Word: sarnoffs
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...determined to end the British wireless monopoly. At Government urging, General Electric's Vice President Owen D. Young got G.E., Westinghouse, United Fruit and A.T. & T. to pool all their wireless patents and jointly organize RCA. It took over American Marconi-and Sarnoff. As RCA's chairman, Young was so impressed with Sarnoff's vision and knowledge of wireless theory and practice that he made him general manager...
...Sarnoff dug out his old 1915 memo and tried it on Young, who liked the "music box" idea. But RCA's directors were willing to risk only $2,000. Sarnoff gave a demonstration that woke them up. He borrowed a Navy transmitter and helped give a blow-by-blow broadcast of the 1921 Dempsey-Carpentier world championship fight. It created a sensation; about 200,000 amateur wireless operators and others with homemade sets heard it, and spread the news of the wonder so widely that the public clamored for sets. RCA quickly developed the "music box," and both...
Everyone thought that Sarnoff was foolishly optimistic when he predicted that $75 million in boxes would be sold within three years. Actual sales: $83 million. David Sarnoff, a prophet with honor, was soon radio's wonder boy, teeming with ideas. Why not, he proposed, put radios and phonographs in a single cabinet, save space, cut costs by using the same loudspeakers? Sales of such combinations soared. Why not start a radio network to improve programs, broaden the market for sets? At Sarnoff's urging, RCA founded NBC and the Red network. Two months later, the Blue network...
Changing the Tune. The radio field was being invaded by so many newcomers that Sarnoff got worried; he thought RCA should expand into other fields. But RCA's profits were needed to keep pace with the mushrooming radio business; there was little left for the kind of expansion he had in mind. So Sarnoff began his famous series of expansions without cash; he traded RCA products and stock for the companies he wanted. RCA had developed the Photophone, a device for talking movies, and traded rights to it to Radio-Albee-Orpheum and F.P.O. Productions...
Radio stock went soaring from $2.50 to $549 a share, was split and resplit. Insiders made killings in radio pools, but Sarnoff had a reputation for keeping aloof from such shenanigans. At their height, he sailed to Europe to help Owen Young set up the Young Plan for German reparations...