Loading ...Having spent over four decades as a radio and TV engineer working around too many ‘news’ departments, I can testify to the validity of the above article. As an engineer, I was the wizard who made all the technical stuff work… the ‘magic of television’. But even we got no respect from the bean-counter bosses even though we built and operated their magic cash register.
Lee DeForest was the inventor of the vacuum tube… the foundation of electronics. Even he lamented the problem early in the last century:
Broadcast Engineering
“Some day the program director will attain the intelligent skill of the engineers who erected his towers and built the marvel . . . . The radio engineer has worked miracles in research, invention, and clever engineering. But a comparable knowledge of the basic factors of the social equations to be solved seldom is found in the executive offices of his employers.”
— LEE DE FOREST, “Father of Radio”, Inventor of Triode Vacuum Tube
In the end, it was short sighted economics that caused the end of my career as the boss effectively told me that he didn’t need me to maintain his cash register anymore.