1/ The Quest for Magnalux, 1951–1956
Benjamin Gross · 2018
In September 1951, RCA chairman David Sarnoff celebrated his forty-fifth year in the electronics industry by challenging members of his research staff to invent three new technologies in time for his golden anniversary dinner five years later. This chapter focuses upon the first of these gifts, the “Magnalux” light amplifier, which would supposedly enable the creation of television pictures of any size and brightness. After reviewing the content and context of Sarnoff’s speech, it considers the development of two separate light amplifiers based upon electroluminescence, each embodying different aspects of his request. As engineers at the newly renamed David Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, New Jersey rushed to complete these projects, their accomplishments prompted Sarnoff to alter his rhetoric concerning Magnalux’s capabilities, reaffirming the capacity of corporate researchers to shape public discussions of industrial innovation and the ultimate contingency of technological success and failure.