How did radio broadcasting begin. Part II

 Continuation. The first part of the link: 

     A similar experience made him famous a year later – in 1912 it was he (according to the legend he voiced, of course) who caught a distress signal from the Titanic, and then for three days communicated with the ships involved in the rescue of people.

It so happened that it was Sarnov who became the main source of information for the press, and although evil tongues said that he himself did not know how to work on the key at that time and was just the manager of a group of telegraph operators of three people, this turned out to be unimportant, at least for the same press.

It is not known whether Sarnov heard the idea of mandatory equipping ships with radio stations from smart people and developed it or came to this idea himself, but it was his name that "stuck" to the law that any ship with more than 50 passengers was necessarily equipped with a walkie-talkie.

Marconi radio station, the most powerful and modern of all, installed on the Titanic.

After the release of this law, Sarnov's affairs within the Marconi Corporation made another leap: it seemed the right decision in the company to make the 21st young man the head of a group of managers engaged in equipping ships. Note that he coped with this task very confidently.

In a word, when Sarnov first approached the management of his company with the topic of organizing a broadcast, he was already a prominent and authoritative figure in the Marconi corporation and was in the position of chief inspector of the company (he received a promotion by equipping the railway with radio - both stations and locomotives), but the refusal sounded quite motivated – and Sarnov, as he later said, "acted like a soldier" - he spent all his time and energy then on fulfilling military orders, but did not stop thinking about the broadcast.

Fortunately, fate constantly confronted him with people who were inventing something in the field of radio - it was a new thing, there were no fewer inventors around the radio than there are now – creators of small or global products around the Internet.

Sarnov devoted years of forced "downtime" to "building muscles" in the topic of radio broadcasts, which, as it now becomes clear, did not leave him for a minute. He found out about a modest radio station in San Jose and later used the word "broadcast", which seemed to him very successful.

But the main thing is that he communicates a lot with inventors, among them a certain friend of his, Alfred Goldsmith, the man who realized Sarnov's dream of a "music box" to life. Goldsmith called his creation "radiola". However, in the future, not the radio of our hero's friend, Alfred, will go into production, but the development of Edwin Armstrong, which was distinguished by greater compactness, the absence of an external antenna, better signal reception and sound reproduction – as they say, nothing personal, just business.

   A postage stamp dedicated to Edwin Armstrong and his radio.

It should be noted that Armstrong will go down in history first of all as the person who created broadcasting in the FM band - the very, almost the only, innovation that Sarnov will not appreciate and which will be the reason for the gap between him and Armstrong. Sarnov will fight against FM all his life, but, of course, innovations will win.      Under the same slogan – "nothing personal" - the takeover of the company "Marconi" by a group of investors, including General Electric. They say that Sarnov himself actively lobbied for the deal, telling investors that it was worth creating a company accumulating patents in the field of radio, since the radio topic itself was at the peak of growth. At the same time, Sarnov himself believed that since his former benefactor, Marconi, did not accept his idea of a broadcast, it was worth trying to do the same in new conditions.

It should be noted in passing that Marconi himself preferred to serve in the army to business, where, with the outbreak of the war, he went with the modest rank of lieutenant of communications, and later represented Italy at the Versailles Peace Conference - of course, the bigwigs of business took advantage of his retirement.

So the RCA corporation (Radio Corporation of America) was created, in which Sarnov received the position of manager of the commercial department and where he very quickly advanced in the service, realizing what he could not get approval for, since in the new structure his idea of a broadcast also did not cause understanding.

The basic idea of radio, actively developed all over the world, was still in the transmission of information on the principle of "point-to–point", the possibilities of radio as a mass media were not seriously considered by anyone in the world, it seemed extremely ridiculous to people making decisions that someone, whoever it was, will be able to talk to a blurry and incomprehensible audience consisting of random persons. By the way, it seems that Sarnov himself also doubted such prospects at first, but he believed that music was what would unite many, hence the idea of "music box". His opponents, indeed, treated the idea of broadcasting music more restrained, in any case, it did not cause attacks of wit – Sarnov appealed to the wide popularity of gramophones and gramophones and the huge popularity of records with recordings.

One way or another, but Sarnov, relying more on his own authority and official capabilities than on the opinion of his superiors, "punched" the purchase of Armstrong's patent for a "music box" (Armstrong became a millionaire, to the displeasure of Sarnov's friend Goldschmit) and built the first radio studio from where music broadcasting was coming.

The case, however, did not go too rapidly: during the whole of 1919, only 5 thousand Armstrong devices were purchased in the 120 million-strong America. Sarnov, of course, expected that the consumer, unlike investors, would vote for the radio with his wallet, but this did not happen - there were not so many music lovers in the country who preferred the radio to the record on their gramophone. The idea of musical broadcasting clearly needed to be expanded.

Everything was changed by an event about which all the newspapers of America wrote and which every American was waiting for: on June 2, 1921, a boxing match was scheduled between heavyweights, the idol of Americans Jack Dempsey and Frenchman Georges Carpentier. Sarnov felt that his brainchild could prove itself, RCA worked hard by equipping a place for a commentator at a stadium in New Jersey and hanging up as many loudspeakers-"bells" as it could.

As a result, more than 300 thousand Americans heard the report and, although the radio transmitter broke down at the time of the knockout in the fourth round (Dempsey won), the fate of the radio was decided. As well as the fate of radio listeners, because at that moment the country completely and unconditionally fell in love with radio and "took it into its home."

Dempsey and Carpentier fight. The organizers did the impossible by accommodating 90 thousand people at the stadium, but there were many times more people who wanted to know what was going on, which Sarnov took advantage of.

      In 1924, at least 2.5 million American families already had a radio receiver, in 1927 the number of radios sold would exceed 10 million, and RCA's revenues from the sale of receivers amounted to $ 80 million in 1924 and for a long time became the largest of the company's revenue items – more than the operation of transcontinental communication lines and than the fulfillment of military orders and transmitting and receiving devices of the "point–to-point" type, on which only a few years ago it was supposed to build the commercial well-being of the company.

The idea that an inexpensive mass-produced product is more profitable than an expensive and unique one has once again triumphed.

To be continued...