Godfrey Charles Isaacs

Godfrey Charles Isaacs (22 July 1866 – 17 April 1925) was an English businessman who served as the first Director of the British Broadcasting Company and as the long-time managing director of the Marconi Company. Isaacs was born in Belsize Park, London, England to a prominent Anglo-Jewish family. Educated at the Leibniz University Hannover and Free University of Brussels he qualified as a mining engineer before entering his father's firm of fruit and ship brokers. In 1910, he was invited to become managing director of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company by its founder Guglielmo Marconi. He has been credited with making the company very profitable but was involved in the Marconi scandal of 1912, when several British politicians, including his brother Rufus Isaacs, were accused of "insider trading" when they acquired shares in the American subsidiary of the Marconi Company; the parent company expecting to secure a contract from the British Government. In 1920, he turned his attention to radio broadcasting as a new growth area for the company and oversaw its introduction. In 1922, when the future shape of British broadcasting was being planned he pushed for it to be a public service without advertising and effectively conceived of the BBC, then becoming one of its first directors. He retired from the Marconi Company in November 1924, and died in 1925 aged 58, which The Times obituary attributed to overwork.