by Tim Wu
2. Armstrong and David Sarnoff’s secretary, Marion MacInnes, were married in 1923. Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 154.
3. This move to the state-of-the-art Empire State Building laboratory and the subsequent experiments conducted there by Armstrong are discussed in Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 219, and Frank Northen Magill, Great Events from History II: Science and Technology Series (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1991), 940.
4. This exchange is recounted in Lewis, Empire of the Air, 263.
5. For an overview of the Empire State Building experiments and Armstrong’s subsequent expulsion to make way for RCA’s television broadcast experiments, see Christopher H. Sterling and John M. Kittross, Stay Tuned: A Concise History of American Broadcasting, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2002), 156–60.
6. Lawrence Lessing recounts the stunned reaction of listeners to the first public demonstration of the FM radio broadcast conducted by Armstrong in 1935, discussed later in this chapter in more detail. The broadcast, Lessing notes, was revolutionary not only because it was a new technological achievement, but also because the sound was being conveyed “with a life-like clarity never heard on even the best clear-channel stations in the regular broadcast band.” Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 209–10.
7. Ibid., 232–38.
8. The radio industry’s close relationship to the federal government, and particularly the FCC during the period discussed in this chapter, is explored in Philip T. Rosen, The Modern Stentors: Radio Broadcasters and the Federal Government, 1920–1934, (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980).
9. Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 209.
10. The term “radio’s second chance” was most famously used in the 1946 book by the same name authored by Charles Siepmann. The driving concept behind Siepmann’s book was primarily that radio had not lived up to its early idealistic promise and that FM radio potentially had the power to both increase sound quality and reach beyond the major broadcast networks’ stranglehold on content, which was, in his view, negatively over-commercialized. Charles Arthur Siepmann, Radio’s Second Chance (New York: Little, Brown, 1946).
11. The shift in band, along with the new rules and their justification, can be found in FCC, Eleventh Annual Report (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1945), Twelfth Annual Report (1946), and Thirteenth Annual Report (1947); see also Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 258–60.
12. See United States Congress, House Committee on Ways and Means, Hearings (1950), 197.
13. “In 1979, for the first time, FM passed AM in overall market shares, and, in succeeding years, increased its lead. FM, once the unwanted, ill-treated sibling of AM, had become the desired, admired, and more popular medium.” F. Leslie Smith, John W. Wright II, and David H. Ostroff, Perspectives on Radio and Television: Telecommunication in the United States (New York: Routledge, 1998), 63.
14. Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 260.
15. Lessing’s biography of Armstrong contains an excellent chapter detailing the litigation: “The Last Battle.” The chapter details the fairly epic struggle a lone inventor faces when litigating against a corporation with virtually unlimited capital to fund strategically protracted litigation. Lessing, Man of High Fidelity, 279–85. Another source is Harold Evans, Gail Buckland, and David Lefer, They Made America (New York: Little, Brown, 2004).
CHAPTER 10: NOW WE ADD SIGHT TO SOUND
1. This anecdote about Baird’s 1926 demonstration can be found in Antony Kamm and Malcolm Baird, John Logie Baird: A Life (Edinburgh: National Museums of Scotland, 2002), 55, 69. For another perspective, see Tom McArthur and Peter Waddell, The Secret Life of John Logie Baird (London: Hutchinson, 1986). See also Donald F. McLean, Restoring Baird’s Image (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2000), 38. To read about Baird in the history of early television, see Albert Abramson, The History of Television, 1880 to 1941 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1987). A concise biography of Baird can be found in Christopher H. Sterling, “Baird, John Logie (1888–1946)” in Horace Newcomb, ed., Encyclopedia of Television, vol. I, 2nd ed. (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2004), 201–2.
2. The Baird undersock was made of unbleached half-hose material sprinkled with borax powder, as described in Russell W. Burns, John Logie Baird: Television Pioneer (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2000), 18. Accounts of the Baird undersock and pneumatic shoe can also be found in David E. Fisher and Marshall Fisher, Tube: The Invention of Television (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1996), 24–27.
3. This excerpt from Baird’s journal can be found in an interesting book which describes how various household products were born. David Lindsay, “Television,” in House of Invention: The Secret Life of Everyday Objects (New York: Lyons Press, 2000), 133–42.
4. The Times article details the January 1926 demonstration and describes the image that Baird transmitted. “On This Day,” The Times, January 28, 1985, H13.
5. Jenkins published a description of his discoveries in Charles F. Jenkins, Vision by Radio, Radio Photographs, Radio Photograms (Washington, DC: Jenkins Laboratories, 1925). See also Charles F. Jenkins, Radiomovies, Radiovision, Television (Washington, DC: National Capital Press, 1929). Jenkins was named “Father of Television” by The New York Times, as quoted by historian Gary R. Edgerton, The Columbia History of American Television (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 29. A concise biography of Jenkins can be found in Steve Runyon, “Jenkins, Charles Francis (1867–1934),” in Newcomb, ed., Encyclopedia of Television, 1218–20.
6. The newspaper article included a picture of Farnsworth holding the parts of his television set. “S.F. Man’s Invention to Revolutionize Television,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 1928, section 2.
7. The New York Times credited Baird with leading the international race to achieve a practical television. Clair Price, “A Saga of the Radio Age—and Its Hero,” New York Times, March 27, 1927, SM6. The Federal Radio Commission issued the first television license to Jenkins in 1928, authorizing him to operate at a power of 250 W. See R. W. Burns, Television: An International History of the Formative Years (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 1998), 205. The number of viewers was reported in 1929 by the New York Evening World; see Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 30.
8. In the forty-minute broadcast, two actors performed a one-act play in a locked room before three cameras and a microphone. Russell B. Porter, “Play Is Broadcast by Voice and Acting in Radio-Television,” New York Times, September 12, 1928, 1.
9. As quoted in the biography of Baird by Ronald F. Tiltman, Baird of Television (New York: Arno Press, 1974), 170.
10. Jenkins’s public offering is described in Edgerton, Columbia History of American Television, 31. Baird described this deal in his memoirs, John L. Baird and Malcolm Baird, Television and Me: The Memoirs of John Logie Baird, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2004), 114.
11. A technical description of mechanical television, along with useful diagrams, can be found in A. G. Jensen, “The Evolution of Modern Television,” in Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and Television: An Anthology from the Pages of the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 235–38.
12. The Daily News ran this article on December 30, 1926, as quoted in Burns, Television: An International History, 206.
13. This ad can be found at o.tqn.com/d/inventors/1/o/z/2/charles_jenkins.jpg.
14. The advertisement can be found in James N. Miller, “The Latest in Television,” Popular Mechanics, September 1929, 472–76.
15. In the article, Sarnoff writes that television is still in an experimental stage and will require careful nurturing to grow into a great public service. David Sarnoff, “Forging an Electric Eye to Scan the World,” New York Times, November 18, 1928.
16. The report, written by Alfred Goldsmith, concluded that only RCA could “be depended upon to broadcast television material with high technical and program quality.” As quoted in Michele Hi
lmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 28.
17. To read more about Jenkins and his struggles with the FCC, see James A. Von Schilling, The Magic Window: American Television, 1939–1953 (Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press, 2003), 3, 13.
18. The FCC requirements for a licensed broadcaster can be found reprinted in Robert Stern, The FCC and Television: The Regulatory Process in an Environment & Rapid Technological Innovation (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1950).
19. To learn more about the formative years of BBC, see Burton Paulu, Television and Radio in the United Kingdom (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981). See also Ronald Simon, BBC Television: Fifty Years, November 14, 1986–January 31, 1987 (New York: Museum of Broadcasting, 1987). To read about Germany’s broadcast of the Olympic games, see Arnd Krüger, “Germany: The Propaganda Machine,” in Arnd Krüger and William J. Murray, eds., The Nazi Olympics: Sport, Politics, and Appeasement in the 1930s (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 27–43. See also David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1993).
20. “S. F. Man’s Invention to Revolutionize Television,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 3, 1928. See also Evan I. Schwartz, The Last Lone Inventor: A Tale of Genius, Deceit, and the Birth of Television (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 137.
21. Schwartz, Last Lone Inventor, 123.
22. Ibid., 13.
23. This anecdote about the disastrous Crystal Palace fire comes from ibid., 224.
24. This account of Sarnoff at the World’s Fair comes from Von Schilling, Magic Window, 5. A contemporary description and photograph appear in “Radio Living Room of Tomorrow,” Popular Mechanics, vol. 72, no. 2, August 1939, 300.
25. For the New Yorker quote, David Hillel Gelertner, 1939, “The Lost World of the Fair” (1995), 167. Sarnoff is described in glowing terms in the piece. See Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, “David Sarnoff,” in People of the Century, Time / CBS News (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 162–65, 163.
26. Schwartz, 272.
27. See David Sarnoff’s testimony before the FCC at Washington, D.C., on November 14, 1938, and May 17, 1939, published in Principles and Practices of Network Radio Broadcasting: Testimony of David Sarnoff (New York: RCA Institutes Technical Press, 1939), 16.
28. Walter Lippmann, “The TV Problem,” Today and Tomorrow, October 27, 1959, in Clinton Rossiter and James Lare, eds., The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 411–13.
CHAPTER 11. THE RIGHT KIND OF BREAKUP
1. Harold Orlans, Contracting for Atoms: A Study of Public Policy Issues Posed by the Atomic Energy Commission’s Contracting for Research, Development, and Managerial Services (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1967), 33.
2. For the terms of the 1956 consent decree in the suit against AT&T, see Gerald W. Brock, Telecommunication Policy for the Information Age: From Monopoly to Competition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 71–72.
3. For the statement of the Bell engineers, see Constantine Raymond Kraus and Alfred W. Duerig, The Rape of Ma Bell: The Criminal Wrecking of the Best Telephone System in the World (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1988), 13. For Goldwater’s statement, see ibid., 103.
4. The statistics here are drawn from U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, 85 F. Supp. 881 (S.D.N.Y. 1949). For a general discussion of statistics on first-run theaters in 1930s-1940s Hollywood, see Andrew Hanssen, “The Block Booking of Films Re-examined,” in John Sedgwick and Michael Pokorny, eds., An Economic History of Film (New York: Routledge, 2005), 121–51.
5. Thurman W. Arnold, The Folklore of Capitalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937), 211. Indeed, in light of these conflicting impulses, Arnold believed that the antitrust laws in this country were systematically underenforced. See ibid., 207–30.
6. Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1977).
7. “Arnold Demands a New Movie Deal,” New York Times, April 23, 1940, 19. For the case against the AMA, see United States v. American Medical Association, 110 F. 2d 703 (D.C. Cir. 1940). For the Supreme Court’s 1938 remand in the case against the studios, see Interstate Circuit v. United States, 304 U.S. 55 (1938).
8. For the final 1948 Supreme Court decision in what has become known as “the Paramount case,” see United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., 334 U.S. 131 (1948).
9. For Crandall’s argument that the Paramount case did not result in downward pressure on ticket prices, see Robert W. Crandall, “Postwar Performance of the Motion-Picture Industry: The Economics,” Antitrust Bulletin 20 (1975): 61. For Anderson’s comment, and a further discussion of the blossoming television industry’s impact on the film industry, see Martin Halliwell, American Culture in the 1950s (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 147. For Anderson’s original work, see Christopher Anderson, Hollywood TV: The Studio System in the Fifties (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), 1.
10. Richard E. Caves, Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 95–96.
11. For a discussion of the key players and events in ushering in the New Hollywood without the constraints of the Production Code, see Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and Rock ’N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 1998), 23–52.
12. Jack Valenti, The Voluntary Movie Rating System: How It Began, Its Purpose, the Public Reaction (pamphlet, 1996).
13. The Production Code became progressively less onerous through the 1950s and ’60s. In 1968 it was abandoned in its entirety in favor of the MPAA rating system. See Geoff King, New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (London: IB Tauris, 2002), 31. For a general discussion of the development and identity of the New Hollywood, see ibid., 1–33.
CHAPTER 12: THE RADICALISM OF THE INTERNET REVOLUTION
1. For the full text of the memorandum, see J.C.R. Licklider, “Memorandum for Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network,” KurzweilAI.net, www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0366.html?printable=1.
2. For Licklider’s early years and career, see H. Peter Alesso and Craig Forsythe Smith, Connections: Patterns of Discovery (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, 2008), 60; for his life, M. Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal (New York: Penguin, 2002).
3. For Rheingold’s description of the AN/FSQ-7, see Howard Rheingold, Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 142–44.
4. J.C.R. Licklider, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1 (1960): 4.
5. John Markoff, What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry (New York: Penguin, 2005), 9.
6. For an extensive discussion of Baran’s career and innovations, see Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 53–67.
CHAPTER 13: NIXON’S CABLE
1. The opening story is based on the author’s interview with Ralph Lee Smith, September 14, 2008. His article is “The Wired Nation,” Nation, May 18, 1970, 582.
2. For a discussion of the project and the controversy it caused, see Richard P. Hunt, “Expressway Vote Delayed by City: Final Decision Is Postponed After 6-Hour Hearing,” New York Times, December 7, 1962; see also Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, eds., Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008).
3. Books on the history of the American cable industry are relatively rare. See Megan Mullen, The Rise of Cable Programming in the United States: Revolution or Evolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 90–93; Patrick Parsons, Blue Skies: A History of Cable Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008); and Patrick
R. Parsons and Robert M. Frieden, The Cable and Satellite Television Industries (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1997). See also Brian Lockman and Don Sarvey, Pioneers of Cable Television: The Pennsylvania Founders of an Industry (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005).
4. Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States Senate, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., 1959 (statement of William C. Grove).
5. House Committee on the Judiciary, 89th Cong., Copyright Law Revision Part 6, Supplementary Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law: 1965 Revision Bill 42 (Comm. Print 1965).
6. U.S. Cong. House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice Hearings, 92d Cong. (1972) (statement of Jack Valenti), reprinted in 15 Omnibus Copyright Revision Legislative History 727 (George S. Grossman, ed., 1976).
7. 392 U.S. 390 (1968).
8. Stanley M. Besen and Robert W. Crandall, “The Deregulation of Cable Television,” 44 Law & Contemporary Problems 77 (1981): 93.
9. On his life, see Ralph Engelman and Morley Safer, Friendlyvision: Fred Friendly and the Rise and Fall of Television Journalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); See It Now’s confrontation with McCarthy is the subject of Thomas Rosteck, See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), and of the 2005 film Good Night and Good Luck directed by George Clooney.