Julian Sinclair Smith (May 5, 1920 – April 19, 1993) was an American electrical engineer and television executive. He was the founder of the

Sinclair Broadcast Group Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. (SBG) is a publicly traded American telecommunications conglomerate that is controlled by the descendants of company founder Julian Sinclair Smith. Headquartered in the Baltimore suburb of Cockeysville, Maryland, t ...

Early life

Smith was born in 1920 in Baltimore, the son of a grain exporter. He received his

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

degree from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

in 1952.

Career

In 1958, Smith, an electrical engineer, along with a group of shareholders, formed the Commercial Radio Institute, a broadcasting

trade school A vocational school is a type of educational institution, which, depending on the country, may refer to either secondary or post-secondary education designed to provide vocational education or technical skills required to complete the tasks ...

Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. Commercial Radio Institute later applied to build an

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...

station, which would eventually become known as

in 1971 as a single local television station; namely, Baltimore, Maryland's

WBFF-TV WBFF (channel 45) is a television station in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, affiliated with Fox and MyNetworkTV. It is one of two flagship stations of Sinclair Broadcast Group (based in nearby Hunt Valley), alongside ABC affiliate WJLA-T ...

. In 1986, he and his family incorporated Sinclair Broadcast Group, decided upon by his sons, as a namesake and his legacy for the company.

Personal life and death

Smith married Carolyn Beth Cunningham. They had four sons, including

David David (; , "beloved one") (traditional spelling), , ''Dāwūd''; grc-koi, Δαυΐδ, Dauíd; la, Davidus, David; gez , ዳዊት, ''Dawit''; xcl, Դաւիթ, ''Dawitʿ''; cu, Давíдъ, ''Davidŭ''; possibly meaning "beloved one". w ...

, who became CEO of the Sinclair Broadcast Group in 1988. Smith died in 1993, at the age of 72, after suffering from

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

. As of December 2016, his four sons are the majority shareholders of Sinclair Broadcast Group.

References

1920 births 1993 deaths People from Baltimore American electrical engineers American television executives Johns Hopkins University alumni Sinclair Broadcast Group 20th-century American engineers {{US-tv-bio-stub