Dailey before Sarnoff

[Iain Stuart Yardley]

I just came across a report from North Carolina about a Cape Hatteras wire operator employed by Marconi in 1912 who claims he was the first person to receive transmission on land of the sinking of the Titanic.

An excpert:

"...Dailey contended that he received the first SOS about the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. He claimed he relayed word to David Sarnoff, an operator in New York City..."

but apparently Sarnoff dismissed it.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/living/travel/9222637.htm

Cheers,

Boz

 

[Mark Baber]

Hello, Boz---

Sarnoff's involvement with Titanic is a wonderful research project for anyone interested in following up on it. By the time he became chairman of RCA/NBC, it was an established part of his biography that he was among the first to receive messages about Titanic's accident and to disseminate that information in New York. But the earliest reference to this, at least in The New York Times, is some time in the 1920's---I don't recall the exact date---and Sarnoff's name does not appear in NYT at all in 1912. We've touched on this passingly over the years, as a search for "Sarnoff" will reveal, and, as far as I know, no one here has any contemporaneous source for the notion that Sarnoff played any role, let alone an important one, in getting the news of Titanic's sinking to the public. Just when this idea first surfaced, or whether it has any basis in fact, is a mystery.