@ Electronic Age

@ electronic age ELECTRONICS IN SPACE BY JAMES E. WEBB, ADMINISTRATOR NASA DAVID SARNOFF'S 55 PIONEERING YEARS www.americanradiohistory.com www.americanradiohistory.com electronic. age In this issue .. 2 FIFTY -FIVE PIONEERING YEARS VOL. 20 / NO. 4 / AUTUMN 1961 The story of David Sarnoff's career which has spanned the growth of electronic communications from telegraph key to space satellite. ® electronic age 11 ELECTRONICS IN SPACE The head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration examines the vital role that electronics plays in our space program. 15 OPERA Here's a look at the exciting, new opera -on records. 18 ELECTRONICS' NEW SEMESTER With 4 million students receiving instruction by TV and 3,000 language laboratories built in a year, school's in for electronics. DAVID ,.RRO > » , oRaR,RG .rR> 22 REVEILLE FOR COMPUTERS "Speed" is the critical word in a modern defense system and the Army, Navy and Air Force have enlisted electronic data processing to help them keep pace. COVER: The RCA-built Tiros III weather satellite spotted hurricane Esther several days sooner than it would have been detected by con- 25 WHAT A CHARACTER! ventional methods. The feat was When a new star is needed at the Walt Disney studios, toe. hailed as a prime demonstration all hands pitch in and he's made to order from head to of the potential of meteorological satellites for revolutionizing weather forecasting. For the exciting 29 WORLD OF THE 'WHITE EYE' story of "Electronics in Space," see If you've ever wondered what it's like to live at an Arctic outpost article by NASA chief James E. here's a first-hand report. Webb, page 11. 32 ELECTRONICALLY SPEAKING Twenty years of `Age.' BARBARA ZERRIEN, Editor JOHN MAXIMUS, Design Consultant EDITORIAL BOARD Kenyon Kilbon Jules Koslow RADIO CORPORATION OF AMERICA Harold Queen 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZA, NEW YORK 20, N. Y. Nancy Shea DAVID SARNOFF, Chairman of the Board, JOHN L. BURNS, President, FRANK M. FOLSOM, Chairman, Executive Committee, JOHN O. CANNON, Secretary, ERNEST B. GORIN, Treasurer RCA Chairman David Sarnoff, who is Published quarterly by Rodio Corporation of America. Copyright 1961 RCA -all rights reserved. celebrating his 55th Anniversary in com- Any part may be reproduced if credit is given. Printed in U.S.A. When requesting o change munications and electronics, has con- of address, please include the code letters and numbers appearing with stenciled address. tributed to progress from the era of the telegraph key to the space satellite. www.americanradiohistory.com As a wireless operator for the Marconi Co. FIFTY-FIVE With nventor Guglielmo Marconi in 1933. With Maestro Arturo Toscanini. In uniform during World War II. www.americanradiohistory.com DAVID SARNOFF'S CAREER HAS SPANNED THE GROWTH OF ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS FROM TELEGRAPH KEY TO EARTH SATELLITE - AND HIS OWN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THIS PROGRESS HAVE BEEN BROAD IN SCOPE AND ENDURING IN SIGNIFICANCE Honored, with Mrs. Sarnoff, by France. PIONEERING YEARS FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO THIS FALL, David Sarnoff began a career that carried him from a $5.50 -a- week messenger boy for the Marconi Wireless Tele- graph Company of America to his present position as Chairman of the Board and chief executive officer of the world's largest all- electronics company, the Radio Corporation of America. It has been a career studded with impressive "firsts." He first proposed radio as a home instru- ment for bringing entertainment, music and news into the living room in 1916; he arranged the first radio broadcast to a mass audience (Dempsey - Carpentier heavyweight championship fight in 1921); he established NBC as America's first broad- casting network in 1926; he made the first U.S. commercial telecast at the opening of the New York World's Fair in 1939; he pioneered in the produc- tion of the first commercial color television sets and programs in 1954; and he oversaw the develop- ment of the world's first weather satellite, Tiros in 1960. Today, Brig. General Sarnoff (he earned the Introducing television at 1939 New York World's Fair. title through wartime service with the U.S. Army www.americanradiohistory.com Signal Corps ) is intimately involved in another "first" - cently, "is election to the Hall of Fame - and the only NASA's first active repeater communications satellite reason he hasn't achieved that is the stipulation that which the Radio Corporation of America is building candidates must have been deceased for at least for Project Relay. His far -ranging proposals on space twenty -five years." communications have attracted world -wide attention. He has called for an all-out national effort to develop "DAVID IS LUCKY!" the first practical global satellite communications sys- Behind these honors is an up-from -the -bottom story tem as quickly as possible. He has urged that the United as exciting as any in the annals of American business Nations be given programming access to the first success. Sarnoff was born February 27, 1891, oldest of satellite television channel, so that it might project to five children of a poor family in the tiny community of the world a live picture of crucial deliberations in the Uzlian, in Russia's province of Minsk. His mother used Security Council and General Assembly. to describe her four sons in a way that has become a President of the Radio Corporation of America at family classic. One of them she identified as the smart- 39, and Chairman of the Board since 1947, General est, another as the kindest, a third as the handsomest. Sarnoff has had the longest span of any chief executive Then she would conclude the inventory by adding: officer among the nation's top twenty-five industrial "And David is lucky!" corporations. Over the past three decades, he has "Frankly," says the General, "I have never under- directed RCA's growth from an entertainment -oriented rated the element of luck in what passes for wordly company with 22,000 employees and sales of $137 success. I know it takes more than luck alone, but I million to a broadly -based enterprise with 88,000 em- do not hesitate to acknowledge that I have been lucky ployees and annual sales of $1.5 billion. Its twenty- beyond my deserts. It was luck that my parents had eight manufacturing plants in the United States and the pioneering instinct and the good sense to bring fifteen plants abroad turn out products ranging from me to this land of freedom and the opportunity that tiny ferrite cores for computers to huge radars for goes with freedom. It was luck that for me that oppor- tracking missiles and satellites. tunity materialized in an art and an industry even Asked recently what was his favorite segment of younger than myself. It was a lucky coincidence that I RCA's far -ranging business, the General replied: "The was born about the same time that the electron was one that's in trouble. If things are going all right, they discovered. And it was lucky that I hitched my wagon don't hear anything from me." to the electron." In overseeing RCA's world -wide operations from When young David arrived in America at the age his office on the 53rd floor of Manhattan's RCA Build- of nine, he could not speak a word of English. His first ing, General Sarnoff has a passion for efficient organiza- school was the Educational Alliance on East Broadway tion. "I don't want to do what someone else can do," where immigrants were taught the language ( and he explains. He tries to concentrate exclusively on where he is now an Honorary Trustee ). After he had policy matters, and has delegated operating authority been at the school about a week, the teacher told him to RCA's President John L. Burns. The General never he was to recite at a school assembly. His one line lets papers accumulate on his polished, leather- topped was: "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." desk. When he finishes with one, he hands it to secre- When the time came for his recitation, his mind tary Ella Helbig to dispatch to the appropriate execu- went blank. He stared out at his father and mother tive with a penciled notation: "PSM" (for Please See in the audience, but the words would not come. After Me) or "Pls Handle" or sometimes just a terse "Yes!" a while, the teacher mercifully escorted him to his seat or "Nol ". - but David never forgot this first humiliating experi- So extensive are the General's activities and so ence as a public speaker. Determined to improve his diverse his interests they defy a capsule summary. He technique, he joined a Debating Society and one year has served as adviser to three Presidents. TIME Maga- later was passionately arguing the question: "Resolved: zine has called him "one of the most imaginative That the Philippines be given their independence." strategists of the Cold War." Leaders in Government, Today General Sarnoff ranks among the most industry and other fields consult him regularly to get widely sought -after speakers in the nation. Several his ideas on national policy. Twenty-one colleges have hundred invitations pour into his office each year to presented him with honorary degrees, and virtually address business conventions, scientific meetings, col- every front -rank scientific, industrial and military group lege convocations and other blue- ribbon affairs. Of has paid official tribute to his accomplishments. these, he accepts fewer than a half dozen. But once he "About the only honor left for General Sarnoff," the agrees to speak, he throws himself into the preparation noted clergyman, Dr. Ralph Sockman, observed re- of remarks with a zest that astonishes his associates.

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