Word: sarnoffs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...architect of nationwide banking --Ray Kroc, hamburger meister --Estee Lauder, cosmetics tycoon --William Levitt, creator of suburbia --Lucky Luciano, criminal mastermind --Louis B. Mayer, Hollywood mogul --Charles Merrill, advocate of the small investor --Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony --Walter Reuther, labor leader --Pete Rozelle, football-league commissioner --David Sarnoff, father of broadcasting --Juan Trippe, aviation entrepreneur --Sam Walton, Wal-Mart dynamo --Thomas Watson Jr., IBM president...
...recede in importance as lawyers take center stage. As it happens, Zworykin had made a patent application in 1923, and by 1933 had developed a camera tube he called an Iconoscope. It also happens that Zworykin was by then connected with the Radio Corporation of America, whose chief, David Sarnoff, had no intention of paying royalties to Farnsworth for the right to manufacture television sets. "RCA doesn't pay royalties," he is alleged to have said, "we collect them...
...Patent Office rendered its decision, awarding priority of invention to Farnsworth. RCA appealed and lost, but litigation about various matters continued for many years until Sarnoff finally agreed to pay Farnsworth royalties...
...government suspended sales of TV sets, and by the war's end, Farnsworth's key patents were close to expiring. When they did, RCA was quick to take charge of the production and sales of TV sets, and in a vigorous public-relations campaign, promoted both Zworykin and Sarnoff as the fathers of television. Farnsworth withdrew to a house in Maine, suffering from depression, which was made worse by excessive drinking. He had a nervous breakdown, spent time in hospitals and had to submit to shock therapy. And in 1947, as if he were being punished for having invented television...
...heady feeling is back with another technology revolution. But the basic truth Sarnoff articulated--television is a beneficial, creative force--still holds despite the tumult of vertical integration, ratings wars, new-media breakthroughs and Internet companies with zooming stock prices. Certainly, the General would have caught the new wave, if not led it, and embraced television's transformation by the digital age. His channel was always dialed to the future...