David Sarnoff

David Sarnoff (February 27, 1891 – December 12, 1971) was an American executive who shaped the development of radio and television broadcasting in the United States. He spent nearly his entire career at the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), joining shortly after its creation in 1919 and staying until his retirement in 1970. Under his leadership, RCA and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) grew into a global telecommunications and media empire. After being appointed a Reserve Brigadier General of the Signal Corps in 1945, Sarnoff insisted on being called “The General” and expected others to address him as “General Sarnoff.”

Born to a Jewish family in the small town of Uzlian, then part of the Russian Empire (now Belarus), Sarnoff was the son of Abraham Sarnoff and Leah Privin. His father emigrated to the United States first, raising money to bring the rest of the family. As a child, Sarnoff spent much of his early years studying and memorizing the Torah at a cheder, or yeshiva. In 1900, at age nine, he emigrated with his mother, three brothers, and one sister to New York City, where he sold newspapers before and after classes at the Educational Alliance to help support the family. When his father became incapacitated by tuberculosis in 1906, 15-year-old Sarnoff left school to work full-time. He had planned a career in newspapers, but a chance encounter landed him a job as an office boy at the Commercial Cable Company. After his boss refused him time off for Rosh Hashanah, he quit and joined the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America on September 30, 1906, beginning a six-decade career in electronic communications.

Over the next 13 years, Sarnoff worked his way up from office boy to commercial manager, learning the technology and business of electronic communications on the job and through library study. He served at Marconi stations on ships and at posts on Siasconset, Nantucket, and the New York Wanamaker Department Store. In 1911, he installed and operated wireless equipment on a ship hunting seals off Newfoundland and Labrador, using the technology to relay the first remote medical diagnosis—a ship’s doctor treating an infected tooth via a radio operator at Belle Isle. The following year, he led two other operators at the Wanamaker station in efforts to confirm the fate of the Titanic. A skilled self-promoter, Sarnoff later exaggerated his role, claiming he had been the lone hero who stayed at his telegraph key for three days receiving news of survivors. Historian Schwartz questions whether Sarnoff, then a manager of telegraphers, actually worked the key, though this overlooks corporate hierarchy issues; the event began on a Sunday when the store was closed.

In the next two years, Sarnoff became chief inspector and contracts manager for Marconi, whose revenues grew after Congress required continuous staffing of commercial shipboard radio stations. That same year, Marconi won a patent suit that gave it the coastal stations of the United Wireless Telegraph Company. Sarnoff also demonstrated the first use of radio on a railroad line—the Lackawanna Railroad Company’s link between Binghamton, New York, and Scranton, Pennsylvania—and permitted and observed Edwin Armstrong’s demonstration of his regenerative receiver at the Marconi station in Belmar, New Jersey. Using H. J. Round’s hydrogen arc transmitter, Sarnoff demonstrated music broadcasts from the New York Wanamaker station. These demonstrations, along with AT&T’s 1915 long-distance wireless telephony tests, inspired the first of many memos he wrote to his superiors about future radio applications. Around late 1915 or 1916, he proposed to company president Edward J. Nally that Marconi develop a “radio music box” for amateur radio enthusiasts. Nally deferred the idea due to the increased business demands of World War I. During the war, Sarnoff remained Marconi’s Commercial Manager, overseeing the company’s factory in Roselle Park, New Jersey.

Unlike many early radio pioneers who saw it as a point-to-point technology, Sarnoff recognized its potential for point-to-mass communication: one broadcaster speaking to many listeners. When Owen D. Young of General Electric arranged the purchase of American Marconi and reorganized it as the Radio Corporation of America—a radio patent monopoly—Sarnoff revived his proposal in a lengthy memo on the company’s business and prospects. His superiors again ignored him, but he helped arrange the broadcast of the July 1921 heavyweight boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier, serving as one of the announcers. Up to 300,000 people heard the fight, and demand for home radios surged that winter. By spring 1922, Sarnoff’s prediction of popular demand for radio broadcasting had come true, and over the next few years he gained significant stature and influence. In 1926, RCA bought AT&T’s Broadcasting Company of America subsidiary, including its New York station WEAF and its associated network operations. This was reorganized to launch the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), America’s first national radio network. Four years later, Sarnoff became president of RCA. NBC had by then split into two networks, the Red and the Blue; the Blue Network eventually became ABC Radio. Although Sarnoff is often wrongly called the founder of both RCA and NBC, he actually founded only NBC. He was instrumental in building and establishing the AM broadcasting radio business.