On Wed, 9 Sep 2009, Richard Knoppow wrote:



The Marconi radio operator in New York City who received
the Titanic's
distress call was a young boy named Sarnoff who later
founded RCA.

Geoff.

While Sarnoff was involved with the reception of Titanic
distress signals he was not the sole operator and later much
exagerated his role. He was very good at self promotion. See
the biographical artical at Wikipedia which appears to me to
be pretty accurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sarnoff

That part of history was also covered in Tom Lewis's "Empire
of the Air" that was made into a PBS documentary. It's a good
history of the early days of radio, focusing on Sarnoff, Armstrong
and I guess deForest. Since it's not dealing with a single
subject it's less likely to dote on the subject. It's been about
a decade since I read the book, but my recollection is that it
made that point about Sarnoff inflating his role in the Titanic
affair.

This is the first I've seen that "CQ" is because of the Marconi
company, and I suspect a deeper search into history would reveal
some other explanation.

Michael VE2BVW