answers graded A+
Guglielmo Marconi - correct answer ✔✔- Father of point- to-point radio (wireless)
-1986 he broadcast first radio message
Lee deForest - correct answer ✔✔- one of three Americans responsible for radios success
-Took credit for Marconi's ideas
- idolized Thomas Edison as a poor young man
-Studied patent reports but had a tendency towards fraud
-stole "spade detector" invention from Canadian
- stole Fessenden and "valve invention from Fleming of Britain
-Saw "wireless" as a mass communication device, not point to point like the telephone
-called himself father of radio
-responsible for bringing radio to the American public
-had multiple marriages (last one old enough to be her grandfather)
- sued Armstrong in 1915 over the patents he sold to American Marconi
-moved to hollywood promoted the book he ghost wrote for his wife (I married a Genius)
-died in 1961
Edwin Howard Armstrong - correct answer ✔✔- one of three Americans responsible for radios
success
-rich, pampered, obsessive, genius
-invented many radio improvements, especially amplification in 1912, allowing radio to be
heard through speakers rather than only by headphones
, -Armstrong built the first FM radio network (the yankee network and hoped to use his invention
for the audio portion for television)
- sued the RCA over FM and sold all his RCA stock to raise the funds necessary to pay his lawyers
in very long law suit
-RCA responsible in putting him out of business
- when he was broke he assaulted his wife and killed himself
-(widow won the suit against suit)
David Sarnoff - correct answer ✔✔- one of three Americans responsible for radios success
Entrepreneur/ visionary
- wrote to his bosses that marconi's inventions should be used for broadcasting
-Sarnoff hired his previous employers & fired them
-Hired by RCA as a its general Manager (once it was established as a fully operational
manufacturer of radios)
-poor jewish russian immigrant, type A behavior, sold newspapers on NYC street corners, 14 his
brothers and fathers worked for him
-understood meaning and impact of science not an inventor
-while employed by American Marconi co., heard wireless signals of Titanic sinking in 1912
-in 1913 oversaw American Marconi's purchase of Armstrong's patents. Like deForest,
Armstrong, and a few others, Sarnoff saw radio as a Mass medium
- Sarnoff wrote his "radio music box" memo to his boss in 1916
- described his vision of wireless as a household utility
-afraid of his kid
-head of RCA until his retirement in 1969
- asked armstrong to develop radio without static in 1938
- responsible for RCA as #1 in recorded music radio and television