Business: Patent War

Guglielmo Marconi is clearly the father of wireless telegraphy, but between SOS. calls and the Happiness Boys lies a long period of experimental development. Many men have contributed to radio development; no one man can be called Father of Radio.

Favorable to patent litigation is such an anonymous condition, and out of the radio world came last week announcement of a patent war. Attacking was Kolster Radio Corp. Defending were 19 radio-makers including Grigsby-Gruno (Majestic), National Carbon* (Eveready), Crosley, Zenith, Stewart-Warner, Sonora—”independent” set-makers all. Not included was Radio Corp. of America.

Kolster Corp. maintained that four basic patents, including a fundamental tuning device by which several condensers are operated with a single control, have been violated. Vigorous prosecution may result in damage suits amounting to many millions, may throw the radio industry into prolonged patent litigation.

Kolster Radio Corp. was formed in 1926* as a merger of several wireless companies. It supplies the radio portion of Columbia radio-phonographs. From it the Mackay (Postal Telegraph) companies buy all their communication equipment, and it supplies a minimum of one-third of the wired radio apparatus used by wired Radio, Inc., a subsidiary of North American Co. (utility serving 932 cities with population of 6,250,000). With these potent customers, and also with an excellent Kolster radio set, it is likely that Kolster’s 1929 earnings will exceed the 20¢ per share figure reported in 1928 on sales of more than $13,000,000.

Chief financial figure in Kolster is Sugarman Rudolph Spreckels, board chair man. Chief radio expert is Engineer Frederick A. Kolster. Born in Geneva, Switzer land, transported to Boston, Mass., at the age of two, Mr. Kolster was originally destined to be a musician. His family came to this country, indeed, because his father had been engaged to play a violin with the Boston Symphony. Young Kolster therefore soon had a violin handed to him. But his small hands did not well adapt themselves to the instrument and when to the violin was added a piano, Engineer Kolster, rebellious, entered the Cambridge Manual Training School where he “prepped” for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While still attending M. I. T., he got a job as assistant to the Cambridge city engineer. Most of his time was spent in driving stakes, but Engineer Kolster was proud of his position and his profession. When John Stone Stone, one of U. S. radio’s experimental pioneers, offered Mr. Kolster a job in the Stone Laboratories, Mr. Kolster at first replied that he was a civil engineer and why should he bother with wireless telegraphy. Later he changed his mind.

Once in the wireless field, he progressedrapidly, has now to his credit many a radio invention. He devised the radio compass, by which ships can calculate the position of nearby vessels from a single wireless message. Hero Captain George Fried located the sinking Florida (TIME, Feb. 4) by means of a Kolster compass, when, after initial S. O. S. signals, the navigating instruments of the Italian freighter went overboard. In conjunction with the compass Kolster developed a system of radio fog signals, which, when generally adopted, should eliminate the traditional and romantic, but imperfect, foghorn. Mr. Kolster also worked for ten years (1912-22) with the radio department of the U. S. Bureau of Standards, assisted in drawing up the radio regulations by which the Department of Commerce governs broadcasting activities.

*Subsidiary of potent Union Carbide & Carbon Corp.

*Incorporated as Federal-Brandes, Inc. Kolster assumedits present title April 10, 1928.