Speaker 1: With technology with tex Stuff from Stuff. Hey there, and
Speaker 1: welcome to tex Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and today I'm
Speaker 1: going to do in part one of an episode about
Speaker 1: a company called Phillips or Royal Phillips has actually had
Speaker 1: several names over its storied history, and I am going
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about what the company has done,
Speaker 1: where it's from. And this is from a listeners suggestion.
Speaker 1: Roger actually asked this. Roger wrote, I'm an avid Tech
Speaker 1: Stuff podcast listener from the UK, especially enjoying the company histories.
Speaker 1: I have two companies that I think would be quite
Speaker 1: interesting to cover. The first is Royal Phillips. Phillips has
Speaker 1: been an innovator since the eighteen hundreds, with everything from
Speaker 1: light bulbs through to high tech medical scanning equipment, with
Speaker 1: a few consumer items such as compact sets, video recorders,
Speaker 1: laser disc and CD DVD technology thrown in for good measure.
Speaker 1: It would be great to get the history, but I
Speaker 1: really wanted to look at Phillips and talk about the
Speaker 1: history of this company. It is interesting because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people when they think of electronics, they
Speaker 1: tend to think of either American companies like General Electric
Speaker 1: or Westinghouse, or they think about Japanese companies like Sony
Speaker 1: and others are along those lines, but they tend to
Speaker 1: forget that there were European companies that were instrumental in
Speaker 1: the development of electronics, and in fact, Phillips is one
Speaker 1: of those companies. So I thought I would tackle the
Speaker 1: company history of Royal Phillips, better known as just Phillips
Speaker 1: here in the USA. Although we'll get into how Phillips
Speaker 1: is changing even as I speak, that will probably be
Speaker 1: in part two. So Part one we're gonna focus on
Speaker 1: the founding of the company and go through up to
Speaker 1: about the beginning of World War Two, or at least
Speaker 1: the Netherlands involvement in World War Two. Because the Phillips
Speaker 1: is a company that originates from the Netherlands, the company
Speaker 1: actually takes its name from a family. The patriarch of
Speaker 1: that family was Benjamin Frederick David Phillips, who went by Frederick.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call him Freddie Baby, So Freddie Baby was
Speaker 1: born in the Netherlands on December one, eighteen thirty. He
Speaker 1: was the fourth son of a family that made its
Speaker 1: money in the tobacco trade. His father, Lyon Phillips, was
Speaker 1: very successful tobacco merchant. Um probably merchant is being too
Speaker 1: narrowly defined. Uh. He was also a cousin to another
Speaker 1: notable person in history, Carl Marx, who was the author
Speaker 1: of the Communist Manifesto, and in fact, Marx would often
Speaker 1: call upon his relatives, the Phillips whenever he was in
Speaker 1: need of money. So while Marx was, you know, a
Speaker 1: communist and believed very much in the distribution of wealth
Speaker 1: across the workers, he was not above asking his wealthy
Speaker 1: merchant class uh distant family for for cash when he
Speaker 1: needed it. Frederick Phillips became a banker and he was
Speaker 1: incredibly successful. He built up a really healthy fortune, and
Speaker 1: he married a woman by the name of Mary Hayliger's.
Speaker 1: By the way, there are a lot of Dutch names
Speaker 1: in this and the next podcast that I will be butchering,
Speaker 1: largely because Dutch is similar to German, which I know
Speaker 1: a little bit of, but different enough that my instincts
Speaker 1: on how to pronounce things are often going to be wrong.
Speaker 1: So my apologies to all of you Dutch speakers out
Speaker 1: there and really everyone else too, as I butcher these names.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna do my best anyway. Frederick Phillips and
Speaker 1: his wife had ten children, not all of them survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood, and one of those children was a son
Speaker 1: by the name of Gerard Leonardo Frederick Phillips, best known
Speaker 1: just as Gerard Phillips. Now, when Frederick was in his sixties,
Speaker 1: he became inspired by his son, Gerard, who was interested
Speaker 1: in making carbon filaments for lightbulbs. This would be around
Speaker 1: eighteen one, and that was around when electricity was kind
Speaker 1: of on the verge of replacing gas lamps for lighting.
Speaker 1: But as we've talked about in tech stuff on previous occasions,
Speaker 1: it was really tricky to build an electric light bulb
Speaker 1: that could burn brightly enough and last long enough to
Speaker 1: be a practical replacement for gas lamp. A lot of
Speaker 1: those early filaments would burn out very rapidly, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of different innovators who were working
Speaker 1: in this space to try and find a way to
Speaker 1: make those filaments last long enough for an electric light
Speaker 1: bulb to really be practical. In fact, I would argue
Speaker 1: that Edison's major contribution was the development of a filament
Speaker 1: that was longer lasting than most of the predecessors. Uh
Speaker 1: he didn't invent the light bulb. He just improved upon it. Well.
Speaker 1: Gerard was interested in this as well and was working
Speaker 1: very hard on trying to come up with a carbon
Speaker 1: filament that could be of practical use. And he went
Speaker 1: to his father and said, maybe we could create a
Speaker 1: company specifically for this purpose, and Frederick Phillips agreed to
Speaker 1: back his son Gerard and they formed the Phillips and Company.
Speaker 1: Uh they actually purchased a factory in the town of
Speaker 1: Eindhoven to make lightbulbs. Now, at that time, Eindhoven was
Speaker 1: sort of a modest industrial town. Today it's actually known
Speaker 1: as a center of innovation and high tech scholarship, and
Speaker 1: that's largely due to the influence of the Phillips company.
Speaker 1: But it didn't take off immediately. In fact, at first
Speaker 1: the company really struggled. So Gerard was a mechanical engineer
Speaker 1: and was really good at that. He was he was
Speaker 1: very innovative, very clever. He graduated from delf University in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty three with a degree in mechanical engineering. And
Speaker 1: he had also worked for a company called a e
Speaker 1: G which, along with another company called Siemens and Hausk,
Speaker 1: was a dominant player in the electric lighting industry in Europe. Now,
Speaker 1: according to historical accounts, the lamps that Gerard was producing
Speaker 1: from Phillips and Company were of excellent quality. They were
Speaker 1: a amazingly long lasting lamps compared to the competitors, and
Speaker 1: they're very pretty, very beautiful design. The factory itself had
Speaker 1: twenty eight people working there and they were earning good
Speaker 1: wages comparatively speaking, So everything was going well on that end,
Speaker 1: But the business itself was not doing so well. The
Speaker 1: sales weren't reflecting the quality, and by nineteen by eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, rather the business was already in trouble and
Speaker 1: in fact teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. So it
Speaker 1: was founded in eighteen by eighteen ninety four, it's already shaky.
Speaker 1: And the main problem was that Gerard Phillips, while he
Speaker 1: was an accomplished mechanical engineer, had very little business acumen.
Speaker 1: He could produce amazing work, but he had trouble managing
Speaker 1: the business side of things, and so in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: four his younger brother, Anton Ellops joined the company. Now,
Speaker 1: Anton had a background in business and also was a
Speaker 1: much more outgoing personality than his brother was. Gerard was
Speaker 1: kind of a solitary worker. He preferred to do research
Speaker 1: in the lab and have a quiet environment and avoid conversation,
Speaker 1: which he often thought of as being unnecessary and a
Speaker 1: distraction from work. Meanwhile, Anton was much more outgoing. He
Speaker 1: enjoyed socializing and networking and was sort of a born salesman.
Speaker 1: So together the two brothers were able to turn the
Speaker 1: company around. Gerard was still the head of the company,
Speaker 1: but Anton became kind of the director of sales, and
Speaker 1: soon orders were pouring in from all over Europe and beyond.
Speaker 1: One of the first big clients of the Phillips and
Speaker 1: company uh business was the Star of Russia. So the
Speaker 1: Russian tsar at really purchased Phillips lamps to light up
Speaker 1: the Winter Palace to a pretty big deal, especially when
Speaker 1: you consider that Karl Marx was a relative. Very interesting experience,
Speaker 1: and there are in fact entire books written about Karl
Speaker 1: Marx and the Phillips family and how that relationship was
Speaker 1: complicated and how the different philosophies were at play. While
Speaker 1: the Phillips family was still sympathetic at least two Marx's
Speaker 1: plight enough so that they were giving him money when
Speaker 1: he needed it. Very interesting stuff but kind of beyond
Speaker 1: the scope of tech stuff. I'll leave that to stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class. Maybe they can do an
Speaker 1: episode about Karl Marx and his relationship with the Phillips family.
Speaker 1: At any rate, back to Phillips UH. While Anton was
Speaker 1: becoming something of a sales legend in Europe, his brother
Speaker 1: Gerard headed up research and development back in Eindhoven. So
Speaker 1: Gerard was constantly improving designs to build better lamps, and
Speaker 1: then Anton would go and sell those designs to customers.
Speaker 1: And because of Gerard's success, UH, and because of his
Speaker 1: his reputation as a brilliant designer, Anton was actually able
Speaker 1: to promise his clients that the company was always working
Speaker 1: on improving designs and innovating in the space. And this
Speaker 1: really became a great example of a buzzword known as synergy.
Speaker 1: You've probably heard synergy a lot of times. Synergy it
Speaker 1: basically means it's the process of creating a whole that's
Speaker 1: greater than the sum of its parts. And this is
Speaker 1: really the case with the Phillips brothers. Individually, they were
Speaker 1: both intelligent men who were quite capable in their own spheres,
Speaker 1: but together they were able to accomplish a lot more
Speaker 1: than they could have done on their own. In fact,
Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, if Gerard had not received help
Speaker 1: from his brother, it's quite possible that the Phillips Company
Speaker 1: would have gone bankrupt before they were able to really
Speaker 1: make an impact well. By seven, the business changed because
Speaker 1: carbon filaments went obsolete. There were there was a better
Speaker 1: technology in place that would last longer, it burned brighter
Speaker 1: and used the same amount of energy as carbon filaments,
Speaker 1: and that would be tungsten wire filament. So Phillips and
Speaker 1: Company switched to designing lamps that used tungsten wire. It
Speaker 1: could actually produce three times the amount of light with
Speaker 1: the same amount of electricity as a carbon filament lamp,
Speaker 1: so it made sense to make that change. In nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: the company was listed on the AMSTERDAMN Stock Exchange and
Speaker 1: became a limited company called all Right, I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: it a shot, guys, but this is gonna be it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna sound like a three year old trying to
Speaker 1: sound out a word because it's it's very intimidating. So
Speaker 1: the company became known as in V. Phillips Glow is
Speaker 1: lump in fabricn gloile, lump and fabrican is how I
Speaker 1: will say that, and all you Dutch speakers out there
Speaker 1: can scoff at me justifiably anyway. A limited company, in
Speaker 1: case you're wondering, it's an organization made up of investors,
Speaker 1: and each of those investors is protected from liability to
Speaker 1: the extent of their own investment in the business. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, just just a simple example, if you
Speaker 1: invested ten thousand dollars in a limited company, you couldn't
Speaker 1: be held accountable for more than ten thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: liability should something go catastrophically wrong. So really, a liability
Speaker 1: company is meant to protect the people that invest in it.
Speaker 1: It thus gives you an incentive to invest in the
Speaker 1: pany because you stand to gain from your investment and
Speaker 1: you're protected from anything really unfortunate. So, for example, if
Speaker 1: it's proven that the company h mishandled funds in some
Speaker 1: criminal way, you have a level of protection because of
Speaker 1: the nature of that organization, assuming you're not the actual
Speaker 1: person committing the crime. In nineteen fourteen, Phillips and Company
Speaker 1: established the net Lab, which was a research and development
Speaker 1: facility dedicated to innovation and improving existing technology. Now in
Speaker 1: that lab in a T L a B. Is actually
Speaker 1: a nickname. The full name for the facility is again,
Speaker 1: all right, the Phillips neture Kundig Laboratory. UM, I'm so sorry. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the center was necessary because by this time the company
Speaker 1: was beginning to explore other technologies, not just incandescent lamps,
Speaker 1: and the company also wanted to develop its own patents
Speaker 1: so it wouldn't be dependent upon third parties. So by
Speaker 1: that I mean, um, all right, So let's say that
Speaker 1: that you want to be able to use a particular process. Well,
Speaker 1: when a person or organization receives a patent, when they
Speaker 1: filed for a patent and they're granted that patent, their
Speaker 1: design is made public. That's part of the agreement to
Speaker 1: have a process or design patented. When you do that,
Speaker 1: that particular design is publicly available. Anyone can go and
Speaker 1: pull up the patent and see how it is you're
Speaker 1: doing the thing you are doing. That's all part of
Speaker 1: the filing process. But in return for publicly saying this
Speaker 1: is how we do things, the patent holder gets exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to use that particulcular design or approach in whatever
Speaker 1: way they want for a given amount of time, and
Speaker 1: that given amount of time has changed over the years,
Speaker 1: but essentially says that for x amount of years, you
Speaker 1: get exclusive rights to this design. You can do whatever
Speaker 1: you want with it, and if anyone else uses that
Speaker 1: same design without your permission, you can sue them for infringement.
Speaker 1: So the design is publicly available, which gives the protection.
Speaker 1: Gives protection to the person who holds the patent because
Speaker 1: then they can say, well, clearly, you stole my idea
Speaker 1: because my idea is publicly available for you to read.
Speaker 1: But I am protected. I can use that idea exclusively
Speaker 1: and I did not give you permission. So even if
Speaker 1: a company came up with its own approach that just
Speaker 1: happened to be the same approach as what has already
Speaker 1: been established in a patent, they would be liable because
Speaker 1: they'd be using a system that was already documented in
Speaker 1: the patent system. So it's a very interesting way of
Speaker 1: protecting your ideas. But one thing you can do if
Speaker 1: you own a patent is well, first, first of all,
Speaker 1: you can sell it if you want. So if you
Speaker 1: are the holder of a patent, you can actually sell
Speaker 1: your patents to another entity. In fact, there are other
Speaker 1: companies that that's all they do is just buy up patents.
Speaker 1: But you can also license your patents to other parties. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you come up with a brilliant idea
Speaker 1: on a way to design a particular style of lightbulb,
Speaker 1: and a company wants to make lightbulbs using your design,
Speaker 1: so they pay you a licensing fee, and in return,
Speaker 1: you give them permission to use your patented idea. Everyone benefits.
Speaker 1: The company can sell products and make make profit. That way,
Speaker 1: you profit from being able to license your idea to
Speaker 1: someone else. And in fact, there's some companies that's all
Speaker 1: they do is licensed patents. They don't make anything. They
Speaker 1: hold the patents for making stuff, but they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have any manufacturing facilities. They just licensed it out to
Speaker 1: other people. They're also companies called patent trolls, and patent
Speaker 1: trolls are a little different. Instead of licensing a patent
Speaker 1: to other companies, they wait until a company makes a
Speaker 1: product or some other system that infringes upon a patent
Speaker 1: and then they threatened to sue unless the company settles
Speaker 1: for an enormous sum of money out of court. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what a patent troll is. That it's a it's
Speaker 1: an entity that has no interest in putting its patents
Speaker 1: to work in any way other than as a means
Speaker 1: of leveraging power over other companies that would want to
Speaker 1: use that process. All right, at any rate, Gerard and
Speaker 1: Anton thought it was really intelligent to develop a company
Speaker 1: specific research and development facility to help file patents so
Speaker 1: that the company itself wouldn't have to rely on licensing
Speaker 1: these third party entities in order to make stuff. The
Speaker 1: first director of the nat Lab was a man named
Speaker 1: Jiels Holst. Holst was an engineer turned physicist, a doctor.
Speaker 1: Doctor Holst a former teacher. He was a professional researcher.
Speaker 1: He did early research into super conductivity. That's where you
Speaker 1: cool down a conductive substance, you know, a metal, You
Speaker 1: cool it down to very very very low temperatures and
Speaker 1: that will eliminate electrical resistance, meaning you have a perfect conductor. Uh.
Speaker 1: Holst also had worked with Madame Curie in some of
Speaker 1: her experiments and radio activity, so very important person. And
Speaker 1: Holst was a big thinker, and he was determined to
Speaker 1: give his researchers a huge amount of freedom to explore
Speaker 1: fundamental scientific questions, even if there were no immediately applicable
Speaker 1: outcomes to that that that area of inquiry. So in
Speaker 1: other words, he said, it doesn't matter if the questions
Speaker 1: you are asking immediately result in some sort of product
Speaker 1: that Phillips can sell. It's important for us to answer
Speaker 1: the questions. So go out there and do that. And
Speaker 1: the result was that then Lab became an important center
Speaker 1: of research and Phillips and Company actually benefited as a result.
Speaker 1: It's a good example of how fundamental research can result
Speaker 1: in benefits, even if you didn't see the possibility when
Speaker 1: you started out. Some of that research helped in the
Speaker 1: development of infrared and X ray technology, which no one
Speaker 1: really could have predicted at the time. Host was also
Speaker 1: UH important because he invited individuals in the scientific field
Speaker 1: to come to nat Lab and to give lectures. For example,
Speaker 1: a physicist of certain renown named Albert Einstein gave a
Speaker 1: talk at that lab in nineteen twenty three. So it
Speaker 1: really was a center of learning and research and UH
Speaker 1: and kind of a point of pride in the Netherlands
Speaker 1: as well. All right, well, let's go back to nineteen
Speaker 1: fifteen UH and the history of the company. So now
Speaker 1: we're getting into the time of World War One, um, which,
Speaker 1: of course back then was just the Great War, So
Speaker 1: the Netherlands maintained a neutral status during World War One
Speaker 1: and as a result, operations at Phillips remained largely undisturbed.
Speaker 1: In addition, the war was creating coal shortages, and that
Speaker 1: meant that it was harder for people for companies to
Speaker 1: produce coal gas, which meant it was harder to fuel
Speaker 1: gas lamps, and it forced a lot more people to
Speaker 1: convert to using electricity. So, in other words, World War
Speaker 1: One actually generated business for the Phillips company. So to
Speaker 1: support the production of new lamps, Phillips invested in a
Speaker 1: couple of different properties to uh to really ramp up production.
Speaker 1: One of them was an Argone production facility. They had
Speaker 1: a Argone lamp that was efficient and inexpensive, so it
Speaker 1: was very popular. They also purchased a glass manufacturing plant
Speaker 1: in order to ramp up production on their lamps. In
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Phillips introduced a medical X ray tube, which
Speaker 1: officially diversified the company from just the incandescent lamp business.
Speaker 1: Then that lab was busy researching technologies and filing patents
Speaker 1: for everything from gas diffusion to radio wave reception and
Speaker 1: the company also began to expand to other countries. They
Speaker 1: opened up sales forces in the United States and in France,
Speaker 1: and a little bit later in Australia, Brazil and China,
Speaker 1: so they were not taking things slowly. In the early
Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century. Now, the X ray business
Speaker 1: was still really new in nineteen nineteen. Phillips started in
Speaker 1: the business by repairing X ray tubes during World War
Speaker 1: One and then moved to manufacturing tubes on a small
Speaker 1: scale in the Phillips research laboratory. But early X ray
Speaker 1: tubes had some pretty distinct disadvantages. One was that they
Speaker 1: emitted radiation in all directions, not just whichever one you
Speaker 1: happen to be interested in, which is not just inefficient,
Speaker 1: it's also dangerous. Because X ray radiation is ionizing radiation.
Speaker 1: It can potentially cause cancer if you're exposed to it,
Speaker 1: so having it emit in all directions was not safe.
Speaker 1: They also relied on high voltage cables, which were exposed
Speaker 1: and thus potentially dangerous. You can electrocute yourself even if
Speaker 1: you were safe from the radiation, you could just die
Speaker 1: from the electricity. But a man known as a Bowers
Speaker 1: of the Phillips Research labor Laboratory came up with a solution.
Speaker 1: Bowers designed a cylindrical X ray tube. The earlier X
Speaker 1: ray tubes were actually spherical, so kind of like a
Speaker 1: light bulb is. But the ones the Bowers made were
Speaker 1: cylindrical and had a grounded metal canister with a glass
Speaker 1: window on one side of the canister. So imagine that
Speaker 1: you've got a cylindrical uh, glass tube. You slide that
Speaker 1: into a metal canister. The metal canister has one side cutout,
Speaker 1: so it's like a window, and then you coat the
Speaker 1: metal canister with lead and that way, when you turn
Speaker 1: on the X ray tube, X rays can only come
Speaker 1: out the window side. They can't go through the lead
Speaker 1: lined case. So you thus made it more efficient and
Speaker 1: safer because you could you could direct the path of
Speaker 1: the X rays. Uh. It took a few tweaks to
Speaker 1: get the design just right, but it was a success
Speaker 1: and Phillips began to market it. They called it Meta
Speaker 1: licks or metallic X M E T A l I X.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna take a quick break from talking about
Speaker 1: X rays for a second. I'm gonna come back to
Speaker 1: that in a minute, but I want to mention a
Speaker 1: few things that also happened around this same time frame. First,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty, a company called Yeah, that's happening again,
Speaker 1: all right? A company called en V Gamen shopill Lick
Speaker 1: binzit Von and Lean Phillips, Globump and fabriacn formed and
Speaker 1: assumed ownership of Phillips. Boy, I sound like I've had
Speaker 1: a stroke, but the short name for it was n
Speaker 1: z bin Zi. Two years later, Gerard Phillips retires as CEO,
Speaker 1: so nine two he steps down and Anton Phillips, his
Speaker 1: younger brother, assumes the position of chairman. At age now
Speaker 1: a nineteen seven Phillips bought a company called c. H F.
Speaker 1: Mueller of Hamburg. So this is a German company, which
Speaker 1: is why I know how to pronounce it. C h F.
Speaker 1: Mueller was founded by Carl Heinrich Florence Mueller in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and originally was a glass company. Mueller himself
Speaker 1: was known for being a very artistic uh glassblower, and
Speaker 1: the early products from Mueller were these decorative pieces like
Speaker 1: goblets and wine glasses. But over time Mueller began to
Speaker 1: refine his process to build glass for gas diffusion and
Speaker 1: incandescent bulbs, and Mueller also had a reputation and a
Speaker 1: history that was tightly tied to X rays. So to
Speaker 1: explain that, we actually have to look back at the
Speaker 1: discovery of X rays. So let's let's look at so
Speaker 1: in while Gerard was being askewed by his brother Anton,
Speaker 1: there was a physicist named Wilhelm Konrad round jin Um.
Speaker 1: He was experimenting with cathode rays and produced X rays.
Speaker 1: He was not the only scientist who had been experimenting
Speaker 1: with this. Nicola Tesla is another notable person who who
Speaker 1: noticed the the existence of X rays, although he didn't
Speaker 1: fully appreciate the the applications of it. But on November
Speaker 1: round Gin discovered a screen coated with barry um platino
Speaker 1: cyanide with fluoresce when a nearby gas discharged to activated
Speaker 1: even when there was a black cardboard barriers separating the two,
Speaker 1: and he was wondering, what how is that happening? What's
Speaker 1: why is it fluorescing? What's causing that? So he began
Speaker 1: to explore this curious phenomenon and as a result, he
Speaker 1: identified X rays. He noted in one experiment that if
Speaker 1: you put your hand between the discharging tube and a screen,
Speaker 1: you could see an image of your hand on the
Speaker 1: screen with your bones a darker image than your flesh.
Speaker 1: That wasn't exactly a high resolution X ray at that time,
Speaker 1: but it showed the potential for it, and not long
Speaker 1: after he published his findings, researchers at the National Physics
Speaker 1: Laboratory reproduced the effect using a cathode ray tube from C. H. F. Mueller.
Speaker 1: The results were interesting but pretty fuzzy, and so the
Speaker 1: researchers got in direct contact with Mueller explained what it
Speaker 1: was they were trying to do, and so Mueller and
Speaker 1: the researchers together began to try and develop a better
Speaker 1: cathode ray, specifically for X ray production. So they refined
Speaker 1: their approach. Now, by the time Phillips acquired the company
Speaker 1: of C. H. F. Mueller, they had that company had
Speaker 1: already become a leading provider of X ray technology, So
Speaker 1: now Phillips had become the name an X ray tech.
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen Phillips was starting to get into the
Speaker 1: radio business. Now, I've done several episodes about the history
Speaker 1: of radio, including a discussion about who invented radio in
Speaker 1: the first place. In fact, that was an episode Chris
Speaker 1: Palette and I recorded and famously. After the first attempt,
Speaker 1: we both agreed that the episode we had just recorded
Speaker 1: was awful, and we immediately trashed it and went back
Speaker 1: and recorded it a second time. So if you go
Speaker 1: back into the archives of Tech Stuff and you listen
Speaker 1: to the episode who Invented the Radio, that's actually our
Speaker 1: second try at that topic. The first one is lost
Speaker 1: forever because I think we deleted it. I don't think
Speaker 1: it even exists in our archives. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it's a tough question to answer. It's a lot more
Speaker 1: complicated than just saying Nicola Tesla invented radio or Marconi
Speaker 1: invented radio. But no matter how complex the origin of
Speaker 1: the radio, it was incredibly popular. It's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: understand why people flocked to the radio because it was
Speaker 1: a new form of receiving communication from the world at large.
Speaker 1: You could get news immediately from miles and miles away,
Speaker 1: and it was a revolution in communication. And so Phillips
Speaker 1: became a leading manufacturer of radios in the Netherlands. In
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two, just five years after getting into the industry,
Speaker 1: Phillips had already sold its one million radio set and
Speaker 1: also became the leading manufacturer of radios and radio tubes,
Speaker 1: not just in Europe but in the whole world. However,
Speaker 1: the following decade, the nineteen thirties, that just they weren't
Speaker 1: all that prosperous. Uh. There was a depression in europe
Speaker 1: An economic depression, and Phillips was affected just like other
Speaker 1: companies were, and so the comp he had to restructure
Speaker 1: and had to lay off a lot of employees and
Speaker 1: scaled down and focus. But one thing they did not
Speaker 1: do is skimp on research and development. The company actually
Speaker 1: committed even more resources towards R and D in the
Speaker 1: hopes of becoming more nimble to a changing market. The
Speaker 1: idea being that things were going to evolve very quickly
Speaker 1: and only through scientific inquiry would the company be able
Speaker 1: to stay ahead of the game. And around that same time,
Speaker 1: engineers in then lab had been experimenting with a new
Speaker 1: technology called television that was largely an internal project within
Speaker 1: the company until about ninety eight, which is when Phillips
Speaker 1: presented a showcase of their black and white television set
Speaker 1: at the annual fair in Utrecht. Phillips would remain a
Speaker 1: television manufacturer until two thousand eleven, when the company decided
Speaker 1: that the market was too competitive, and at that point
Speaker 1: Phillips shut down its TV manufacturing centers and entered a
Speaker 1: partnership with another company called t p V Technology out
Speaker 1: of Hong Kong. That agreement formed a new organization that
Speaker 1: would develop and market television's using the Phillips brand, but
Speaker 1: it was only thirty owned by Phillips. T p p
Speaker 1: V would own the remaining se of that organization, So
Speaker 1: the Phillips television sets you see today are Phillips in
Speaker 1: name only. Really, it's a brand that exists, but it's
Speaker 1: not manufactured in a Phillips factory. In nine nine, Phillips
Speaker 1: stuck its toe in another area of consumer electronics, the
Speaker 1: electric shaver. Their product was called the Philip Shave, which
Speaker 1: is hilarious to me. The original model had a chord,
Speaker 1: so you had to plug it into the wall in
Speaker 1: order to operate it. Uh. It was a cylindrical device
Speaker 1: with a circular little metal surface. That's what count in
Speaker 1: the rotating blades that you would use to cut the
Speaker 1: hairs on your face, and it sort of looked like
Speaker 1: an electric cucumber. In the United States, the brand name
Speaker 1: for Philip's shaving devices was nore Elco. So if you've
Speaker 1: heard of nore Elco, that's a Phillips brand, and the
Speaker 1: rest of the world it was just called the Philip
Speaker 1: Shave until about two thousand six. That's when Phillips began
Speaker 1: to phase out the Philips shave brand name and start
Speaker 1: to market them just under Phillips. Meanwhile, here in the US,
Speaker 1: they included Phillips with nore Elco. Uh, probably an anticipation
Speaker 1: of dropping the Norrelco name entirely, and so you would
Speaker 1: just get Philip's brand, uh, you know, shavers all across
Speaker 1: the world and not have this this different brand name
Speaker 1: in different countries. Nonsense going on, and as time went on,
Speaker 1: they would add other products to this line, things like
Speaker 1: beard tremmors and hair trimmers, that kind of stuff, And
Speaker 1: so they created sort of a consumer products division within
Speaker 1: Phillips beyond just lightbulbs and radio and television sets. No.
Speaker 1: Nineteen nine was also the year that Anton Phillips resigned
Speaker 1: as president, though he would remain an advisor to the
Speaker 1: company for several more years. His son in law, Franz Aughton,
Speaker 1: became president and his actual son, Fritz Phillips became a
Speaker 1: director of the company. So Uh, Anton's son, Fritz would
Speaker 1: report to Anton's son in law, Franz Fritz and Franz
Speaker 1: NTY was a very tumultuous year for the company. The
Speaker 1: Netherlands didn't have the luxury of remaining neutral in World
Speaker 1: War Two the way they did in World War One,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it became clear that Germany was preparing
Speaker 1: to invade the Netherlands. So an anticipation of that upcoming invasion,
Speaker 1: Franz Arton and Anton Phillips formed the North American Phillips
Speaker 1: Corporation or in a PC in the United States, and
Speaker 1: then they began to relocate operations to America in order
Speaker 1: to avoid the conflict UH. On paper, the business was
Speaker 1: still listed as being a Netherlands company, a Netherlands based company,
Speaker 1: probably for tax purposes, but effectively management was shifting to
Speaker 1: the United States, and when Germany invaded the Netherlands, it
Speaker 1: took about five days of fighting before the Dutch government surrendered.
Speaker 1: They were pretty much forced to. They just were not
Speaker 1: equipped to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and
Speaker 1: so at that point Phillip's management, the ones who had
Speaker 1: not already moved to the United States fled first to
Speaker 1: England and then from England. They went to the US
Speaker 1: to join the n a PC. Now, this is where
Speaker 1: we're going to bring Part one to an end, and
Speaker 1: in Part two, we're going to talk about what happened
Speaker 1: to Anton Phillips his son, Frits Phillips during World War Two.
Speaker 1: Because Fritz, unlike his father and his uh, you know,
Speaker 1: his brother in law, he stayed in the Netherlands. He
Speaker 1: did not move to the United States. So his story
Speaker 1: during World War Two is very different from everyone else's
Speaker 1: story who moved over to the US. And I'll also
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how Phillips became really important
Speaker 1: in establishing several different media standards, which were alluded to
Speaker 1: in Roger's message when he asked that we would cover
Speaker 1: this topic in the first place. And we'll also take
Speaker 1: a look at the uncertain future of Phillips and and
Speaker 1: why is it uncertain in the first place. Meanwhile, if
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for tech Stuff topics or future guests
Speaker 1: of people who you would like to have on as
Speaker 1: either someone I interview or a guest host, you should
Speaker 1: let me know. Email me. The address is tech Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook, Twitter, or tumbler. The handle
Speaker 1: I use at all three is tech stuff H. S W.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk to you again about Phillips really soon
Speaker 1: for more on this and bathands of other topics because
Speaker 1: it has stock works dot com