The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television

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At the time, however, distant radio signals could seldom be heard above the ever-present crackle of background static from naturally occurring electromagnetic waves. Armstrong had discovered a means of cycling part of a received signal back and forth through the receiver and amplifier, magnifying the strength of the signal many times over. Armstrong's discovery, if it held up, would allow for radio communication over greater distances than ever before. It proved to be a bitterly cold night, but Sarnoff soon forgot his discomfort.

He watched with mounting excitement as Armstrong crouched over the receiving unit and, after a moment's tinkering, pulled in a remarkable message: Shall ground aerial wires. The two young men would spend the entire night--thirteen hours in all--huddled over Armstrong's receiver, pulling in radio signals from around the world. Years later, Sarnoff's memory of the experience moved him to uncharacteristic raptures: Armstrong, a native New Yorker from a well-to-do family, would remain a fiercely independent inventor in the mold of Edison and Marconi.

Sarnoff, a Russian Jewish immigrant who had literally worked his way up from the mailroom, was poised to become the archetype of the American tycoon, a man who would devote his life to the goals and interests of his corporation. Even so, the alliance they forged at Belmar would not only shape the lives of both men, but also help to determine the future of mass communication in the United States.

Armstrong's feedback circuit, together with a subsequent innovation called the superheterodyne, an elegant technique that could improve reception and tune a radio at the same time, would soon make him a millionaire. As the largest holder of RCA stock, Armstrong would become a fixture in Sarnoff's life--both in the office, where Armstrong courted and married Sarnoff's secretary, and at home, where Armstrong visited so frequently that Sarnoff's family dubbed him "the coffee man.

He took a grand tour of Europe--"Arriving in England on Saturday" he cabled a friend, "with the contents of the Radio Corporation's safe"--and bought himself a lavish Hispano-Suiza automobile. Even as he surveyed his dominion from atop the RCA broadcasting mast, however, there remained one unconquered summit. For all of the accomplishments and refinements of Armstrong and fellow radio pioneers such as Lee de Forest and Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, radio communication was still hampered by the constant din of background static. The problem was so pervasive that it was the custom for newspapers to run weather forecasts alongside their radio listings, to give the home listener an idea of the likely effect of adverse conditions.

It was a subject that Sarnoff and Armstrong often discussed during their coffee chats. With the confidence of youth, Armstrong initially expected a quick solution. In fact, more than ten years would pass before his labors brought results. In December of , Armstrong once again summoned David Sarnoff to see his latest miracle. Sarnoff, now the president of RCA, appeared at Armstrong's laboratory, in the basement of Philosophy Hall at Columbia University, expecting to see some new gadget or tube that would filter out bothersome background noise from radio carrier waves.

Instead, Armstrong had found a way to alter the waves themselves, creating a fundamentally new form of radio communication. Instead of modulating the amplitude, or intensity, of a radio carrier wave, Armstrong had developed a means of modifying its frequency, or interval. If one imagined radio signals as ocean waves, Armstrong had found a way to control the rate at which they washed up on the beach--changing the frequency, rather than the size.

In time, this form of transmission would be known as frequency modulation, or FM. The implications of Armstrong's breakthrough were stunning. To all outward appearances, it seemed that Armstrong had scored another technical triumph. All was not as it seemed. Much had changed in the world of broadcast communications while Armstrong had been locked away in the basement of Philosophy Hall. The emerging technology of television, which had been only a faint crackle of static when Armstrong started his work, now threatened to drown him out. Up to this point, Sarnoff had been cautious in his approach to television, fearing that a premature commitment would undermine RCA's hugely profitable radio operations.

Initially, the laboratory atop the Empire State Building had been dedicated to television experiments. By canceling the television operations and turning the facility over to Armstrong, Sarnoff was sending a clear and carefully modulated signal to the business community--radio was here to stay. This strategy promised not only to preserve RCA's dominance of the industry, but also to give Sarnoff's research scientists more time to perfect a commercially viable television system. It soon became apparent, however, that Sarnoff couldn't afford to drag his feet any longer.

Armstrong's FM system, if adopted, would carry a staggering price. In order to take up FM as the new standard of radio, the entire industry would have to be overhauled, and existing radio sets would have to be scrapped. At a time when huge amounts of money were needed for television research, RCA could not afford to sacrifice its radio revenues. At the same time, Sarnoff realized that his television initiative was no longer the only game in town.

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Others were working to perfect television technology, and if some other company got there first, RCA might find itself required to buy licensing rights and equipment from a rival. Accordingly, Sarnoff took a new line. Sarnoff assured Armstrong that this would only be a temporary interruption, and even offered to employ FM technology in the television initiative. For the moment, however, RCA had to tend to the bottom line.

Armstrong was told to remove his equipment from the Empire State Building.

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It was not the first time Armstrong had been ordered off an RCA broadcast mast, and he had reason to hope that all would end well. Matters came to a head at the annual RCA stockholders' meeting in May Treading a fine line so as to avoid upsetting the radio partisans, Sarnoff indicated that "while television promises to supplement the present service of broadcasting by adding sight to sound, it will not supplant or diminish the importance and usefulness of sound broadcasting. Sarnoff, he reminded them, had guided the company through the dark days of the depression. I don't agree with everything, for I have a row on with him now.

I am going to fight it through to the last ditch. I just wanted to tell you what you owe to Sarnoff. Undeterred, Armstrong resolved to proceed on his own. Only six months later, on November 5, , he arranged a lecture before the New York chapter of the Institute of Radio Engineers. After addressing his audience for some little while, Armstrong quietly played his trump card: As Armstrong switched the unit on, the audience heard the usual sound of broadcast static.

Then, as Armstrong turned a knob, the unit fell strangely silent. For a moment it seemed as if the radio had gone dead, but then the sound of an announcer's voice issued from the speaker: Armstrong gestured for silence as the demonstration continued. The sound of a glass of water being poured came over the radio's speaker, followed by the crumpling of a piece of paper.

Armstrong had made his point--these sounds could not possibly have been distinguished against a background of AM static. Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception, Armstrong went ahead with plans to build his own FM transmitting station in Alpine, New Jersey. When completed, the station's foot broadcast tower would be visible across the Hudson River in New York City--even from David Sarnoff's palatial suite of offices on the fifty-third floor of the RCA building.

The project would require much of Armstrong's energy and resources, and he liquidated most of his personal fortune--including a huge block of RCA stock--to make the funds available. Unfortunately, an even greater portion of his energies would soon be absorbed in litigation with RCA over the use of his patents.

In time the case wound up in court, where the question of FM became a decisive issue. For some time, RCA had been claiming to have developed its own system of frequency modulation without any help from Armstrong. Now, speaking before a judge, Sarnoff insisted that his engineers had "done more to develop FM than anybody in this country, including Armstrong.

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The suit would drag on for years. His wife and many of his friends urged him to accept a settlement, but for Armstrong it had become a matter of honor--one that required a clear legal victory. By , Armstrong's patents and licenses had expired, and his legal bills and research expenses had drained his fortune. His health began to suffer and his behavior grew erratic. On one occasion he came to believe that someone had poisoned his food and insisted on having his stomach pumped. On another, his wife fled the house as Armstrong lashed out with a fireplace poker. On January 31, , two months after the incident with the fireplace poker, Armstrong sat down and jotted a note to his wife.

I cannot understand how I could hurt the dearest thing in the whole world to me. This amazing book is packed with Civil War Trivia that you will be amazed to hear about.

Click on the cover to get a preview of the incredible facts. Broadway; 1st edition April 9, Language: Page 1 of 1 Start Over Page 1 of 1. The video content is inappropriate. The video content is misleading. The ad is too long. The ad does not play. The ad does not inform my purchase.

THE BOY GENIUS AND THE MOGUL: The Untold Story of Television

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Please try again later. The side story of David Sarnoff is better told in the other book. That other book made me read this one and I doubt the reverse effect would have occurred.

I had an impulse to pick this book up after seeing a documentary on Philo T. The account on the show was somewhat breezy owing to the hour long format. I was hoping to find more detail in Stashower's book. I was both satisifed and maybe just a little disappointed. Part of me wished that more technical detail had been covered in the book, though the other part of me realizes that this is primarily a dramatic story of an individual's struggle to bring a new technology to market while being raced and opposed by a capitalist juggernaut David Sarnoff and RCA.

This book is more of a showcase for drama, not for technology. If you're looking for a quick read on the trials and tribulations of one of the key inventors of television, this is a good book. If you're looking for either a primer on early television technology or an extremely detailed account of Farnsworth's battle with Sarnoff, you may be a bit disappointed. Imagine you pick up a book and right on the front cover is a blurb telling you it is the true story of good vs. Would you waste your money and time buying and reading it? That was the struggle I encountered as I put off, for over a year, reading this book.

How could I stomach reading a book about a nice guy who gets screwed? Well it is not true at all. Farnsworth doesn't get screwed. He finds investors and lawyers who are trustworthy and don't steal his ideas. He files many patents that hold up in court. He makes millions of dollars in the s and '30s that amount to hundreds of millions of dollars today, adjusted for inflation. The only problem is that television is complicated and takes 20 years and close to a billion dollars in today's dollars to perfect, so whlie Farnsworth might have wished to be the sole inventor, reaping all the financial rewards, it was not realistic.

Television required large teams with vast resources because inventing the television was not enough -- one also had to invent the camera to capture the moving images, figure out how to make the cathode ray tube, and devise radio transmission compression algorithms that did not interfere with radio. Farnsworth has a team and limited resources but I cannot begrudge all the other companies like RCA who competed.

We don't have to feel sorry for Farnsworth because while he chooses to reinvest in the company he founded, rather than cash out and live like a king in early retirement, he does manage to sell shares of stock from time to time to pay for multiple houses, cars, and fancy clothes. He does unfortunately work insane hours six days a week in the early years and this takes such a toll on his health, from which he never truly recovers, but it was his choice to remain in the race.

He may not be rich when he dies, but he does not die penniless.

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So in conclusion, this is a worthy book to read. I just wish its author Daniel Stashower or whoever wrote the blurb on the front cover did not paint such a gloomy picture of the outcome of the story that unfolds inside. If you have any interest in the history of radio and television from the lay person to the engineer you will desire to read a copy of "The Boy Genius and the Mogul" by Daniel Stashower.

The hero that we root for of course is Philo T. Farnsworth, one of the inventors of Television technology. Daniel Stashower, a mystery novelist and biographer of Arthur Conan Doyle, discusses the history and development of Farnsworth's "image dissector. The Boy Genius and the Mogul The Untold Story of Television is not quite an untold story but it is still one worth repeating and Daniel Stashower does a good job of taking the reader easily through a story that could be much more complicated in other hands it does after all touch on both science and the legal system, never friendly topics for the casual readers of history.

Farnsworth and Sarnoff of the title make interesting protanganists and steep this book in human interest. The story droops at times but it still generally makes for a fascinating read. See all 8 reviews. Most recent customer reviews. Published on March 31, Published on March 27, What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?

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The Boy Genius and the Mogul: The Untold Story of Television

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