff died in his sleep 12 December 1971, of cardiac arrest. At
his funeral he was eulogized as a visionary who had the capacity to
see into tomorrow and to make his visions work. His obituary began
on page one and ran nearly one full page in The New York Times and
aptly summed up his career in these words: "He was not an inventor,
nor was he a scientist. But he was a man of astounding vision who
was able to see with remarkable clarity the possibilities of
harnessing the electron."
DAVID SARNOFF. Born near Minsk, Russia, 27 February 1891. Attended
public schools, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A.; studied electrical
engineering at Pratt Institute. Married: Lizette Hermant, 1917;
three sons. Joined Marconi Wireless Company, 1906-19, telegraph
operator, 1908, promoted to chief radio inspector and assistant
chief engineer, when Marconi was absorbed by Radio Corporation of
America (RCA), 1919-70, commercial manager; elected general manager,
RCA, 1921, vice president and general manager, 1922, executive vice
president, 1929, president, 1930; invested in development of
television during 1930s; chair of board, RCA, 1947-70; oversaw RCA's
manufacture of color television sets and NBC's color broadcasts.
Received 27 honorary degrees, including doctoral degrees from
Columbia University and New York University. Died in New York City,
12 December 1971.