For 50 years radio dominated the airwaves and the American consciousness as the first “mass medium.” In Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio, Ken Burns examines the lives of three extraordinary men who shared the primary responsibility for this invention and its early success, and whose genius, friendship, rivalry and enmity interacted in tragic ways. This is the story of Lee de Forest, a clergyman’s flamboyant son, who invented the audion tube; Edwin Howard Armstrong, a brilliant, withdrawn inventor who pioneered FM technology; and David Sarnoff, a hard-driving Russian immigrant who created the most powerful communications company on earth.
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Jason Robards | Narrator |
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Red Barber | Self - Radio Announcer |
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Erik Barnouw | Self - Historian |
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Ken Bilby | Self - Biographer of David Sarnoff |
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Norman Corwin | Self - Writer |
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Susan Douglas | Self - Historian |
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Frank Günther | Self (engineer) |
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Jeanne Hammond | Self - Niece of Edwin H. Armstrong |
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Loren Jones | Self - Engineer |
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Garrison Keillor | Self - Writer |
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Helen Kelley | Self - Radio Broadcaster |
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Robert Morris | Self - Engineer |
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Dana Raymond | Self - Friend of Edwin H. Armstrong |
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Gertrude Tyne | Self - Engineer |
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Fred Allen | Self - Predicts Demise of Radio |
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Gene Autry | Self - Sings |
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John Barrymore | Hamlet |
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Winston Churchill | Self - Finest Hour Speech |
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Charles J. Correll | Self - Prepares for Amos 'n' Andy Broadcast |
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Lee De Forest | Self - Objects to Quality of Radio Programming |
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Ralph Edwards | Self - Host of 'This Is Your Life' |
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Dwight D. Eisenhower | Self - Announces Landing in Normandy |
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Eugenia Farrar | Self (with Lee De Forest) |
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Freeman F. Gosden | Self - Prepares for Amos 'n' Andy Broadcast |
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Guglielmo Marconi | Self - Visits Sarnoff at RCA |
| Director | Ken Burns |
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| Writer | Ken Burns, Tom Lewis, Geoffrey C. Ward | |
| Producer | Ken Burns, Tom Lewis, Morgan Wesson | |
| Nr Discs | 1 |
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| Distributor | PBS |
| Layers | Single side, Single layer |
| Regions | Region 1 |
| Watched | |
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| Index | 982 |
| Added Date | Jun 05, 2013 16:27:10 |
| Modified Date | Oct 12, 2015 03:43:10 |