WEBVTT - The Packard Bell Story 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Text Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.040 Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.480 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.880 and I love all things tech. And some of you 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.600 might not know this, but I close every single episode 0:00:26.600 --> 0:00:30.160 by giving out the Twitter and Facebook handles for this show. 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.560 Both of those, by the way, our Text Stuff h 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:36.800 s W. And I invite people to suggest topics for 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:39.920 me to cover on this show. And some folks actually 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:44.040 do that, like Andy, who actually sent his suggestion to 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.640 me directly to my personal Twitter account that, by the way, 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:54.160 is at John Strickland and that's a j O in Strickland. Anyway, 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:59.680 Andy wrote, you cover Packard Bell before? Probably well, Andy, 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:03.280 I haven't covered Packard Bell before, but I'm going to 0:01:03.320 --> 0:01:06.640 do it now so that shows you. Well. I gotta 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.440 little confrontational there. I'm sorry Andy to know what came 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:14.320 over me, but yes, it's time to talk about Packard 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.640 Bell now. For someone my age, the name Packard Bell 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:22.720 brings to mind an army of IBM PC clones in 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.600 the nineteen eighties and nineties. I'll get into what that 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:28.440 means later on, but while I think most folks around 0:01:28.440 --> 0:01:33.399 my age associate Packard Bell with inexpensive and frequently mocked 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.640 personal computers. The company's origins, or at least the origins 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:42.240 of the name of the company, go back much, much further. 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:52.480 The full story of Packard Bell is one of entrepreneurship, innovation, acquisitions, betrayal, death, resurrections, 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:55.880 and fading into the sunset only to come back. The 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:59.760 story shares some parallels with other company stories like a TORII, 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:03.520 and I'll explain that a little bit further on. For now, 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:08.720 let's start with a man named Herb Bell. Kind of Now, 0:02:08.919 --> 0:02:12.840 the history of both the company and this founder are 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:16.880 a bit muddled. Some history state that Packard Bell should 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.880 trace its origins to nineteen twenty six. Others say no, no, no, 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:23.960 it should be nineteen thirty three. The company itself was 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:27.600 incorporated in ninety five, according to The New York Times. 0:02:28.040 --> 0:02:30.240 The New York Times also says that Herbert Bell was 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:34.200 born in eighteen ninety in Rock Valley, Iowa, but other 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:38.280 sources say he was born in Burlington, Wisconsin. So, as 0:02:38.320 --> 0:02:41.600 you guys can gather, this is a somewhat difficult story 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:45.680 to tell, but hey, history is more than just dates. 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:49.640 And places right. So we'll just accept that there is 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:54.840 some confusion about the details of this history, or that 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.680 we're dealing with a multiverse, parallel dimension situation here. Either 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:00.519 of those I think work as a get out of 0:03:00.639 --> 0:03:04.040 jail free card in this situation. So when Herb Bell 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:07.760 was growing up in either Iowa or Wisconsin, he wasn't 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:12.079 necessarily dreaming of building an electronics company. I should add 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:15.359 he definitely grew up in Burlington. I found newspaper articles 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:19.000 from Burlington that talked about it. So it might be 0:03:19.040 --> 0:03:21.240 possible that he wasn't born there, but he definitely grew 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.920 up there. Herbert Bell was actually born Herbert Anthony Zwiebel. 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:32.160 He had four brothers, Arthur, Albert, Elmer, and Willard. Between 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:36.160 nineteen ten and nineteen fifteen, these brothers all left home 0:03:36.240 --> 0:03:40.200 to quote make their way in the world end quote. 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:45.600 Herbert left Burlington in nineteen twelve to go to Milwaukee. 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:49.400 He found work with the Mitchell Automobile Company, where he 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.320 worked until nineteen eighteen, at which point he set out 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:54.640 to make a company of his own. In partnership with 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:59.600 his brothers Arthur and Albert, they formed the Zwiebel Brothers Company. 0:03:59.680 --> 0:04:03.960 And they manufactured tires and related equipment for vehicles. A 0:04:04.000 --> 0:04:08.520 bit later, they brought in brother Elmer, also known as Bub, 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:13.200 and he owned the Bub Body Company. The four brothers 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:17.920 incorporated the two companies together, forming a voltron of car 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.040 part companies. I guess. In nineteen twenty one, the brothers 0:04:22.040 --> 0:04:25.320 decided to sell this business. They turned it public and 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:27.359 they handed it over to a new board of directors, 0:04:27.360 --> 0:04:29.919 and they pocketed the cash. They all packed up and 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.520 moved to California because actually their parents had relocated to 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.920 California back in nineteen nineteen, so they were following behind. 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:39.599 They had made a good amount of money by building 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:42.440 up their business and then selling it, and so they 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.960 looked for what would come next. For Herbert that would 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:50.240 end up being electronics. He became interested in the young industry. 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:53.760 He was just starting to to really flourish in the 0:04:53.839 --> 0:04:58.440 Los Angeles area around this time, so radio was very young. 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.040 The first license radios to stations in the United States 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:05.840 began to broadcast in nineteen twenty, so this is still 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.160 very very early in the history of radio. And her 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:12.560 Bell was one of those tech entrepreneurs who would establish 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:17.520 a well worn tradition. By this time today. He started 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:21.640 his company in a garage, actually his parents garage to 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:24.400 be precise. He began to learn how to build radio 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.479 sets and the ins and outs of electronics. His early 0:05:27.520 --> 0:05:31.960 work focused on providing coin operated radio sets for hotel lobbies. 0:05:32.360 --> 0:05:34.520 So imagine that you're in a hotel lobby, there's a 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:36.400 radio there. You actually have to put a coin in 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.000 and then it will play whatever station you tune it 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:44.560 to for however long. The coin operation thing lasts interesting concept. 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.760 Herbert made his brother Albert a partner in the business, 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.719 but this early company didn't establish itself, and by nineteen 0:05:52.760 --> 0:05:57.279 twenty nine it was out of business. Undiscouraged, Herbert Bell 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:01.640 found a financial partner in a certain Simtir Edward Jackson 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.440 if You're nasty, and together they formed the Jackson Bell 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:10.160 Radio Company. Jackson Bell radios are to this day sought 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:14.599 after by collectors. That being said, according to the Radio 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.960 History Museum, Jackson Bell wasn't really in the business of 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:23.320 manufacturing radios so much as it was all about marketing radios. 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:27.440 The actual radios, again according to the Radio History Museum, 0:06:27.800 --> 0:06:32.960 were made by a company called Gilfillan Brothers Radio Company. 0:06:33.000 --> 0:06:35.440 Whether Jackson Bell made their own radios or not as 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.080 kind of a moot point, because it wasn't around for 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:41.159 very long. It got started in nineteen thirty, but it 0:06:41.240 --> 0:06:44.960 was out of business by nineteen three. This was during 0:06:45.000 --> 0:06:50.719 a truly tumultuous time in economic history. In nineteen twenty nine, 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.960 stock prices in the United States began to plummet, leading 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:59.279 to a massive crash in the market on October. The 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.920 economic all outstretched all around the world and it would 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:05.880 take a decade to get back to where the market 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:10.680 had been before the crash. This was the Great Depression. 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:14.120 I don't see what's so great about it. The Swiebels 0:07:14.160 --> 0:07:17.760 company was, like many others, affected by this fallout, and 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.640 the brothers folded their business. Part of the problem was 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:25.160 due to a bigger company making some rather broad changes. 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:28.920 That company was our c A, which I have actually 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:32.760 covered in previous episodes of Tech Stuff, multiple episodes in fact, 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.520 so you can go back through our archives and listen 0:07:35.560 --> 0:07:39.080 to those. The Swiebel Brothers had a license to sell 0:07:39.200 --> 0:07:42.440 our c A radios, but when the company introduced a 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.240 new type of radio that made the ones that the 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.360 Sweebels had in their inventory completely obsolete. As we will, 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.520 company really began to struggle. Jackson Bell just couldn't really 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.040 do anything. They now had products that were hard to 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.000 sell right at the beginning of a severe economic depress, 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.120 so they couldn't move their inventory, they couldn't afford to 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:07.960 invest in the new technology, and they just had to 0:08:08.240 --> 0:08:10.920 close up shop as a result. Now, this is why 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.640 some histories say that Packard Bell cannot use nineteen twenty 0:08:14.720 --> 0:08:17.520 six as the starting point, because even though that's when 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:21.400 Herb got into the electronics gig, the companies he founded 0:08:21.600 --> 0:08:26.000 all ceased to exist by the early nineteen thirties. Herb 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.000 was down, but he wasn't out. He and his brothers 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.800 changed their last name to Bell officially, mostly to americanize 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:35.880 their names a bit more, even though they were all Americans. 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.440 And in nineteen thirty three, her Bell would strike up 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.760 a new partnership to launch another electronics business, this time 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:49.040 with a guy named Leon Packard Packard Bell. Packard was 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.400 able to secure investments from his family to start up 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:57.160 this new business. Some reports say he used a trust fund, 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.720 some say that it was an uncle who lent the money, 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:03.160 but in any case, he was kind of the cash 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:07.600 behind the whole business. And again the business was called 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:11.880 Packard Bell, but Leon Packard wasn't part of this company 0:09:11.920 --> 0:09:16.080 for very long. He apparently got unhappy with the way 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:20.719 her Bell was pushing things. Bell was aiming for more ambitious, 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:24.520 more expensive radio sets, and Packard was worried about it 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:28.040 getting priced out of the market. So Herb would end 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.480 up buying out his partner sometime in either nineteen thirty 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.720 four or nineteen thirty five. Again I found sources that 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:38.280 gave conflicting dates, but it did happen right around that time. 0:09:39.000 --> 0:09:41.520 Now there was no longer a Packard at Packard Bell, 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:44.480 but the company had established the sort of brand name, 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:47.600 so rather than mess with that, they stuck with it. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.960 So Packard was gone, but Packard Bell remained. The first 0:09:52.000 --> 0:09:55.080 product out of Packard Bell, as far as I can determine, 0:09:55.240 --> 0:09:59.960 was a rebranded Jackson Bell tabletop radio called the Model 0:10:00.160 --> 0:10:04.520 thirty five. A tabletop meaning this was a radio that 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:07.160 could sit on a table, as opposed to a giant 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.720 console radio that was a free standing piece of furniture. 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.120 They still were pretty big and they involved a lot 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:17.120 of artistry. The cabinets that were made for these these 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:19.960 radios often are gorgeous. In fact, that's one of the 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:25.120 reasons why UH collectors seek out these antique radios. They 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:29.720 were also very specific to the regions where they were produced. 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.040 I'll say more about that in a second. So Urban 0:10:32.080 --> 0:10:36.079 his brothers maintained close business relationships. And the brothers had 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.640 all founded their own businesses, and we're manufacturing various components 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.320 and her Bell would package them together as finished radio. 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:45.480 So some of them were making electronics, some of them 0:10:45.480 --> 0:10:49.440 were cabinet makers, and collectively they were all kind of 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:53.360 creating the pieces that would allow Packard Bell to sell 0:10:53.520 --> 0:10:56.480 finished radios. So Packard Bell was really more of an 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.160 assembly company, not a manufacturer. They took the component it's 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.920 from the other brothers organizations. One interesting thing Bell did, 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:07.520 as I mentioned, was he customized his radios for the 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:10.920 West Coast region. Remember they were located at a California 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.280 So rather than simply creating a radio with a dial 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:17.800 that has all the different radio frequencies marked on it, 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:22.920 he actually listed out the radio stations with their respective frequencies. 0:11:23.240 --> 0:11:25.760 So let's say that you have a radio station called 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:29.440 we'll just say Bob, and the radio station Bob is 0:11:29.600 --> 0:11:33.240 at a M seven fifty and instead of having it 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.520 saying just a M seven fifty. You would actually write 0:11:35.520 --> 0:11:38.920 out Bob on the dial, so people could dial directly 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.160 to whichever radio station they were interested in. They didn't 0:11:42.160 --> 0:11:46.520 have to hunt through the frequencies. And Bell was primarily 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:49.760 selling radios to people on or near the West Coast, 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.120 so he could do this. It was called stationizing, and 0:11:53.160 --> 0:11:55.679 he could do it because he wasn't selling radios to 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:58.600 people in other parts of the world, where the radio 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.640 stations would be totally different, and for those frequencies. It 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.360 would actually take several years before the company would start 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:09.280 to sell radios beyond this immediate region. The nice thing 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:11.559 was you didn't have to remember about which station was 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:14.040 using which frequency. You just set the dial to the 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:16.679 station you were interested in because things were right there. 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:20.520 And the story goes that the inspiration for doing this 0:12:20.760 --> 0:12:24.280 all came from Mama Bell. Now I don't mean mob 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:28.240 Bell the phone company, but rather the mother of the 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:31.800 Bell brothers. Herbs said that his mother complained about the 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.000 printing on radio dials and that it was too difficult 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:37.720 for her to read those numbers and thus be able 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.960 to tune the radio to the station she wanted. Packard 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:45.720 Bell licensed some of our CIA's radio technology and incorporated 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:48.920 that technology into their own radios. Or Bell led his 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:53.400 company into establishing a pretty solid reputation upon the outbreak 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:56.440 of World War Two in Europe. Then Packard Bell began 0:12:56.520 --> 0:12:59.920 to branch out from radios and we're done building components 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.640 and technologies for the US military. One of those technologies 0:13:03.760 --> 0:13:09.160 was the transponder. Now, Packard Bell did not invent the transponder. 0:13:09.200 --> 0:13:13.600 It wasn't created out of Packard Bell. British engineers actually 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.920 created the first transponders, but Packard Bell helped develop them 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:22.600 and manufacture them. So what the heck is a transponder. Well, 0:13:22.640 --> 0:13:26.560 it's an electronic component. Technically, it's a transceiver that's used 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:29.760 in aircraft. During World War Two, it served as a 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.600 way for radar stations to identify whether a detected aircraft 0:13:33.720 --> 0:13:38.480 was friendly or not. The idea was actually incredibly simple. 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:43.760 You would outfit your aircraft with these transponders, which, upon 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:47.200 receiving a signal, could send out a message that contained 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:50.439 the identifying information of that aircraft. In fact, it could 0:13:50.520 --> 0:13:53.679 just contain a signal, a simple signal. So essentially this 0:13:53.720 --> 0:13:56.599 plane was saying, hey, it's okay, I'm a buddy, you 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:58.680 know I'm not I'm not one of the enemy. And 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:02.480 the British called this tech a parrot transponder. The parrot 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:07.760 would squawk or send out its message. American engineers called 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:12.560 it identification friend or foe or I F F for short. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:16.240 Creating unique codes for aircraft would come a little bit later, 0:14:16.600 --> 0:14:18.640 but that would help too. So now not only did 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.000 you know, oh, this is a friendly aircraft because it's 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.880 responding to the signal and giving me the appropriate response. 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.440 Now I can actually get specific unique signals, so I 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:33.320 can say exactly which aircraft it is. Not just that 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.520 it's friendly, but I know which one it is. Even 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.200 if the enemy figured out that Allied planes were sending 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:42.040 back signals, the odds of them picking an existing signal 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:45.440 to masquerade as a friendly aircraft would be slim. The 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.520 one big problem was that the transponder signals were strong 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:54.240 enough to muck up radar stations. So an incoming signal 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:58.120 from a transponder was powerful enough that it would completely 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:00.400 cover a radar screen. It was like you had an 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.520 enormous puddle of ink covering up your screen, except it was, 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.800 you know, points of light. So pilots were instructed instead 0:15:09.000 --> 0:15:12.200 to turn on their transponders when they were prompted by 0:15:12.280 --> 0:15:15.720 radio operators. The informal way, as I said, was to 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.400 call this squawking. So to squawk your parrot is to 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.240 turn on your transponder so it sends a message back 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:24.360 down to the ground. Then you're supposed to turn it 0:15:24.400 --> 0:15:26.560 back off again because you don't want to flood the 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:31.120 radar stations. Eventually, this technology found its way into civilian 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:33.720 aircraft and it became a way for air traffic control 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.920 to identify aircraft in specific airspace, and when paired with 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:42.840 other electronics, the transponder could send back specific information beyond 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.200 just the identity of the aircraft. It could also send 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:51.080 stuff like that aircraft's altitude, and pilots could set transponders 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:56.520 to send specific messages when other communications systems failed. If, 0:15:56.640 --> 0:15:59.360 for example, their radio failed, the pilot could set a 0:15:59.400 --> 0:16:03.120 transponder so that the code sent to a t C 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.680 would correspond to an emergency message such as may day, 0:16:07.840 --> 0:16:11.800 or communications are down or even hijack, So pilots can 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:15.480 squawk if they're in trouble. They can set their transponder 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.800 to that specific code to indicate the issue, so it's 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:24.600 an emergency system as well as an identification system. Transponders 0:16:24.640 --> 0:16:28.320 are pretty interesting. For one thing, they only allow codes 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:31.120 with digits between zero and seven, or at least the 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.960 original ones did. But to explain why that is why 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.920 they could only use between zero and seven would take 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:41.240 a bit more time away from our topic. So I'm 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:44.440 going to spare you. Guys. You're welcome, but maybe someday 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.040 I'll go into a full episode about transponders. So you've 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:59.960 been warned, But for now, let's take a quick break. Okay. 0:17:00.040 --> 0:17:04.000 Packard Bell continues to put together radios and make military 0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:07.679 components all throughout World War Two, and the company was 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:11.600 doing pretty well. Like it wasn't going gangbusters, but it 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:15.479 was profitable. It was still focused on that regional market, 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:17.720 so it's still making radio sets for people on the 0:17:17.720 --> 0:17:20.280 West coast of the United States, still going with that 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:25.000 stationized approach to the dials. After the war, Packard Bell 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:28.640 finally incorporated, at least according to The New York Times 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:31.840 in its obituary for her Bell spoiler alert or Bell 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:36.720 passed away a long time ago. But Packard Bell also 0:17:36.840 --> 0:17:40.479 began to enter into a new industry. They began to 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:45.719 get into television manufacturing. Television's back then were similar to 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.959 the old school radios. They tended to be pretty large 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:54.960 pieces of furniture, often housed in cabinets. The earliest ones 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:58.080 I know about from Packard Bell were three models that 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:03.680 the company introduced in nineteen. Two of those were console models, 0:18:03.880 --> 0:18:06.520 essentially the cabinet style. I was just talking about these 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:11.320 free standing pieces of furniture that had television sets inside them. 0:18:11.359 --> 0:18:15.199 The third model was a tabletop model, and so in 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:19.240 this case, the television was inside a wooden frame another 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:21.920 like wooden cabinet, but it was small enough to sit 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:25.520 on a table as opposed to stand freely on its own. 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:28.960 The screen on the tabletop model, and the smaller of 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.639 the two console models was ten inches on the diagonal, 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:37.520 just ten one zero. The larger console had a twelve 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:41.119 inch screen. It also had a radio and a phonograph 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:44.240 built into this thing. I imagine it had to be 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:48.160 a bit of a monster. The company would continue producing television's, 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:52.120 branching into color TV a decade later, and I've covered 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:56.399 how TV works several times, so don't worry, I'm not 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:00.640 gonna go on a how television works tangent here. Packard 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:04.320 Bell found success in the television market, just as it 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.359 had with the radio market, and before long the company 0:19:07.400 --> 0:19:10.879 was selling its products across the United States. This also 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:15.679 meant finally abandoning that stationized approach to radio dials, because 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:19.719 now the frequencies weren't corresponding to the same radio stations. 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.800 There was no guarantee that the person who was buying 0:19:21.800 --> 0:19:25.320 your radio would have access to the exact same radio 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.200 stations as what you were putting on the dial, so 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:31.879 they get rid of that. By the mid nineteen fifties, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:34.560 things were good enough with Packard Bell for them to 0:19:34.640 --> 0:19:37.560 go public, with the company to go from private company 0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.920 to publicly traded company, or Bell would step down as president, 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.560 but he would remain on the board of directors for 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:48.400 several more years. In the meantime, the company wanted to 0:19:48.480 --> 0:19:52.200 stretch a bit more to get into some other industries, 0:19:52.240 --> 0:19:55.959 and so they created a new division focused on building 0:19:55.960 --> 0:20:01.120 out computers. Now this was still in the late nineteen fifties, 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.000 so we're not talking about personal computers here. We're talking 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:10.040 about many computers, kind of the the bridge between mainframe 0:20:10.200 --> 0:20:14.359 systems and the desktop machines that we would later know 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.760 and sometimes love. So These were computer systems that were 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:22.080 meant to do number crunching for stuff like research facilities 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:27.159 or universities, or the military, or sometimes really big companies. 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:32.119 Packard Bell hired a former US Air Force meteorologists named 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:37.240 Max Palevski to spearhead the computer efforts. Polevski had really 0:20:37.440 --> 0:20:42.479 begun to study computer science after working with people like 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.120 von Neumann, so he was coming into this really jazzed. 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:51.000 And the first computer that Packard Bell would build would 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:54.080 be called the p B two fifty. It was a 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:58.440 computer built on the principles of the Automatic Computing Engine 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:01.840 or ACE. That the computer system that was designed by 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:07.280 the great Alan Turing himself. The ACE marked the first 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:12.440 truly electronic stored program all purpose digital computer. And that's 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:14.720 a lot of words, so let's break it down a 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.240 little bit. The all purpose part is really easy. So 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.320 early on, engineers built a lot of specific purpose computer systems. 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:27.280 These were designed to handle a very narrow spectrum of tasks, 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:30.360 and these machines had a streamlined design for that purpose. 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.280 Now when I say streamlined, I don't mean in terms 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:37.440 of physical structure, because all these machines were big and unwieldy, 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:41.280 but rather in terms of the systems architecture what it 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:46.280 was actually processing information for. So these specific machines were 0:21:46.359 --> 0:21:49.760 quite good at handling the problems that fit within their design, 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.720 but they were incapable of running any other kind of 0:21:52.760 --> 0:21:57.040 process outside of that purpose. And all purpose or general 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:02.000 purpose computer could run any program within that computer's capabilities, 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:07.240 not just a narrow spectrum of programs. Turing's design was ambitious, 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:10.560 so much so that his colleagues ultimately decided that they 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:14.120 had to compromise on that vision quite a bit when 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:17.840 building out the actual computer. Otherwise the engineering requirements were 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.480 going to just be too severe, so they made a 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:24.399 much more modest machine called the Pilot Model ACE. In 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:28.960 nineteen fifty. Packard Bell's p B two fifty followed uh 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:33.200 in the design philosophy of ACE. It wasn't exactly a copy, 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:36.879 but it was built on those same basic principles. Okay, 0:22:36.920 --> 0:22:40.520 but what about electronics stored. Well, one thing the PB 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:45.080 two fifty sported was magneto restrictive memory, and this was 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:49.040 a type of delay line memory for computers. Now, you've 0:22:49.040 --> 0:22:53.640 probably heard me talk about random access memory or RAM, 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.080 and if not, I'm sure you've encountered at least the 0:22:57.119 --> 0:23:00.159 concept of RAM. RAM is a type of storage that 0:23:00.200 --> 0:23:04.720 allows computers to process information without pulling it from a 0:23:04.800 --> 0:23:08.240 hard disk or disk drive. It's a temporary type of 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.679 storage meant to facilitate calculations to make stuff faster. I 0:23:12.760 --> 0:23:15.600 sometimes like in it to short term versus long term 0:23:15.640 --> 0:23:19.199 memory for humans, but that's not really an apples to 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:22.199 apples comparison. It's just kind of useful to say. If 0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:24.920 you have something in your short term memory that's right 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:28.200 there and you're working with it, it's really easy. If 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:30.320 you have to remember something that happened a long time 0:23:30.359 --> 0:23:34.320 ago that takes more time. It's similar to that concept, 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:38.600 but it's not a one to one analogy. Well, delay 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:41.359 line memory is even different from that. For one thing, 0:23:41.840 --> 0:23:45.840 it's not random access. Delay line memory is sequential, so 0:23:45.880 --> 0:23:49.440 the data is organized in the order that it was entered. 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:54.240 It has this predetermined ordered sequence. It's also totally weird 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:57.600 when you think about it in context of modern computing. 0:23:57.800 --> 0:24:03.120 Here's how it worked. In the original incarnation of delay 0:24:03.240 --> 0:24:07.800 line memory, the system would convert data into sound waves, 0:24:08.040 --> 0:24:11.080 so it would actually become an acoustic form of information, 0:24:11.640 --> 0:24:14.760 and then it would send that acoustic wave. These sound 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:19.600 waves through a medium that put the brakes on those 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:23.359 sound waves. You know, sound travels at different speeds through 0:24:23.400 --> 0:24:27.200 different media, right, it travels through water more slowly than 0:24:27.240 --> 0:24:31.320 it travels through air. For example, in the case of 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:35.800 the early delay line memory models, they use tubes of 0:24:35.960 --> 0:24:40.639 liquid mercury. The sound waves carrying data would slow down 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:44.000 as it would transfer into the liquid mercury, but it 0:24:44.000 --> 0:24:46.639 would continue traveling until I reached the far end of 0:24:46.680 --> 0:24:48.760 the tube of mercury, wherein it would hit a sensor 0:24:49.080 --> 0:24:51.359 that would allow it to re electrify the signal for 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:54.800 processing a process. Signal could then be sent back through 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:58.160 the tube. Now you could set up such a system 0:24:58.359 --> 0:25:01.560 to store that data to it barily, and the way 0:25:01.640 --> 0:25:04.640 you would do it is you would constantly send the 0:25:04.720 --> 0:25:08.320 same signal back and forth through the tube until you 0:25:08.400 --> 0:25:13.600 needed it. The site make likened this to using an 0:25:13.600 --> 0:25:16.720 echo to do the same thing. So imagine that you're 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:19.879 standing in a canyon and you need to remember something 0:25:19.960 --> 0:25:21.960 like someone's just told you some numbers and you gotta 0:25:22.000 --> 0:25:25.640 remember them, so you shout it out really loudly, and 0:25:26.280 --> 0:25:28.760