Debased Child

Lee De Forest, 73, who fathered modern radio with his 1907 invention of the audion tube, wrote a 40th anniversary letter to the National Association of Broadcasters:

"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 on the streets . . . to collect money from all and sundry. . .

"You have made 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 . . . wherewith the occasional fine program is periodically smeared with impudent insistence to buy or try.

"The nation has no soap, but soap opera without end or sense floods each household daily.

"Murder mysteries rule the waves by night and children are rendered psychopathic by your bedtime stories.

"This child of mine has been resolutely kept to the average intelligence of thirteen years . . . as though you and your sponsors believe the majority of listeners have only moron minds. Nay, the curse of his commercials has grown consistently more cursed, year by year."

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