[NJARC] Library Marks Sarnoff’s Centenary with Lectures, Exhibits

[amagoun]

Please forward as you see fit--thanks!

Alex
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Library Marks Sarnoff’s Centenary with Lectures, Exhibits

One hundred years ago, a fifteen-year-old immigrant started work as an
office boy for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, and
the world changed because of it.

This June, the David Sarnoff Library will honor its namesake with three
illustrated lectures and two exhibits on Sarnoff’s career and New Jersey

innovations that changed the world.  The lectures take place in Sarnoff
Corporation’s Auditorium on successive Tuesday evenings on the 6th,
13th, and 20th of June, at 7:30 pm.  These programs are made possible by

grants from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, a state partner
of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Sarnoff Corporation.

On June 6, Dr. Paul Israel, director of the Edison Papers at Rutgers
University, will speak on “Looking Forward from Edison to RCA:
Industrial Innovation in Central New Jersey.”  He will discuss the
geographic, economic, and human aspects that made the Garden State such
an attractive location for the world’s greatest inventor and his
research and development activities in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries.

On June 13th, Dr. Sheldon Hochheiser, former historian and chief
archivist for AT&T, will speak on “Looking Down from Murray Hill: Six
Innovations that Changed the World.”  He will explain why AT&T moved
Bell Laboratories across the Hudson River from Manhattan, and discuss
some of the innovations that emerged from them, from the transistor to
satellite communications to digital networks.

On June 20th, Dr. Alexander Magoun, executive director of the David
Sarnoff Library, will speak on “David Sarnoff, RCA, and the Arc of the
American Century.”  He will trace how Sarnoff’s career parallels the
rise and relative decline of his adopted country, from his arrival from
Russia in 1900 to the demise of the company he defined, RCA, in 1986.

“David Sarnoff is an icon of the American Dream,” says Dr. Magoun.
“He’s Horatio Alger come to life, only we know that he accomplished far
more than any of Alger’s children.  The lectures and exhibits offer some

context for why and how he and RCA’s staff accomplished so much.”

David Sarnoff rose through the ranks of Marconi and its successor, the
Radio Corporation of America (RCA), and championed the innovation of
electronic technologies to fill the human need for communications, from
broadcast radio to color television to technologies enabling the
Internet.  In the summer of 1941, he helped break ground for what became

the David Sarnoff Research Center at the junction of Routes 1 and 571 in

Princeton.  There, RCA’s scientists and engineers realized Sarnoff’s
vision for more compact and convenient communications and information
technologies by inventing and innovating color television,
liquid-crystal displays, video cameras, low-power and high-frequency
transistors, computers and memory technologies, and electron
microscopy.  Dedicated to improving opportunities through the innovation

of electronic communications, Sarnoff and the inventors of RCA made
possible a world connected and informed by electronics.

The exhibits—David Sarnoff and the Innovative Spirit and Six Innovations

that Changed the World—offer visitors opportunities to understand and
appreciate the electronic technologies that make modern life possible,
and the people who brought them to life.

The Library will be open from 6:30 until 9:30 so that guests may tour
the exhibits before and after the lectures.  ADA access is available to
the lectures.  Refreshments will be served.  For more information call
(609) 734-2636 or email questions at davidsarnoff.org.
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Alexander B. Magoun, Ph.D.
Executive Director
David Sarnoff Library
201 Washington Road, CN 5300
Princeton, NJ 08543-5300

609-734-2636
amagoun at davidsarnoff.org
(f) 609-734-2339
www.davidsarnoff.org
www.davidsarnoff.blogspot.com