Who was David Sarnoff, Anyway?
David Sarnoff (1891-1971) was not an inventor, an engineer, or a scientist. Instead, as a corporate manager and executive he became technology’s champion, especially for broadcast communications, starting at the age of fifteen. He advocated, supported, financed, and oversaw the development of radio in the 1910s and 1920s, and then television from the 1930s through the 1950s. Sarnoff first posed the concept of broadcast radio in 1915. At that time, more than half of the American population lived in towns of less than 5,000 people; information arrived through newspapers, magazines, mail order catalogs, letters and postcards, and word of mouth. Today, there are nearly 13,000 AM and FM radio stations in the United States, and thousands more abroad, as well as nearly 20,000 internet radio stations. Sarnoff formally introduced RCA’s electronic monochrome television system in 1939 and the world’s first electronic color television system in 1946. In 2000 there were over 1,600 television statio
