Do we take any solace knowing that the museum in Rigby, Idaho, lives on?
It was here, at the former RCA headquarters on Route One, where the man RCA employees called “the general” preserved much of his legacy: the first internal computer memory device, Sarnoff’s trophies and correspondence, thousands of cubic feet of lab notes detailing innovations from interactive personal computer games to LCD screens.
(Alex)Magoun has spent years working to increase foot traffic in the museum, which occupies a wing of the Sarnoff Corp. laboratories in West Windsor.
Now, he finds himself saddled with a more melancholy task: the David Sarnoff Library, open since 1967, will close before the end of this year, and Magoun must find the artifacts a new home.
And let us not forget, RCA employees called Sarnoff “the general” because that’s what he TOLD them to call him, after he finagled a star out of Eisenhower during WWII.