David Sarnoff is the American Dream.
Born in Russia at the tail end of the nineteenth century, he left his homeland at five-years-old and arrived in New York City after a four- year journey.
Determination from a tender age led the young Sarnoff to do as all good American immigrants should: flourish. However, David was never an inventor, scientist or entrepreneur of any kind. Instead, he made his way through a combination of hard graft and the enthusiastic championing of new technology.
He began working for Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America in 1906 and by 1915 advocated and publicised the plight of broadcast radio. The end of World War One saw General Electric buy Marconi and found Radio Corporation of America (RCA). The first television was introduced in 1939, and it was RCA’s research facility that invented the tubes used by TVs and computer monitors.
"It is with a feeling of humbleness that I come to this moment of announcing the birth in this country of a new art so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society,” Sarnoff told an audience at the time. “It is an art which shines like a torch of hope in the troubled world. It is a creative force which we must learn to utilise for the benefit of all mankind.”
The popularity of Hollyoaks and Celebrity Love Island suggest his words have gone unheeded.
Man is still the greatest miracle and the greatest problem on earth
David Sarnoff - media visionary
“[Television] will become an important factor in American economic life," Sarnoff added presciently. Judging by the optimistic tone of his speech, however, he underestimated quite how pervasive the television’s influence would become – Americans now devote almost five hours a day to this sedentary, passive, almost hypnotising activity.
Now, although Sarnoff didn’t do the inventing, it was his marketing prowess that popularised the technology and facilitated this second industrial revolution. Even when serving active duty in 1944 Sarnoff pushed media relations, implementing electronic news coverage of the D-Day landings and the liberation of France.
David Sarnoff died in 1971, but will always be remembered for the technological innovations that shape contemporary life.
