Dreamers and Deceivers by Glenn Beck Read Free Book Online

said.
    “There’s no such thing as working too hard,” Armstrong replied, but by then his mentor had already left the room.
    He surveyed his work one last time, then sat back and smiled.
    Absolutely perfect.
    Belmar, New Jersey
    January 31, 1914
    A very important man had contacted Armstrong for a demonstration of his latest receiver. Armstrong had been preparing for their meeting for weeks now.
    He arrived early to set up, but when he pulled into the drive his appointment was already there, waiting for him.
    To his surprise, Armstrong noted the man was around his own age, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, but he was dressed to the nines like a Wall Street wheeler-dealer.
    “I’m Edwin Armstrong,” he said, as the two shook hands. “My friends call me Howard.”
    “And I’m the chief technology inspector and contracts manager for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company,” the other young man replied. “I don’t have any friends, but my enemies call me Mr. David Sarnoff.”
    They hit it off right away.
    The conversation was easy, like a reunion of old acquaintances. They talked of many things as Armstrong opened the trunk and the two of them worked together to set up the equipment.
    Sarnoff was a son of Jewish immigrants who’d come to America with little more than the clothes on their backs and hopes of a better life. A natural businessman, he’d been earning his keep since childhood, and overcoming every hurdle of prejudice and poverty as he clawed his way up the ladder. By the time he was fourteen he’d bought his own newsstand and put his four siblings to work for him. Now, less than a decade later, he held a position that would have been coveted by ambitious men twice his age.
    Though their backgrounds and disciplines were very different, it turned out their dreams of broadcast radio were the same. Both believed the radio receiver would one day be a treasured fixture in every American living room. Sarnoff seemed to have a plan to actually make that happen.
    “Wait a minute, I’ve heard of you,” Armstrong said, as he connected the feed line and completed his final checks. “David Sarnoff, yeah.When the Titanic went down, the newspapers said you stayed at the telegraph key for three straight days, getting messages out to the families. The reporters called you the wonder boy of radio.”
    “That’s me.”
    Armstrong looked him over again. “Is all of that really true?”
    “Well, it wasn’t true back then,” Sarnoff replied, with a conspiratorial wink, “but brother, it sure is now.”
    As Armstrong fired up the receiver, the two took turns tuning in far-flung stations and copying the incoming Morse code. They hit Ireland, Nova Scotia, Hawaii, and San Francisco—there seemed to be no limit to the range from which this amazing apparatus could receive.
    “I’ve seen enough,” Sarnoff said at last, laying his earphones on the table.
    “Let me tell you how it works.”
    “I don’t really care how it works.”
    “But—”
    “Howard, relax. This receiver you’ve made, it’s not just a breakthrough, like you said in your letter—it’s the most remarkable radio receiving system in existence. It’s a revolution.”
    “So, that means . . .”
    “That means I’m going to recommend that Marconi license your invention. And that, my friend—assuming all your paperwork’s in order—means you’ll be making as much every month as most people make in a year.”
    “Say that again.”
    Sarnoff smiled. “Probably five hundred dollars per month, Howard, for this invention alone. And I’ve got a feeling this is only the beginning.”
    •  •  •
    Twenty miles away, Lee de Forest paced the floor in his small studio.
    In his youth, both Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi had turned down Lee de Forest’s generous offer to lend them his genius. That blowhard Marconi hadn’t even bothered to answer de Forest’s formal letter of introduction.
    At twenty-eight years old and on the verge of