[NJARC] Happy endings for the David Sarnoff Library (pmalvasi at aol.com)

[Alex Magoun]

Pete,

 

The National Museum of American History (part of the Smithsonian) first
borrowed Sarnoff's key apparently almost 30 years ago for an exhibit, and
retained it with permission for its Information Age exhibit (1991-2005).  I
don't know who made the reproduction, and don't know the origins of the one
online.  The Smithsonian returned the original along with the first
transistorized TV and they were displayed at the Library.  Both are at The
College of New Jersey now.

 

Regarding Jim's comments, they refer to outdated historical research done in
the 1980s.  Kenneth Bilby, the RCA vice-president for public relations who
worked with Sarnoff, found no reports in the NY Times regarding Sarnoff and
the Titanic.  No reason he should, since the NYT had a contract for news
from American Marconi's far larger competitor.  I found a clipping in a
Boston newspaper as well as three typed messages from Sarnoff that went to
the head of the NY Wanamaker store, and more messages from Sarnoff at the
Seagate Marconi station in Brooklyn through marconicalling.com.  For
example,
http://www.marconicalling.com/museum/html/objects/titanic/large_image/large_
image-type_d__t04191.html; note the initials of the operator.  We posted the
newspaper clipping (which I thought would blow up further) and three
messages on http://davidsarnoff.org/gallery-ds/gallery-ds021.html.
Sarnoff's key is visible in the photo of him at the Wanamaker station (date
unknown, c. 1911-12) and at the Marconi Siasconsett station on Nantucket.

 

 Interested visitors to that gallery will also notice that Sarnoff was the
Marconi operator on the first demonstration of wireless from a moving train,
as reported in Scientific American.  You can read more about Sarnoff's early
career in a paper I presented at an IEEE conference in 2001,
http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs_iportals/iportals/aboutus/history_center
/magoun.pdf.  Eight years later I will only withdraw my identification of
the man at the WDY mic in 1921-22 as Sarnoff.

 

Best,

Alex