Early radio, in fact, was all AM radio, and the sound quality was considerably inferior to what you hear now. One day, an annoyed David Sarnoff, the head of NBC, told radio’s greatest inventor, “why don’t you come up with a little black box to get rid of the static?”
Some years later, the inventor, Edwin Howard Armstrong, told Sarnoff he had done it. Working long hours in a laboratory at the top of the Empire State Building, he had invented FM.
Everyone agreed the sound quality was far superior. Trouble was, none of the millions of radios then in existence could get FM. There weren’t any converter boxes, and apparently, nobody had any thought of making a radio that got both AM and FM signals.
Sarnoff thought FM wasn’t worth the trouble. Armstrong, who saw things in rigid black and white terms, thought everyone ought to dump AM and put in FM. That set off a battle so titanic that it inspired one of Ken Burns’ greatest documentaries, Empire of the Air.
Eventually, the corporation realized it was wrong, but Armstrong then refused to let NBC use his great invention. So they essentially stole it. Years of patent suits followed, and Armstrong, broken down by debt and stress, jumped off a building.
His widow took up his suits and eventually won every one of them, and became a very wealthy woman. Unfortunately, that didn’t do the inventor himself much good, beyond a nice tombstone.
Fortunately, nobody is being killed over digital TV. But there comes a point in everyone’s life when you have to wonder how much technology is too much. Our government says this switch was necessary for national security reasons, and of course I always believe them when they say that. Don’t you?
Washington will, however, make a tidy $20 billion or so auctioning off places on the new digital spectrum. Gee, that might be enough to keep the auto companies going for a month or two...
I suppose I’ll end up enjoying the new digital picture about as much as I enjoy most things. However, since the only things I ever watch are news and pre-recorded documentaries, my sensual pleasure may be a little less than that of some. However, I may be a little jaded because I first heard about the transition to digital from a TV executive who spoke to a class I was teaching, more than a decade ago. “You’ll be able to see the pimples on a major league pitcher’s nose when he throws the ball,” he proclaimed triumphantly. Funny, but that was a need I never knew I had.
Tonight, I think I’ll go home and clean my VCR.
As the Supreme Court once elegantly put it, there’s something to be said for adjusting to things with all deliberate speed.
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