Goldmark was born on December 2, 1906, in Budapest, Hungary, the son of Sandor (Alexander) Goldmark, a businessman, and Emma Steiner. His parents were divorced when he was eight; his mother remarried, and he moved with her to Vienna at the end of World War I.
Goldmark's early musical training in piano and cello had a profound effect on his career. As a youth, Goldmark was fascinated by everything electrical, in particular the nascent engineering fields of radio and television. He began his postsecondary studies at the University of Berlin, then transferred to the University of Vienna in 1925. He received his Ph. D. in physics from the University of Vienna in 1931.
While in Vienna, Goldmark developed his first patented invention, an auto horn that could be activated by the driver's knee. At this time he also sent away for a do-it-yourself television kit, assembled it with a friend, and watched on a postage stamp-size screen his first televised images - a flickering picture of a dancer broadcast from London. From the bathroom of his family home, Goldmark managed to enlarge the image size. His solution brought him yet another patent. After receiving his Ph. D. , Goldmark set up the television department for Pye Radio in Cambridge, England. Two years later he moved to New York City. After consulting for fledgling television and radio companies, Goldmark was hired by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1936 to explore the possibilities of television. He was chief television engineer until 1944. In 1937 he became an American citizen. Three months after his wedding, at the end of the delayed honeymoon in Montreal, Goldmark saw a movie that profoundly affected his career. Because of his poor eyesight, he normally did not go to the movies, but this film, Gone with the Wind, was the first Technicolor movie he had seen, and he found it exhilarating. Throughout the film he was obsessed with the thought of applying color to television; he felt that black-and-white television, which was then under development, paled in comparison. A few months later he had created a prototype color television system; on December 2, 1940, the first live color television broadcast took place on CBS's experimental channel. That same day, his son Peter, who would become president of the Rockefeller Foundation, was born. World War II interrupted further development of Goldmark's color television system. In January 1942 he joined Harvard University's Radio Research Laboratory, where he turned his attention to the development of electronic countermeasures designed to confuse enemy radar, including the jammer, a shoe box-size device filled with electronic circuits that was carried by Allied aircraft in bombing raids over Germany and helped save the lives of thousands of Americans. In 1944 he became a member of the United States Navy's Office of Scientific Research and Development, where he helped develop an electronic decoy navy that was designed to deceive the Germans in advance of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Back at CBS after the war, Goldmark, who had become director of engineering research and development in 1944, fought to open the UHF airwaves to color television, but was thwarted in his efforts by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Meanwhile, he perfected his mechanical, rotating-disk color television system, which the FCC approved in 1950. Shortly afterward, however, it was replaced by all-electronic systems that were compatible with the existing black-and-white transmissions. Goldmark's work probably brought color television to the public a decade earlier than it might have otherwise, even though it was not in the form he had intended. Despite this setback, however, he did manage a few victories. The competition used a Goldmark innovation, the curved shadow mask, which produces better resolution at the edges of a television picture. Goldmark's color system did find wide application in closed-circuit television for industry, medical institutions, and schools because its camera was smaller, lighter, and easier to maintain than commercial television systems. His camera was later used by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to beam back color pictures from the moon. In the late 1940's, Goldmark and his development team revolutionized the music recording industry, which for half a century had relied on 78 rpm records. The genesis of his best-known invention, the LP, or long-playing record, occurred one evening in the fall of 1945, while the Goldmarks were visiting friends. After dinner their hosts played a new 78-rpm recording of Brahms's Second Piano Concerto. Goldmark was annoyed by its tinny sound, scratchiness, and clicks, but most of all by each record's short playing time: the concerto required six records. Since Goldmark wanted to improve the quality as well as increase the playing time of recordings, he not only decreased the number of revolutions per minute to 331/3 but also increased the number of grooves per inch, developed a sapphire stylus for the playing cartridge instead of the steel needle then in use, created a lightweight tone arm and new turntable drive, used vinyl instead of shellac to make records, and employed a new microphone to improve the quality of the recordings. But CBS's introduction of Goldmark's LP on June 21, 1948, was not an instant hit. Not until the musical South Pacific appeared on LP five years later did people start buying it - and other LPs - in droves. Goldmark developed the rotating-drum line scanner, a system that allowed satellites to relay high-resolution images from space. This innovation would have tremendous military and scientific implications in the decades to come. By the late 1950's, Goldmark was talking about a tape cassette system for the home and automobile. In partnership with the 3M Company, his team developed a string of patents that laid the groundwork for the standard audiocassette. In April 1958, Goldmark moved his CBS laboratory from New York City to Stamford, Connecticut, where he worked on his last invention, electronic video recording (EVR). This was the first device to play movies in the form of miniature film on one's own television set. Two decades later EVR led to the videocassette recorder. Goldmark never obtained full support of CBS for EVR because chairman William Paley saw the invention as a potential threat to his broadcasting enterprise. Once again, however, a Goldmark invention served to stimulate the industry and contributed to the videocassette boom of the 1980's. Goldmark retired from CBS in December 1971 and formed his own company, Goldmark Communications Corporation, a subsidiary of Warner Communications. Inspired by his son Peter's "war on poverty" work, he became involved in establishing equal-opportunity and antipoverty programs in the Stamford area. On a broader scale, Goldmark believed that the congestion of the cities was the root of many social problems and promoted a solution he called the New Rural Society. He felt that the new communications technologies could relieve the urban burden by allowing a greater dispersion of the population into the countryside. Goldmark died in an automobile crash on a highway in Westchester County, New York, on December 7, 1977.
Member of the United States Navy's Office of Scientific Research and Development (1944), vice-president of CBS (1950), president of CBS Laboratories (1954)
In 1936 Goldmark married Muriel Gainsborough Evans; they had no children and later divorced. In January 1940, Goldmark married Frances Charlotte Trainer; the couple would have four children. In 1954 he divorced his second wife and married his secretary, Diane Davis; they had two children.
He is a retired publisher and journalist who highlighted environmental and social issues.
