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Sarnoff got his first operator's job on Nantucket Island, a job so lonely that few operators wanted it ($70 a month, $40 home to mother). David used his spare time to study books on wireless as tirelessly as he had the Talmud. Soon his expert "fist" could send 45 words per minute steadily for eight hours—a pace not many could equal. After two years there, he got himself transferred to Long Island, at a $10 cut in pay, so that he could go to night school, where he finished a three-year electrical engineering course in twelve months. When his big chance came, he was ready for it: he was an operator in the Marconi wireless station, atop John Wanamaker's Manhattan store, on the night of April 14, 1912, when he picked up a message from the S.S. Titanic: "Ran into iceberg. Sinking fast." For three days & nights, the nation waited breathlessly while Sarnoff, going without sleep, provided its only news of the disaster and survivors. President Taft ordered all other stations off the air to enable Operator Sarnoff to catch the messages.
Sarnoff notes that the Titanic disaster "brought radio (and incidentally me) to the front." As a result of the disaster, Congress passed a law requiring every ship with more than 50 passengers to carry wireless. American Marconi set up a school to fill the sudden demand for operators; Sarnoff became an instructor at the school, rapidly moved up the ladder to commercial manager.
The Music Box. In 1915 he wrote a historic memo to his boss. Experiments had already proved that wireless could broadcast speech as well as signals,* but since anybody could "listen in" on such messages, the wireless companies thought the lack of privacy robbed radiotelephony of any commercial value. Sarnoff realized its possibilities. In his memo, he proposed to build a "Radio Music Box ... to bring music into the house by wireless . . . Receiving lectures at home can be made perfectly audible; also events of national importance can be simultaneously announced and received." In the turmoil of World War I, Sarnoff's memo was ignored.
At war's end, the U.S. determined to end the British wireless monopoly. At Government urging, General Electric's Vice President Owen D. Young got G.E., Westinghouse, United Fruit and A.T. & T. to pool all their wireless patents and jointly organize RCA. It took over American Marconi—and Sarnoff. As RCA's chairman, Young was so impressed with Sarnoff's vision and knowledge of wireless theory and practice that he made him general manager.
Sarnoff dug out his old 1915 memo and tried it on Young, who liked the "music box" idea. But RCA's directors were willing to risk only $2,000. Sarnoff gave a demonstration that woke them up. He borrowed a Navy transmitter and helped give a blow-by-blow broadcast of the 1921 Dempsey-Carpentier world championship fight. It created a sensation; about 200,000 amateur wireless operators and others with homemade sets heard it, and spread the news of the wonder so widely that the public clamored for sets. RCA quickly developed the "music box," and both G.E. and Westinghouse began making it, with RCA acting as wholesaler.