Product Description
The absorbing, astounding, true story of the invention of radio broadcasting in the early 20th Century, and a long-overdue tribute to the lman who actually devised practical AM receivers and the entire FM System:Edwin Howard Armstrong.His genius gave us all a wonderful new world, but his patents were stolen by corporate greed.
The story centers around three figures central to the period:Armstrong, Lee DeForest (who claimed to have invented a lot of things), and David Sarnoff (who founded R.C.A.).
Tom Lewis' bestselling book became Ken Burns' wonderful video, but David (Firesign Theatre) Ossman's audio adaptation is the best telling of the story of any version!Steve Allen, David Ogden Stiers, Edward Asner, Bonnie Bedelia, John Astin, Gary Owens, and a magnificent cast of 90! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Well researched volume
While there are many sources of accurate history about the three men that form the core of this book, the Author did a great job tying the interlocking lives of these titans together. An excellent and well detailed corollary to the associated Ken Burns Film.

Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
Anyone who is interested in the world of radio where it started and where it has come to, may be interested in knowing about this book. I found it very interesting and enlightening. I read this book years ago and bought a paperback copy to be sent to a talk show person on WLBR radio 1270 KHz in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. As one should be aware of where we came from and the background of a profession, if one profess to know how one fits into the current history of the workings of an operation/profession.

Very Narrow Focus, Technically Weak
The title of this book is highly misleading. It should be called "Everything You Don't Need To Know About Three Of The Men Who Made Radio In The United States." Apparently the author got hold of some voluminous archives about Lee de Forest and Edwin Armstrong, and felt compelled to use all this material without very much reference to the larger picture of the world development of the radio art. And when the author neglects the big picture, the true value of Armstrong and de Forest is trivialized.

As just one example of this author's extremely narrow focus, there is not one single entry in the index for the British Broadcasting Company, which began public radio broadcasting in 1922. This extremely parochial approach is seen throughout the entire book, which makes this volume similar in spirit to the extensive hagiography that the old Soviet empire lavished on its own inventors, who of course invented everything before anyone else did. In this book, Armstrong and de Forest are everything, and all the others are mere midgets. This is unfair both to them and everybody else, because science and technology simply don't progress in this fashion. We really don't need this kind of old-fashioned, super-hero approach to biography, which should have gone out of style long ago.

And here we encounter another fatal confusion in the author's mind. Is this book an attempt at biography, or is it a history of technology? The author can't seem to decide which he wants, so we have two books in one, making a very uncomfortable mixture.

Simple errors of fact are numerous. For example, on the very first page of the book, the author states that the electric telegraph was an invention for communicating between two individuals. This imbecile judgement totally ignores the important fact that from its very beginning, the telegraph was used to wire information to large numbers of newspapers, which then shared it with countless thousands of readers. Errors concerning the radio art are equally egregious. For example, the author states that quartz crystals were used as detectors in the early crystal sets. It would be completely impossible to use quartz, whichis totally non-conductive of electricity, in a circuit of this kind.

In this undisciplined core dump of a book, endless quantities of information are dumped onto the pages, with very little guidance to the reader concerning concerning which data is important, and which is not. This is unfortunate because there is much of great interest to be discussed, but the good stuff is overwhelmed by the trivia.

I will totally agree with another reviewer that the greedy, unscrupulous Sarnoff does not belong in the same book with Armstrong and de Forest. The author's rather loopy sense of priorities is also reflected in the endless discussion of de Forest's attempts to make it with the ladies during his college days, whereas Philo Farnsworth, who actually invented television, is discussed in two small paragraphs. More is said about Sarnoff's smoking habits than the work of Farnsworth, one of America's greatest inventors.

This book will certainly disappoint specialists in the radio art, who will expect technical details that simply aren't there. It will also disappoint those readers who want a sharply focused treatment of the larger importance of America's radio inventions to the world at large. If Tim Lewis ever designs a globe of the world, it will display the United States and nothing else. And that kind of parochial, narrow-minded viewpoint is the true tragic flaw of this book.

The story of broadcast radio from RCAs point of view
"Empire of The Air: The Men Who Made Radio," by Tom Lewis, HarperCollins, New York, 1991.This 421 page paperback is the book that accompanied the 1990s PBS series, a three-hour presentation of the story of radio.It emphasized the role of three individuals: Lee DeForest, Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff.Lee DeForest invented the audion tube by inserting a grid between the plate and the filament in a vacuum tube.Howard Armstrong perfected the invention with a series of circuits that made the vacuum tube more sensitive as a radio receiver and suitable as a transmitter.Later he invented FM radio, which greatly reduced static and distortions.David Sarnoff envisioned broadcast radio and provided leadership in its successful commercialization.Later, his company, RCA, also pioneered network radio, television and color television.Modern electronics owe their origins to the electric telegraph, which first brought wires and electricity into communities across the country.Indeed, Thomas Edison and David Sarnoff both began as telegraph operators.

Although the subject of the series was radio, the true subject was Radio Corporation of America or RCA.The book covers the technical developments that made broadcast radio possible and ends with RCA being acquired by General Electric in 1985.

DeForest billed himself as "The Father of Radio," but we learn he was a tinkerer who did not understand how the audion tube worked.In an age when white Anglo-Saxon (Calvinist) Protestants attended Ivy League colleges, and ran most corporations, you would expect Armstrong to win.He was a Presbyterian, educated at Columbia University, under the then leading professor of electrical engineering, Michael Pupin.He was reportedly shy and introverted, but his intelligence was recognized early, and he began experimenting with electronics as a teenager.DeForest, on the other hand, also Presbyterian was educated at Yale University, but his father, a minister, was president of a black college in the South, Talladega College.DeForest is described as an outgoing extrovert, but as a carpetbagger in the South, he had few friends.He spent his time reading patents in the college library, where he resolved to become an inventor.He selected electricity as a promising field of study.DeForestattended Dwight Moody's prep school in Mt. Herman, MA, on his way to Yale, but his rural background meant he did not fit-in with classmates.

Sarnoff was a poor immigrant (Russian) Jew, who was forced to support the family after his father died.After selling newspapers, he learned Morse code in the telegraph department at the New York Herald.From that experience, he got a job at American Marconi,the famous radio telegraph company.When RCA it was formed, he moved into management ranks, and functioned as the technical visionary who promoted broadcast radio as a more profitable venture than the radio telegraphy business.He arranged to have "music boxes" built, and demonstrated their utility.It was Sarnoff who recognized the technical superiority of Armstrong's regenerative circuit and recommended that Marconi license it.Later, he co-operated with Armstrong's demonstration of FM radio.But it was Sarnoff, who decided to invest in television, to resist FM and then to develop alternative circuits, which he claimed were outside of Armstrong's patents.The result was a patent fight, which proved expensive to Armstrong, and ultimately led to his suicide.

American Marconi was the US branch of the Italian Marconi firm.It had been founded by Guglielmo Marconi, based on his invention of radio telegraphy.He had improved the primitive art and greatly increased signal range.He is famous for having transmitted the coded letter S across the Atlantic, but the main use for radiotelegraphy was ship to ship and ship to shore communications (as became clear after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912), plus the flexibility of building stations without the need to install cabling.Unlike the fly-by-night radio telegraph companies founded by DeForest (which set up demonstrations in various cities, sold stock, and then disappeared often without even trying to build a successful business), Marconi was an honest businessman who provided a quality service at a fair price.(DeForest was charged with fraud for one of his ventures, but was judged not guilty in a jury trial.He had been duped by promoters who ran the business end of his ventures, often leaving him with debts and taking off with the cash.)

The PBS series told the story well, but some of the details omitted should be mentioned.In spite of pending challenges to his audion patent, DeForest sold nonexclusive rights to American Telephone & Telegraph Co., i.e., the phone company--in July, 1913.They used the technology in a practical amplifier, which made possible coast-to-coast long-distance telephone service by 1915.

A Canadian university professor named Reginald Aubrey Fessenden, working in Pittsburgh, invented a spade detector that advanced the art of radio telegraphy.He successfully broadcast a playing violin to radio operators in 1906.Later he sold his patents to Westinghouse, who set up, KDKA in Pittsburgh as the first broadcast radio station in November, 1916.

RCA came about because the most powerful transmitter at the time was the alternator.General Electric became expert at manufacturing the device, but a proliferation of patents made it difficult to operate without licenses under competitors patents.GE and American Marconi decided to set up RCA, when it was realized that the American government would not allow a foreign corporation to own a technology considered essential to the national defense.Germany operated an undersea telegraph cable to the Americas, but it was promptly severed in World War I.That made Germany dependent on radio telegraphy for communications and emphasized the importance of radio as a critical national defense technology.

Others soon realized the advantage of contributing their radio patents to RCA in return for part ownership.Westinghouse and AT&T participated, but General Electric was the major shareholder, and had greatest control.Both Westinghouse and AT&T had broadcast radio stations, which they contributed to the venture.It was GE's Owen Young, who recognized Sarnoff's talents and saw to his promotion in spite of the anti-Semitic practices of the day.

World War I had a major impact on radio.Thousands of soldiers were trained in the basics of radio during their military service.After the war, they came home to build crystal sets, and some times one or two tube radio sets constructed from kits.These sets were the audience for early broadcast radio.As with the personal computer, initially it was a hobbyist market.But Sarnoff believed radio should be made available to the average man on the street with a handsome set suitable for the living room with a speaker instead of headphones.

The quest for talking movies began in about 1919.DeForest was an early participant.His technology, called Phonofilm, proved cumbersome.Warner Brothers issued the first talking films using Vitaphone, a record synchronized to the film.In 1928, RCA and GE followed with the photocell film track technology, called pallophotophone.They with Joseph Kennedy formed RKO Radio Pictures to make and distribute talking films by the purchase of the Keith-Albee-Orphium theater chain.(At the time, theater chains showed only the films produced by their companies.)RCA owned 25%.The book does not say so but apparently AT&T/Western Electric was a key developer of talking film technology especially working with Warner Brothers.They built the large speaker amplifier system that filled the theater with sound.RCA came later to the business but entered into an agreement making films with either system compatible on the same projection equipment.

RCA repeatedly encountered challenges from Federal antitrust authorities.In a settlement reached in 1926, AT&T sold its broadcast radio stations to RCA in return for an agreement to be the exclusive carrier of NBC network transmissions to its affiliated stations for a $1MM annual fee.(William Paley founded CBS independently in 1928.)In 1930, an antitrust suit forced the founding companies to divest their interests in RCA, to discontinue manufacture of radio equipment for 30 months, and to cease any non-compete agreements regarding radio equipment. RCA would license its radio technology to others resulting in a proliferation of competing brands of radio sets.In addition, Sarnoff was freed of board members of the sponsoring companies allowing him total control of RCA and its board.ABC was created in 1945 after NBC was forced to divest itself of the blue network.

Television came to RCA almost as a lark.Vladimir Zworykin, a research assistant at Westinghouse, had taken out a patent on a primitive TV camera, but Westinghouse failed to invest in the technology.Sarnoff hired him to work in RCA's Camden, NJ laboratories (on the manufacturing site of the Victor Phonograph Co. which RCA had acquired in 1929 after working with it to provide radio phonograph combinations since 1924).The Sarnoff Labs in Princeton, NJ were constructed in 1941.

RCA became the leading manufacturer of vacuum tubes.DeForest had offered his audion tube for sale almost from the beginning, but he was unable to manufacture tubes with consistent performance.RCA reduced them to standardized designs with predictable characteristics.The Princeton Lab was a developer of over 150 new types of radio tubes.In 1940, a manufacturing plant for vacuum tubes was built in Lancaster, PA.It made 20MM tubes by the end of the war in 2000 types.

Early television technology relied on unreliable, mechanical devices to receive a moving picture.RCA was forced to license Philo Farnsworth's electronic television patents.However, it galled David Sarnoff to pay for such technology.It is said he resolved never to be bested again in patent negotiations.Perhaps that is the reason he fought so hard to avoid licensing FM rights from Howard Armstrong (after Armstrong rejected his offer).

This book is loaded with historical details that make interesting reading.It includes extensive references and notes as well as a bibliography.Indexed.

An Excellent Book with a Major Flaw
I greatly enjoyed reading this book, and viewing the documentary that was based on it.Tom Lewis crafted an interesting, well-written story, and did his research.His facts are almost all correct, and Empire of the Air does a service in reviving interest in the history of the single most-important technological leap of the past century.(It is even more important than the Internet; the Internet has precedents--computers, telephones, TV, FAX, etc.--but radio had no precedent.It was the very first instantaneous mass-communication system in the world.)

Empire of the Air likewise portrays the personalities of "the Men Who Made Radio" almost flawlessly.In all, this is a book not only worth reading, but worth owning.

But I have one problem with Empire of the Air.How is it that How is it that Powel Crosley, Jr., the man who built the most powerful commercial radio station in the U.S. is mentioned only once, referred to in passing as an inventor in a garage?Crosley, the creator of one of the first 100 radio stations in the U.S., a man who consistently led in breaking the barriers to higher power for more than a decade, and who almost single-handedly established the market for radios (something Sarnoff tried to do six years earlier--and failed).Crosley, who bested Sarnoff's RCA in a 7-year legal battle?I can't blame Tom for the omission; I believe it is part of the aftermath of Sarnoff's revenge of persuading his contemporaries to omit Crosley from history.(There's an argument for that, but this is not the place to propound it.)

That aside, Empire of the Air deserves a place on your history bookshelf.It's on mine.
--Mike ... Read more