Sarnoff history

Sarnoff quickly moved up the ladder at American Marconi, and by 1915, he was named the company's contract manager, overseeing all of Marconi's sales and service contracts.

To keep American radio technology from being controlled by foreign-owned companies like American Marconi, that company was absorbed by a new company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), in 1919.

In 1920 Sarnoff reiterated his “radio music box” memo and was given a small amount of money to develop a radio prototype.

As RCA’s new general manager, he demonstrated radio’s market potential by broadcasting the boxing match between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier (July 2, 1921); the broadcast created a sensation.

RCA had a research department as of 1922, headed by an electrical engineering professor from the City College of New York.

In 1924 RCA moved its research department into its own quarters in the Bronx, while corporate headquarters were in Manhattan in New York City.

In 1926 RCA formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

His meeting in 1929 with Westinghouse engineer Vladimir Zworykin convinced him that home television was possible, and Sarnoff persuaded Westinghouse to back Zworykin’s work.

Sarnoff became president of RCA in 1930.

At the same time, the company bought the Jenkins Television Company, an early television pioneer that went bankrupt in 1932.

In 1939 RCA scientists not only unveiled television but also the electron microscope and the facsimile machine.

Rival CBS developed a color television system as early as 1940, but it employed a mechanical spinning disk that was incompatible with most existing television sets.

FROM its gilded perch on Route 1 in Princeton, the Sarnoff Corporation looks essentially the same as it has since 1942, when its legendary founder, David Sarnoff -- who changed the world with the invention of the television -- broke ground on a campus for his engineers.

RCA lost and had to pay royalties to Farnsworth (who by that time had had a nervous breakdown). In the second, which began in 1948, Edwin Armstrong, inventor of FM radio (and Sarnoff’s onetime friend), sued RCA for infringing on his patents.

The RCA system debuted in 1949, though the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had already given its imprimatur to the CBS system.

In 1950 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the colour television standard developed by the Columbia Broadcasting System.

1951: RCA Laboratories is renamed the David Sarnoff Research Center.

In 1953 the FCC reversed its earlier decision, and accepted the RCA color television system as the industry standard.

Indra Nooyi, (born October 28, 1955, Madras [now Chennai], India), Indian-born American businesswoman who was instrumental in the lucrative restructuring and diversification of soft-drink manufacturer PepsiCo, Inc.’s brands.

David Sarnoff stepped down from the chief executive position at RCA in 1965.

His son Robert became president, and then CEO. David Sarnoff remained chairman until 1970.

The company's earnings began to slide at that time, and in 1975, the RCA board refused to renew Robert Sarnoff's contract.

Nooyi earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Madras Christian College in 1976 and a master’s degree in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta two years later.

But RCA was abruptly sold to GE in 1986.

The lab remained in New Jersey, and operated as a for-profit subsidiary of SRI. It incorporated in 1987 as Sarnoff Laboratories.

In 1994 Nooyi joined PepsiCo as senior vice president of corporate strategy and development.

Another was Orchid Biocomputer Inc. (later Orchid Biosciences), which spun off from Sarnoff in 1995.

In 2001 she was named president and chief financial officer of the company.

In 2002 Sarnoff released a medical device that measured oxygen flow in the brain by shining a low-level laser at a patient's eye.

Sarnoff's public spinoff Orchid Biosciences, for example, went through rounds of cost-cutting and a change of chief executive as its stock traded at under a dollar in 2003.

Nooyi assumed the title of CEO in October 2006 and the next year became chairman of the board as well.

The following year it was announced that Nooyi would be stepping down as CEO in October and as chairman of the board in early 2019.