RCA

Company name	RCA Corporation
Company logo
Slogan	The most trusted name in electronics.
Fate	Taken over by General Electric and broken up
Successor
Foundation	1919
Defunct	1986
Location	New York, United States
Industry	Electronics
Key people	David Sarnoff, first general manager
Products	RCA Photophone Electric phonograph videodiscRCA Televisions
Num employees
Parent
Subsid

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. Currently, the RCA trademark is owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor. The trademark is used by Sony Music Entertainment and Technicolor, which licenses the name to other companies like Audiovox and TCL Corporation for products descended from that common ancestor.

Origins

Organization by General Electric

On August 4, 1914, the United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary, starting World War I. Radio traffic across the Atlantic Ocean increased dramatically after the Allies cut German cable telegraphs.

During the war, the United States Navy suppressed patents owned by the major companies involved with radio manufacture in the United States to facilitate the war effort. All production of radio equipment was allocated for the Army and Navy. The Navy sought to maintain a government monopoly of wireless radio; however, the wartime command system over radio was to eventually end by the tabling of the maintenance of government control by the U.S. Congress in 1918. The rejection of the government monopoly did not prevent the Navy from creating a national radio system. On April 8, 1919, U.S. Navy Captain Stanford C. Hooper and Admiral W. H. G. Bullard met with General Electric executives to ask that they not sell their Alexanderson alternators to the British-owned Marconi Company and its subsidiary Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America. The premise of the Navy's proposal was that if GE created an American owned radio company, then the Navy would secure a commercial monopoly of long-distance radio communication. This marked the beginning of negotiations by which GE would buy American Marconi and organize what would become the Radio Corporation of America.

Establishment

The incorporation of the assets of Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (including David Sarnoff), the Pan-American Telegraph Company, and those already controlled by the United States Navy led to a new publicly held company formed by General Electric (which owned a controlling interest) on 17 October 1919. The subsequent cooperation among RCA, General Electric, United Fruit, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and AT&T; laid the groundwork for developments in point-to-point and broadcast radio, including the new National Broadcasting Company. The Navy turned over to RCA the former American Marconi radio stations appropriated during the war. Admiral Bullard received a seat on the RCA Board of Directors for his efforts in establishing RCA. The result was government-created monopolies in radio for GE and Westinghouse and in telephone for AT&T.;

The Navy's rationale — that radio frequencies were limited and needed to be appropriated and put in use before other countries, primarily Great Britain, monopolized them — collapsed with the discovery in the mid-1920s of the practicality of the shortwave band for long-distance transmissions.

RCA's first head was Owen D. Young; David Sarnoff was general manager. RCA's charter required it be mostly American-owned. The company took over the marketing of GE and Westinghouse's radio equipment, and in a subsequent deal it also acquired the patents of United Fruit and Westinghouse in exchange for ownership stakes in those companies. As time passed, the company secured a large number of patents, including the superheterodyne concept. Some of RCA's early radios were designed so as to prevent them from being reverse-engineered.

Over the years, RCA continued to operate international telecommunications services, under the subsidiary RCA Communications, Inc. and later RCA Global Communications.

Broadcast expansion

By 1926, the market for commercial radio had expanded, and RCA purchased the WEAF and WCAP radio stations and networks from AT&T;, merged them with its WJZ (the predecessor of WABC) New York to WRC (presently WTEM) Washington chain, and formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

Radio

GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, when GE began production, until separation in 1930. Westinghouse also marketed home radios through RCA until 1930.

Phonograph

, Texas (2004 photograph)]]

In 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs (including the famous "Victrola") and phonograph records. This included a majority ownership of the Victor Company of Japan, or JVC. The new subsidiary then became RCA-Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the Nipper trademark. RCA Victor produced many radio-phonographs and also created RCA Photophone, a sound-on-film system for sound films that competed with William Fox's sound-on-film Movietone and Warner Bros. sound-on-disc Vitaphone.

RCA began selling the first electronic turntable in 1930. In 1931, RCA Victor developed and released the first 33⅓ rpm records to the public. These had the standard groove size identical to the contemporary 78 rpm records, rather than the "microgroove" used in post-World War II 33⅓ "Long Play" records. The format was a commercial failure at the height of the Great Depression, partially because the records and playback equipment were expensive, and partially because the audio performance was poor (tracking ability depends upon, among other things, the stylus's radius of curvature, and it would require the smaller-radius stylus of the microgroove system to make slower-speed records track acceptably). The system was withdrawn from the market after about a year. (This was not the first attempt at a commercial long play record format, as Edison Records had marketed a microgroove vertically recorded disc with 20 minutes playing time per side the previous decade; the Edison long playing records were also a commercial failure.)

In 1930, RCA became a crucial and key tenant in the yet to be constructed landmark building of the Rockefeller Center complex, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which from 1933 became known as the RCA building, now the GE Building. This critical lease in the massive project enabled it to proceed as a commercially viable venture.

Separation from General Electric

In 1930, the U.S. Department of Justice brought antitrust charges against RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. As a result, GE and Westinghouse gave up their ownership interests in RCA. RCA was allowed to keep its radio factories, and GE and Westinghouse were allowed to compete in that business after 30 months.

Electronic television

, created by RCA in 1939 and widely used until color television gained in popularity.]]

In 1939, RCA demonstrated an all-electronic television system at the New York World's Fair and developed the USA's first-ever television test pattern. With the introduction of the NTSC standard, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the start of commercial television transmission on July 1, 1941. World War II slowed the deployment of television in the US, but RCA began selling television sets almost immediately after the war was over. (See also: History of television) RCA labs was closely involved in RADAR and radio development efforts in support of the war effort. These development efforts greatly assisted RCA in their television research efforts.

RCA was one of the leading makers of vacuum tubes (branded Radiotron) in the USA, creating a series of innovative products ranging from octal base metal tubes co-developed with General Electric before World War II to the transistor-sized Nuvistor used in the tuners of the New Vista series of television sets. The Nuvistor tubes were a last hurrah for vacuum tubes and were meant to be a competitive technology for the relatively newly introduced transistors. RCA also partnered with Tung-Sol to produce the legendary KT88/6550 hi-fi vacuum tube. Their power in the marketplace was so strong that they effectively set the selling prices for vacuum tubes in the USA. Except for the main cathode ray tube (CRT), the company had completely switched from tubes to solid-state television sets by 1975.

Antitrust concerns led to the breakup of the NBC radio networks by the FCC, a breakup affirmed by the United States Supreme Court. On October 12, 1943, the "NBC Blue" radio network was sold to Life Savers candy magnate Edward J. Noble for $8,000,000, and renamed "The Blue Network, Inc". It would become the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) in 1946. The "NBC Red" network retained the NBC name, and RCA retained ownership.

In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the cornerstone was laid for a research and development facility, RCA Laboratories, located along Route 1 and just north of New Jersey Rte 571 in Princeton, New Jersey. It was in this facility that myriad innovations and key technology such as color television, the electron microscope, CMOS based technology, heterojunction physics, optoelectronic emitting devices, Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), video cassette recorders, direct broadcast television, direct broadcast satellite systems and high-definition television would be invented and developed during ensuing years. (After 1988, the facility would be known as Sarnoff Corporation, a subsidiary of SRI International.) During World War II, RCA organizations won five Army–Navy ‘E’ Awards for Excellence in production. Also during the war, ties between RCA and JVC were severed.

In 1949, RCA-Victor developed and released the first 45 rpm record to the public, answering CBS/Columbia's 33⅓ rpm "LP". In 1953, RCA's all electronic color-TV technology was adopted as the standard for American color TV; it is now known as NTSC (after the "National Television System Committee" that approved it). RCA cameras and studio gear, particularly of the TK-40/41 series, became standard equipment at many American television network affiliates, as RCA CT-100 ("RCA Merrill" to dealers) television sets introduced color television to the public.

In 1955, RCA sold its Estate large appliance operations to Whirlpool Corporation. As part of the deal, Whirlpool was given the rights to market "RCA Whirlpool" appliances through the mid-1960s.

Despite the company's indisputable leadership in television technology, David Sarnoff in 1955 commented, "Television will never be a medium of entertainment".

RCA was one of the eight major computer companies (along with IBM, Burroughs, Control Data Corporation, General Electric, Honeywell, NCR and UNIVAC) through most of the 1960s. RCA marketed the Spectra 70 Series (70/15, 70/25, 70/35, 70/45, 70/46, 70/55, 70/60, 70/61) that were compatible with IBM’s 360 series and the RCA Series (RCA 2, 3, 6, 7) competing against the IBM 370. These systems all ran RCA’s real memory operating systems, DOS and TDOS. RCA’s Virtual Memory Systems, the Spectra 70/46 and 70/61 and the RCA 3 and 7 could also run their Virtual Memory Operating System, VMOS. VMOS was originally named TSOS (Time Sharing Operating System), but was renamed in order to expand the system beyond the time sharing market. In fact RCA was credited with coining the term Virtual Memory. TSOS was the first mainframe, demand paging, virtual memory operating system on the market. The English Electric System 4 range, the 4-10, 4-30, 4-50,4-70 and the time-sharing 4-75 computers were essentially RCA Spectra 70 clones of the IBM System /360 and 370 range. RCA abandoned computers in 1971. In January 1972, Sperry officially took over the RCA base.

RCA Graphic Services Division (GSD) was a pioneer in computerized typesetting, marketing the Rudolf Hell Digiset as the VideoComp 800 with a Spectra computer running the FileComp composition system. The system would also typeset from tapes composed on a mainframe using the RCA Page-1 composition system. When RCA left the computer field, support of the VideoComp was taken over by Information International Inc. (known in the typesetting industry as Triple-I).

RCA was a major proponent of the eight-track tape cartridge, which it launched in 1965. The eight-track cartridge initially had a huge and profitable impact on the consumer marketplace. However, sales of the 8-track tape format peaked early on as consumers increasingly favored the compact cassette tape format developed by competitor Philips.

Later years

Sarnoff, whose ambition and business had helped RCA become one of the world's largest companies, turned the company over to his son Robert in 1970. He died the next year, aged 80.

During the 1970s, RCA Corporation, as it was now formally known, ventured into other markets. Under Robert Sarnoff's leadership, RCA diversified far beyond electronics and communications. The company acquired Hertz (rental cars), Banquet (frozen foods), Coronet (carpeting), Random House (publishing) and Gibson (greeting cards), yet slipped into financial disarray, with wags calling it "Rugs Chickens & Automobiles" to poke fun at their attempt at becoming a conglomerate.

Robert Sarnoff was ousted in a 1975 boardroom coup by Anthony Conrad, who resigned a year later after he admitted failing to file income tax returns for six years. RCA maintained its high standards of engineering excellence in broadcast engineering and satellite communications equipment, but ventures such as the NBC radio and television networks declined.

RCA was still profitable in 1983, when it switched manufacturers of its VHS VCRs from Panasonic to Hitachi.

Forays into new consumer electronics products lost money. The SelectaVision videodisc system, not to be confused with the same trademark RCA applied to their VCRs, could not compete against cheaper, recordable videotape technology, and was abandoned in 1985 for a write-off of several hundred million dollars.

In 1984, RCA Broadcast Systems Division moved from Camden, New Jersey, to the site of the RCA antenna engineering facility in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. In the years that followed, the broadcast product lines developed in Camden were terminated or sold off, and most of the buildings demolished, save for the original RCA Victor buildings that had been declared national historical buildings. For several years, RCA spinoff L-3 Communications Systems East was headquartered in the building, but has since moved to an adjacent building built by the city for them. The building now houses shops and luxury loft apartments.

Takeover and break-up by GE

Business and financial conditions led to RCA's takeover by GE in 1986 and its subsequent break-up. GE sold its 50 percent interest in then-RCA/Ariola International Records to its partner Bertelsmann and the company was renamed BMG Music, for Bertelsmann Music Group.

GE then sold the rights to make RCA- and GE-branded televisions and other consumer electronics products to the French Thomson Consumer Electronics, in exchange for some of Thomson's medical businesses.

RCA Laboratories was transferred to SRI International as the David Sarnoff Research Center, subsequently renamed Sarnoff Corporation. Sarnoff Labs was put on a five-year plan whereby GE would fund the labs' activities 100 percent for the first year, then reduce its support to zero or near zero after the fifth year. This required Sarnoff Labs to change its business model to become an industrial contract research facility.

The only RCA unit GE kept was the National Broadcasting Company. GE sold the NBC Radio Network to Westwood One and all of its radio stations to various owners.

For information on the RCA brand after 1986, see RCA (trademark).

Legacy

RCA antique radios and RCA Merrill/CT-100s and other early color television receivers are among the more sought-after collectible radios and televisions, thanks to their popularity during the golden age of radio, their manufacturing quality, their engineering innovations, their styling and their name, RCA.

, that once housed the vast RCA Victor complex.]] stained glass atop the "Nipper Tower" in the former Building 17. This photo, taken from inside the "Nipper Tower", shows the 2003 replacement of the 1978 replacement of the 1915 original glass.]]

The historic RCA Victor Building 17, the "Nipper Building", in Camden, New Jersey, was converted to luxury apartments in 2003.

Environmental record

A former RCA facility in Taiwan's northern county of Taoyuan polluted groundwater with toxic chemicals and led to a high incidence of cancer among former employees. The area was declared a toxic site by the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Agency. Both GE and Thomson spent millions of dollars for cleanup, removing of soil and installing municipal water treatment facilities for neighboring communities. A spokesman for RCA's current owners denied responsibility, saying a study conducted by the Taiwan government showed no correlation between the illnesses and the company's facilities, which shut down in 1991.

A plant in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, owned by RCA from the late 1940s to June 1986 released more than 250,000 pounds of pollutants per year from its exhaust stacks. Tested by the EPA in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the groundwater at the facility is contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE) and 1,2-dichloroethylene (1,2-DCE). In 1991 and 1992, contaminants were detected in monitoring wells on the east side of the Conestoga River in Lancaster.

The shallow and deep groundwater aquifers beneath the Intersil Facility in Mountaintop, Pennsylvania, which RCA operated in the 1960s and later sold to Harris Semiconductor, contain elevated levels of volatile organic compounds.

A former RCA site in Burlington, Massachusetts, which was used from 1958 to 1994 to make and test military electronics equipment, generating hazardous waste, including VOCs, TCE, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes.

In Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, a plant generated wastes containing chromium, selenium and iron. Four lagoons holding chemical waste drained into the limestone aquifer. Used water from the manufacturing process (process water), containing ferric chloride, was treated on-site to remove contaminants and discharged into a sinkhole at the site. The treatment of process water created a sludge that was stored on-site in drying beds and in surface impoundments.

See also

Ampliphase

Berliner Gramophone Company, whose Canadian operation became RCA Victor of Canada

RCA Mark II Sound Synthesizer

RCA connector

CMOS 4000 series

RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video, joint venture between RCA and Columbia Pictures

RKO Pictures, founded in part by RCA

RCA Photophone, Motion Picture sound recording

Electrofax

Harold H. Beverage vice president of research and development at RCA Communications Inc

Ernst F. W. Alexanderson RCA's first Chief Engineer, 1920–1924

George H. Brown, research engineer who headed RCA's development of color television

Colortrak and Colortrak 2000, a notable trademark for RCA's color TVs from the past

Dimensia, a very high-end advanced trademark TV for RCA

RCA Records

Claude Robinson, American pioneer in advertising and opinion survey research

Film Chain—RCA TK-26, TK-27 and TK-28

Professional video cameras—TK 47 and more''

Victor Company of Japan (JVC)

References

Robert N. Sobel: RCA New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1986. ISBN 0-8128-3084-9

Featured here: http://wethemedia.edublogs.org/the-jfk-berlin-programme/

External links

RCA History from Thomson Consumer Electronics

Intech Contractors/Construction Managers. The Victor Project. Converting the "Nipper" building into apartments

RCAGlobal.com - a web site dedicated to what was RCA Global Communications

The Victor Lofts

RCA Radio Central, Rock Point, Long Island, NY

RCA Taiwan factory pollution

RCA TV equipment archive

Category:Companies established in 1919 Category:NBC television network Category:RCA brands Category:Rockefeller Center Category:Defunct companies based in New York Category:Defunct computer companies of the United States Category:Thomson SA Category:Electronics companies of the United States Category:Companies disestablished in 1986 Category:Former components of the DJIA