David Sarnoff
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David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891–December 12, 1971) was the General Manager of Radio Corporation of America (RCA) from its founding in 1919 to his retirement in 1970. Known as the general he ruled over an ever-growing radio and electronics empire that became one of the largest companies in the world.
Early years
David Sarnoff was born in Uzliany shtetl near Minsk, Russia (now in Belarus) to a poor Jewish family. Most of his early childhood was spent studying talmud. He emigrated to the United States in 1900, and was forced to work to feed his parents and siblings by selling Yiddish-language newspapers in New York City. He joined the Marconi Wireless Company in 1906, and studied electrical engineering at the Pratt Institute. When he was 21 he had a job as telegraph operator at the Wanamaker Department Store. Sarnoff later claimed that he was one of the operators who picked up news of the sinking of Titanic. This story was shown to be not true. The station was closed the Sunday night that the Titanic sank. Sarnoff did not report for work until the next day, and within the next 24 hours the Marconi Company closed down all their stations except for four, to prevent interference. The Wanamaker station was among those closed down. Whether or not it is true, Sarnoff repeated the claim often enough to earn himself a reputation.Later years
When he was put in charge of radio broadcasting at RCA, he soon recognized the potential of television. He was determined for his company to pioneer the medium. He met with Westinghouse engineer Vladimir Zworykin in 1928, who was developing an all-electronic television system in his spare time on the company premises. Zworykin told Sarnoff he could build a viable television system with a mere $100,000 grant in two years. Sarnoff decided to fund his research but the estimate was off by several orders of magnitude and several years. RCA demonstrated a working iconoscope camera tube and kinescope receiver tube to the press on April 24, 1936.The final cost of the enterprise was closer to $50 million. On the way they had to battle a young inventor Philo T. Farnsworth who managed to secure patents for his solution to broadcasting moving pictures. In 1929, Sarnoff engineered the purchase of the Victor Talking Machine Company, the nation's largest manufacturer of records and phonographs, merging radio-phonograph production at Victor's large manufacturing facility in Camden, New Jersey.
Sarnoff became president of RCA on January 3, 1930, succeeding General James Harbord. On May 30 the company was involved in an antitrust case concerning the original radio patent pool. Sarnoff was able to negotiate an outcome where RCA was no longer partly owned by Westinghouse and General Electric, giving him final say in the company's affairs.
Initially, the Great Depression caused RCA to cut costs, but Zworykin's project was protected. After nine years of hard work, Sarnoff's determination and Zworykin's genius, they had a commercial system ready to launch. The standard approved by the NTSC in 1941 differed from RCA's, but RCA quickly became the market leader.
Meanwhile, system developed by EMI based on Zworykin's work was adopted in Britain and used by the BBC in 1936. However, World War II put a halt to a dynamic growth of the early television.
During the war, Sarnoff was Eisenhower's top communications expert, overseeing the construction of a radio transmitter that was powerful enough to reach all of the allied forces in Europe. He campaigned for, and received, the honorary title of Brigadier General, and thereafter preferred to be known as "General Sarnoff".
After the war, monochrome television production began in earnest. Color television was the next major development and CBS had their partly-mechanical colour television system approved by the FCC on October 10, 1950. Sarnoff filed an unsuccessful suit in the United States district court to suspend the ruling. He made an appeal to the Supreme court which also upheld the FCC decision. Sarnoff pushed his engineers to perfect an all-electronic colour television system that used a signal that could be received on existing monochrome sets. CBS was unable to take advantage of the color market, due to lack of manufacturing capability and sets that were triple the cost of monochrome sets. A few days after CBS had its color premiere on 14 June 1951, RCA demonstrated a fully functional all-electronic color television system.
Color television production was suspended on october 1951 for the duration of the Korean War. As more people bought monochrome sets, it was increasingly unlikely that CBS could achieve any success with its incompatible system. The NTSC was reformed and recommended a system virtually identical to RCA's in August 1952. On December 17, 1953 the FCC approved RCA's system as the new standard.Sarnoff retired in 1970, at the age of 79, and died the subsequent year. He is interred in a private mausoleum in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
Noted Publications
- Robert Sobel, 'RCA' (NY: Stein and Day, 1984). Viewed as the most authoritative history on the subject.
See also
- Edwin Armstrong, inventor of FM
- George H. Brown, research engineer who developed colour television
- RKO Pictures
External links
- [Museum of Broadcast Communications]
- [Biography in IEEE Virtual Museum]
- [Biography in The TIME 100]
- [David Sarnoff Library] at the [Sarnoff Corporation]
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