Ли де Форест

What have you gentlemen done with my child? He was conceived as a potent instrumentality for culture, fine music, the uplifting of America’s mass intelligence. You have debased this child, you have sent him out in the streets in rags of ragtime, tatters of jive and boogie music, to collect money from all and sundry for hubba bubba and audio jitterbug. You have made of him a laughing stock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere; you have cut time into tiny cubelets, called “spots” (more rightly stains), wherewith the occasional fine program is periodically smeared with impudent insistences to buy or try.

Yet, withal, I am still proud of my child. Here and there from every station come each day some brief flashes worth the hearing, some symphony, some intelligent debate, some playlet worth the wattage. The average mind is slowly broadening, and despite all the debasement of most of radio’s offerings, our music tastes are slowly advancing.

Some day the program director will attain the intelligent skill of the engineers who erected his towers and built the marvel which he now so ineptly uses.

(Ли де Форест, изобретатель Аудиона, о коммерциализации радио; 1946-й год, взято отсюда)

Вот еще некоторые из его высказываний (взято отсюда):

"I foresee great refinements in the field of short-pulse microwave signaling, whereby several simultaneous programs may occupy the same channel, in sequence, with incredibly swift electronic communication. Short waves will be generally used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously." – 1952

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility." – 1926

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances." – 1926

"I do not foresee 'spaceships' to the moon or Mars. Mortals must live and die on Earth or within its atmosphere!" – 1952

"The transistor will more and more supplement, but never supplant, the Audion. Its frequency limitations, a few hundred kilocycles, and its strict power limitations will never permit its general replacement of the Audion amplifier." – 1952

Потенциал микроволновых устройств таки опознал, а все остальное -- пальцем в небо. А вы говорите, Лихницкий.