Had Flanigan Looked Closer, He Might Have Discovered a Very Different David Sarnoff

In writing his ode to David Sarnoff (“Digital Chip Is Real Hope for Video Industry,” May 14), I believe that James Flanigan would have served his readers better by researching his subject a little closer. Of the $20 million Sarnoff spent, he probably earmarked $10 million for lawyers in an attempt to usurp the inventions of others.

From the May issue of Video magazine: “Yet mechanical TV was doomed. Already, a maverick Utah inventor, Philo T. Farnsworth, and a Russian-American RCA scientist, Dr. Vladimir Zworykin, had separately conceived the major components of electronic TV. Farnsworth came up with the first electronic TV in 1927. Over the next two years, Farnsworth eliminated all incidental moving parts. Devised in a small, ill-funded private lab with self-trained assistants, it was one of the prodigious feats of 20th-Century science.

“As a potential competitor to RCA--whose buyout offers he rejected--Farnsworth became a target for harassment. In the early ‘30s, he was dragged into a dramatic struggle with the radio giant over ownership of key patent claims. Despite RCA’s legion of lawyers, Farnsworth won in court, but his victory proved Pyrrhic. Though forced to license the TV product from him, RCA countered with money and health-draining lawsuits as well as a propaganda campaign that negated Farnsworth’s place in history for more than 40 years.”

Sarnoff used the same techniques against Edwin Armstrong over the development of FM radio. Armstrong was driven to suicide over his constant legal battles.

And before we sing the praises of the “David Sarnoff Research Center--which was named of course, for the father of U.S. television,”--wasn’t this the same group that developed RCA’s abortive videodisc system that used a stylus instead of a laser beam? This poorly designed product weakened the market’s acceptance of the laser videodisc system.

But perhaps Sarnoff was right in the context of U.S. business. You have to do what you do best. I say give these companies the money. But half of it has to go to their legal departments. The Japanese may be able to out-engineer us but we can sue the pants off of them. We can probably keep high-definition television out of the United States till the next century.

MARC BERGMAN

Oxnard