Victories Great and Small

Abstract

This chapter recalls the contributions and inventions of Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong, and David Sarnoff. It first looks at Armstrong's legacies, financial settlements, and equipment which possessed significant historic value. The chapter then explores how Armstrong's wife, Marion, spent the next quarter century redressing the wrongs her husband had suffered, and ensuring that he received the recognition after death that had eluded him in life. The chapter also discusses the life of Lee de Forest at the end of the war — enjoying relatively good health and a joyful marriage. It explicates the publication of his autobiography, on which he had been working for many years — Father of Radio. Father of Radio proved to be pure de Forest, his attempt to record his life as he saw it, embellished with his own recollections. It recorded de Forest's success and failures as only he could see them. The chapter narrates David Sarnoff's personal triumph and personal failure in the last two decades of his life. It also investigates how he masked those failures through self-aggrandizement on a grand scale.