Radio Man tells the story of C.O. Stanley, the unconventional Irishman
who acquired Pye Radio at the beginning of the broadcasting age.
Although he started with little experience and even less money, he was
to make Pye a major player in the British electronics industry - only to
crash it spectacularly forty years later. From the romance of early
radio to the birth of the mobile, Stanley and Pye were players in some
of the key moments of twentieth century Britain. His obsession with the
infant medium of television allowed Pye to provide the equipment that
put radar into planes in time for the Battle of Britain. His energy also
drove Pye's pioneering work on the proximity fuse - work that would
revolutionise antiaircraft warfare - and the company's manufacture of
the war's most successful army radios.
In the 1950s Stanley led the offensive against the BBC's monopoly of
television in a battle that split the British establishment. When his
son, John, took Pye into mobile radio Stanley fought and defeated the
bureaucrats who then controlled Britain's airwaves.
Stanley's loss of Pye in 1966 illustrated British industry's inability
to withstand foreign competition. It also brought tragedy. Stanley
himself escaped with honour more or less intact, but left his son to
face public humiliation on his own.
This revealing and meticulously researched text is written within the
broad context of the political, technological and business changes of
the time, and shows how a very ambitious businessman was brought down by
the qualities that made him so successful.
