Donald Flamm (Overseas Fellow, R.T.S.) died in Palm Beach, Florida on February 15 after a short illness. He was born in Pittsburgh but spent most of his working life in New York. After a few years as press representative of the Shubert Organization on Broadway, in 1927 he became the owner and operator of WMCA, one of New York's most popular radio stations. He was quick to see the potential of television as soon as it was first demonstrated by my father in January 1926.
For the first few years of television history, all systems were mechanical and the television signals could be sent over normal radio wavelengths and picked up on existing domestic radio sets. All that was needed was a "televisor" connected to the radio receiver, to amplify the signal and convert it to a picture. In 1931, Donald Flamm joined the crowd of high-pressure promoters who surged into the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to meet my father on his much-publicized visit to the U.S.A. Donald was a quiet-spoken person with a dry sense of humour and my father found him to be the only person in the crowd who seemed to be talking any sense! An agreement was soon reached for a joint project between WMCA and Baird Television Ltd., to broadcast television experimentally in the New York area. Although this was eventually vetoed by the Federal Radio Commission (on xenophobic grounds) Donald and my father remained firm friends.
As a self-admitted anglophile, Donald Flamm performed many public functions to help the British cause in the difficult years 1939-41, before the U.S.A. came into the war against Germany. He joined the Office of War Information and latterly ran the American Broadcasting Station in Europe, which eventually became the Voice of America. After the war, his main interests moved towards theatrical production. Donald's self-deprecating humour was typified by his anecdote of having declined to support The Mousetrap which he felt was lacking in dramatic appeal.
