David Sarnoff had many fans and distractors. One of his many triumps centered upon the radical concept, at the time, of using radio gear, which was the original use of the term "wireless", for something not envisioned by most radio pioneers. Up until then radio was used almost exclusively for point to point communications. While once in a while one might use a transmitter in an attempt to entertain other tranmitter receivers, Sarnoff promotted the idea of entertaining and enlightning the masses with a single transmitter sending programming to a multitude of radios that could only receive, and not transmit. This idea had many detractors. While not accredited to any one individual, the most famous retort to Sarnoff's "music box" was the line "Who would be interested in messages sent
to no one in particular?"
The purpose of this book is to chronicle the technicological evolution of the broadcasting industry. The scope includes not only the science and inventions but the the personalities behind the technology. As almost all of us who make their living in a technical field know it is often not the best technology that wins, but the people, or person that has the most fire in the gut, and the bravely, stuborness, or pure madness to see their way pervail.
Below is a high level proposed table of contents for the book. By selection a section you can burrow down to see what has been collected to date for each section. As you will see some sections are farther ahead than others.
jim@vindicom.com