A significant innovator in the field of communications, particularly in radio and television, David Sarnoff's influence is indelibly stamped on the cultural development of these media. In creating the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) as the first permanent network, he invented commercial broadcasting as we know it. Sarnoff clearly valued technology and foresaw uses for it beyond the understanding of his contemporaries. In doing so, he helped to propel television from the domain of experimentation to one of global status.

Sarnoff was born in Uzlian, near Minsk, in what is now Belarus. His family emigrated to New York in 1900, and the young Sarnoff was raised in Lower Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen district. In 1906 he was employed as an office worker by the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company and soon after became a telegrapher. He was first noticed as the lone radioman to relay news from the sinking...