Dark anniversary coming up GE takeover of RCA

[wa2ise]

Twenty years ago sometime next week. I was there (RCA Sarnoff Lab) and it wans't pretty *Was* a great place to work until this happened.

I suppose that the major shareholders were worried that RCA management would blow another half $ billion like they did on that capacitence video disc system a few years before. That thing bombed.

[Sandy G]

I always thought it was Sarnoff's son, Bobby, that helped drive RCA into the ground w/this & a few other ill-advised endeavors. But weren't RCA & GE in cahoots w/each other way, way back in the '20s? -Sandy G.

[David Roper]

Interesting thing about the GE/RCA relationship as it relates to the metal tubes which RCA loved and contnued to incorporate into consumer stuff into the mid fifties: GE developed them in the mid thirties, but by the late thirties seemed to want nothing more to do with them than Zenith or Philco did. GE prewar TV sets sport an amazing amount of glass on their chassis, using metal tubes only where absolutely necessary.

[bgadow]

I guess it was earlier this week...it was in "today in history" one day or another. I have a little tile hanging on the wall advertising "GE & RCA together again". I've seen several things like that.

It would be interesting to me to know just how things went down at "ground level" both at places like the Sarnoff Lab & at GE Portsmouth, which I guess didn't last long, either.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by bgadow

It would be interesting to me to know just how things went down at "ground level" both at places like the Sarnoff Lab & at GE Portsmouth, which I guess didn't last long, either.

It took about a year fo GE management to get around to the Sarnoff Lab. They were busy with the Indy consumer electronics siteand Bloomington manufacturing plant, along with the various defense contractor and space divisions. GE wanted NBC and the areospace stuff, and wasn't that excited about having consumer electronics and the Sarnoff R&D lab. As well as a security camera division in Landcaster PA and other such. And there was RCA semiconductor. Ever go to a swap meet or garage sale, and see a box full of stuff you want, but it has other stuff you don't really want, but the seller says you gotta take the entire box? "R&D lab? We don't need no stinkin R&D lab!" At the time NJ was trying to promote the Princeton NJ area as "Silicon Valley east coast", and the Sarnoff Lab was a flagship of this. Various local politicians got GE to not just shut the lab down. GE gave the lab away to some place called "SRI" Standford Research Institute IIRC as a tax writeoff. Then they canned about half of us. The place was a great place to work, invented a bunch of patents (mostly mundane small stuff, but I get to brag that I have 13 patents!), and most of us hung around betting that the place would survive. If this was a "friendly" takeover, I'd hate to see a hostile takeover. We were essentially raped and pillaged.

Haven't bought anything from GE since....

[Chad Hauris]

Wasn't this also about the time the GE tube factory in Owensboro KY shut down?

[Telecolor 3007]

I wonder what Mr. David Sarnoff would do if he sow what his beloved company reached to be today?

[andy]

From some of the questionable business practices RCA had in its heyday, it sounds like they finally got what they deserved. Wasn't RCA the Microsoft of its day? It's a shame so many hard working people had to suffer as a result though.

[Sandy G]

Sarnoff was legendary in his own mind. But he DID have the drive, foresight, & enuff technical understanding to basically start, almost singlehandedly, the broadcast industry.But he WAS a ruthless sonofabitch-witness his needless personal destruction of Major Armstrong, the inventor of FM, who had been one of his closest friends. Another quote attributed to him was "I don't get ulcers-I GIVE them..."and his insistance on being called "General" after the war, offer evidence to this. Sarnoff, Henry Ford, & a few others,we're not likely to see their likes again.-Sandy G.

[Telecolor 3007]

@Sandy G: Sanroff was a Jew, and Jews are very smart fellows.
Maybe "R.C.A." would be in a better situation today if it had manufactured P.A.L. tv sets or other stuff for the Europeanen market.
I'm curios, those "R.C.A." tv sets Made in China have China Made components or U.S.A. Made components?

[Dynacoman]

[QUOTE=Telecolor 3007]@Sandy G: Sanroff was a Jew, and Jews are very smart fellows.


And everyone else is dumb? Unbelievable.

[Yamaha B-2]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

@Sandy G: Sanroff was a Jew, and Jews are very smart fellows.

Not sure what this has to do with anything. Perhaps it is a peculiarly sad eastern European viewpoint. There are many things one could say about such bigoted points of view. But they are obvious. And, Sarnoff was long dead by the time any of this took place.

As someone who taught in a university engineering department at the time, we did benefit greatly from GE's shutdown of RCA's electronics manufacturing business. They shutdown both the Somerville, NJ and Riviera Beach, FL plants and we were able to get two complete, fully automated Thermco 9000 4-tube furnaces donated to our Center for Microelectronics, which was a 2500 square foot class 10 cleanroom that was used by the engineering and applied physics students for their research and studies. We paid for the transport and quartz and got 8-tubes of state-of-the-art gear. Also got a couple of pieces of deposition gear (one thermal and one e-gun). Items we would have taken many years to get if not for GE's largess. While not saying that GE did it right, RCA definitely had done it wrong and the old management simply had no vision of the future. As will almost all failures of U.S. businesses, you can look at bad management. In fact, I would say 99+% of the time, it is bad management.

[Sandy G]

Our Romanian friend makes a good point, altho for the wrong reason. Sarnoff WAS a Russian Jew, who like so many others, came here when he was quite young to hopefully have a much better life, indeed, to be able to live & not starve. He was desperately poor, & the incredible drive & willpower he showed later in life were undoubtedly due to the desire he had to never go back to the poverty he'd experienced as a young man. He WAS a smart fellow, to be sure, but I don't think it had much to do w/his being Jewish. Maybe being Jewish taught him how to thrive in adversity a little better than most, but I kinda get the impression Sarnoff was the quintessential "self-made" man.-Sandy G.

[nasadowsk]

<i>From some of the questionable business practices RCA had in its heyday, it sounds like they finally got what they deserved. Wasn't RCA the Microsoft of its day?</i>

Yeah. Billy boy can only dream of the power Sarnoff had, though. Back in the 30's 40's 50's, you couldn't make anything with a tube in it without bumping into an RCA patent...

Sarnoff's screwing of FM, TV, color, etc is well documented. It's a shame the FCC was such a pushover back then, we could have had FM sooner (none of the switcharoo hanky panky), better TV standards (Dumont at least was pushing for a far better standard that the 525 system we got socked with). Not to mention, had RCA not gone out and claimed 100% credit for a color system they were only partly responsible in creating...

I look at MS the same way I see RCA - once Bill goes, the company's on borrowed time. RCA basically died with Sarnoff...

As far as GE? Ever read that Pittsburgh area paper story on the rise/fall of Westinghouse? GE's rumored to be looking into dumping Appliances and a few other things... IMHO, Welch and Immelt's chase for the almighty dollar is going to kill them inside 20 years...

[Yamaha B-2]

Originally Posted by nasadowsk

As far as GE? Ever read that Pittsburgh area paper story on the rise/fall of Westinghouse?

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