David Sarnoff was an American businessman and pioneer of American radio and television. Throughout most of his career he led the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970.
Background
David Sarnoff was born on February 27, 1891, in the Russian-Jewish community of Uzilan close to Minsk. In 1895 his father left to try his luck in the United States; 5 years later he sent for his family. When the father died in 1906, David, as the eldest son, became the family provider.
Education
Sarnoff spent much of his early childhood in a cheder, studying and memorizing the Torah. He immigrated with his mother and three brothers and one sister to New York City in 1900, where he helped support his family by selling newspapers before and after his classes at the Educational Alliance.
Studying in his spare time, Sarnoff finally was promoted to wireless operator. While working at Sea Gage, N. Y. , he completed a course in electrical engineering at Pratt Institute and later acquired practical experience as a marine radio operator on various ships.
In 1938, he received an honorary degree Doctor of Commercial Science from Oglethorpe University.
Career
Sarnoff started his career as a messenger boy for the Commercial Cable Company. Six months later he became an office boy for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. His first step to fame was on the night of April 14, 1912, when as manager of an experimental wireless station on the roof of a New York department store he monitored the Titanic’s call for help. He quickly notified the authorities and the press, and during the next seventy-two hours monitored messages from rescue ships, noting the names of all seven hundred survivors.
By 1917 Sarnoff had become commercial manager at the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company of America. Combining expert technical knowledge with visionary business acumen, Sarnoff soon rose in the ranks of the company, and his innovations and bold imagination increased radio sales tremendously. RCA, which had absorbed American-Marconi, accepted his plan to make radio “a household utility in the same sense as a piano or phonograph,” and began the mass production of radios as the home receiver of music.
As vice president and general manager of RCA, Sarnoff established a central broadcasting organization to feed programs to a number of interconnected radio stations, the beginning of the networks. He also acquired companies in allied industries, such as the Victor Talking Machine Company and its trademark, “His Master’s Voice.” His aim was to combine radio and phonograph in the same set. RCA also bought and developed Photophone and RKO. Over the years its various companies turned out products ranging from computer parts to radar sets used in tracing satellites.
In 1930 Sarnoff was elected president of RCA, but during the 1932 stock market crash the corporation nearly fell apart. However, he continued to foster research programs, including the development of television, which he had already foreseen a decade earlier. In April 1939, during the dedication ceremonies at the New York World Fair, he pioneered public television broadcasting in the United States, when he appeared before a television camera.
In 1942 Sarnoff became the board chairman and Chief Executive Officer of RCA, and under his direction the Corporation produced radarand signaling systems for the army. Sarnoff saw active duty in World War II, with the rank of colonel, serving as a communications consultant in the Pentagon and at General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s headquarters in Europe. In 1944 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
After the war the David Sarnoff Research Center was set up in Princeton, New Jersey, where scientists developed a compatible color television system that received black and white as well as color pictures. RCA also won the Federal Communication Commission’s approval for setting its system as the standard system for color television. In 1961 Sarnoff brought RCA into the field of electronic data processing, publishing (through the acquisition of Random House), and the car rental business (through the purchase of Hertz).
In 1966 Sarnoff retired from the position of chief executive officer, but continued actively as board chairman until his death.
As a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund panel and in a subsequent essay published in Life as part of its "The National Purpose" series, he was critical of the tentative stand being taken by the United States in fighting the political and psychological warfare being waged by Soviet-led international Communism against the West. He strongly advocated an aggressive, multi-faceted fight in the ideological and political realms with a determination to decisively win the Cold War.
Views
In 1915, he submitted a memo outlining an idea for what he called a "radio music box." At the time, radio was mainly used in shipping and by amateur wireless enthusiasts. But Sarnoff boasted that his device would make radio a "household utility," like the phonograph. "The idea," he wrote, "is to bring music into the house by wireless." Marconi management wrote off the concept as a commercial folly.
After World War I, in 1919, General Electric (GE) formed RCA to absorb Marconi's U.S. assets, which included Sarnoff. Figuring the new management might see things his way, Sarnoff again submitted his "radio music box" idea. RCA execs were intrigued, but pointed out that in order to sell radios, they had to have programming. But Sarnoff had already conquered that problem. He proposed that RCA, in conjunction with GE and its partners, would produce the radio and underwrite programming at the same time.
Quotations:
“The thrill, believe me, is as much in the battle as in the victory....”
“The will to persevere is often the difference between failure and success.”
“Work and live to serve others, to leave the world a little better than you found it and garner for yourself as much peace of mind as you can. This is happiness.”
“Whatever course you have chosen for yourself, it will not be a chore but an adventure if you bring to it a sense of the glory of striving.”
“We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.”
“Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in people”
“Success, in a generally accepted sense of the term, means the opportunity to experience and to realize to the maximum the forces that are within us.”
“No man can be successful, unless he first loves his work.”
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?”
“If we are to become the masters of science, not its slaves, we must learn to use its immense power to good purpose. The machine itself has neither mind nor soul nor moral sense. Only man has been endowed with these godlike attributes. Every age has its destined duty. Ours is to nurture an awareness of those divine attributes and a sense of responsibility in giving them expression.”
“I hitched my wagon to an electron rather than the proverbial star.”
“A career, like a business, must be budgeted. When it is necessary, the budget can be adjusted to meet changing conditions. A life that hasn't a definite plan is likely to become driftwood.”
“Nobody can be successful if he doesn't love his work, love his job.”
“We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them. The products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value.”
“Television is likely to do more to revolutionize politics than sound broadcasting did. Political candidates may have to adopt new techniques to benefit from visual radio: their dress, their smiles and gestures, all will be important. How they look, as well as what they say, may determine to an appreciable extent their popularity. The eyes of the public will be upon them.”
“It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the nation.”
Membership
In 1959 Sarnoff was a member of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund panel to report on U.S. foreign policy.
Rockefeller Brothers Fund panel
,
United States
1959
Personality
David Sarnoff wasn't a scientist, engineer or inventor. Yet he, more than any other individual, was the driving force behind the development of the electronic mass media in the United States. Truly ahead of his time, Sarnoff's vision and ambition fueled some of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th century. His stubborn pursuit of technology turned his employer, Radio Corporation of America (RCA), into a powerhouse in less than a decade. And along the way, he managed to spawn one of America's top three television networks.
Connections
On July 4, 1917, Sarnoff married Lizette Hermant, the daughter of a French-Jewish immigrant family who settled in the Bronx. It was Sarnoff's good luck that the Hermants just happened to become one of his mother's neighbors. This 54-year marriage is said to have been the bedrock of his life. Mrs. Sarnoff soon learned that, in addition to a wife's more conventional roles, she also became the first person to hear her husband's new ideas as radio and television became integral to American home life.
The couple had three sons: Robert W. Sarnoff (who was married to soprano Anna Moffo), Edward Sarnoff, and Thomas W. Sarnoff. Robert succeeded his father as RCA's Chairman in 1971; and the youngest of these sons, Thomas, became NBC West Coast President.