Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1992) Review

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(More customer reviews)You awaken to a clock radio, press a button on a miniature transmitter to unlock your car and chat on a wireless phone. A pager dangles from your belt and the headphones of a miniature FM radio are perched on your ears. Whether the TV shows you watch arrive over a cable, a satellite dish or an antenna, at some point, they travelled through the air.
It's easy to think we've progressed so much since the invention of radio but when you think about it, radio and its progeny are everywhere. Even the computer on which you're reading this owes its very existence, ultimately, to the trinity of Lee de Forest, Edwin Howard Armstrong and David Sarnoff. A more colorful cast of characters could not have been created by mere fiction.
De Forest, the frustrated-at-every-turn inventor who, nonetheless, stumbled upon the pivotal technology that began the age of electronics. Armstrong, voracious reader of scientific journals and tinkerer, who understood de Forest's inventions even better than de Forest himself. David Sarnoff, protege of the great Marconi, opportunistic, driven by a fierce loyalty to the company he headed at its inception until his death, RCA.
Ken Burns tells the story with remarkable detail in just 2 hours. Like his other productions for PBS, "Empire of the Air" is mostly archival footage and still photos interspersed with interviews of those who were present at the creation of radio. The stories of the three "Men who Made Radio" begin with brief histories of each and more detailed descriptions of their contributions. Lee de Forest invented the Audion tube, mostly by copying or "borrowing" the work of others, but when pressed for an explanation of how it functioned, he found himself at a loss. Edwin Howard Armstrong DID understand it, so much so that he invented the technologies that enabled de Forest's "fire bottle" to carry voice and music into the air. David Sarnoff, at first a courier for American Marconi and eventually put in charge of the brand new Radio Corporation of America, saw in radio a means of bringing information and entertainment to far-flung Americans.
Burns also captures the personalities of each: de Forest's belief in the lone inventor and that the fame he always sought was just around the next corner; Armstrong's sheer brilliance that ultimately led to the invention of both AM radio as we know it and FM radio as well; Sarnoff's drive and his faith in the corporation above all else, even to the point of choosing his allegiance to RCA over his long-time friendship with Armstrong. All three would eventually battle it out in court, at a cost of the life of one of them at his own hand.
The Radio Era began with the work of lone inventors and ended with major improvements and new technologies coming out of the well-funded and staffed research laboratories of the likes of RCA, Westinghouse, General Electric and AT&T. By the late 1950s, the days of great inventions appeared to be over. There were no new worlds for individuals to conquer. Having survived 2 World Wars with the help of radio, with color TV beaming entertainment into our homes, America and the world believed that they had seen it all. We would never again see the likes of de Forest, Armstong and Sarnoff, as well as their contemporaries Edison, Bell and Ford.
That is, until the 1970s when a guy named Steve in Cupertino, California convinced his friend, also named Steve, that they could start a company to sell computers that would fit on a desktop. That's a story for whole 'nother PBS special called, appropriately, "Triumph of the Nerds," ...

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