At the time of the Andrea Doria-Stockholm collision at sea last week, Gen. David Sarnoff, RCA board chairman, was within 40 miles of duplicating his historic feat of being the first man to pick up the distress signal from the SS Titanic in the days (1912) when he was a Marconi Wireless apprentice.

When last week's tragedy was flashed to the world, Sarnoff was on Nantucket Island. He still spends considerable leisure time with his favorite hobby of shore-to-ship tinkering--but on this occasion he was just relaxing.