WEBVTT - The Philips Story: Part Two 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:12.719 Tech with Technology with tech Stuff from HAST technolog Hey there, 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.319 and welcome back to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland, and 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:20.880 this is part two of our story on Royal Phillips 0:00:20.920 --> 0:00:24.640 better known as Justin Phillips here in the United States. Now, 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:27.319 in part one, I talked about the founding of the 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.080 company and continued all the way up through the retirement 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:34.519 of Anton Phillips, who was the younger brother to the 0:00:34.680 --> 0:00:38.760 founder Gerard Phillips. We'll begin this episode with a discussion 0:00:38.760 --> 0:00:43.680 about what happened to Anton's son, Fritz Phillips as much 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.640 of the world was plunged into the conflict known as 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.640 World War Two. So if you remember from our last episode, 0:00:51.280 --> 0:00:55.720 Anton and his son in law Frandson or Franz Aton 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.279 fled the Netherlands. They went to North America. They had 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:03.800 established a North American base of operations to work from 0:01:03.920 --> 0:01:07.759 during the course of World War Two. Much of Phillip's 0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:12.399 management followed suit, but but Fritz Phillips stayed behind in 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:18.240 the Netherlands, and Fritz really tried to protect the interests 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.960 of the company as well as the company's employees during 0:01:22.959 --> 0:01:27.880 the entire Nazi occupation. Now, from nineteen forty until nineteen 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:33.480 forty three, Fritz kept things running at Phillips, even resisting 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:37.000 the moves by the Nazis to switch the operations to 0:01:37.360 --> 0:01:44.720 more warlike efforts to support Germany's UH operations, and Fritz 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:50.360 really was able to resist that fairly effectively. But in 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:54.880 April nineteen forty three, things took a very dark turn 0:01:55.640 --> 0:02:00.960 for Fritz, and obviously was a terrible time for much 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:07.680 of Europe because in April nineteen forty three, the Nazis 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.560 made a declaration that was pretty much the doom for 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:16.680 Fritz Phillips at least for the next two years. So 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:21.000 when Germany invaded the Netherlands back in nineteen forty the 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:24.440 three hundred thousand members of the Dutch Army had been 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:30.320 essentially captured, but then released after the Netherlands officially surrendered 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:35.000 to Germany. So the three thousand members of the Dutch 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:39.760 army were under German supervision for a while and then 0:02:39.800 --> 0:02:45.519 allowed to go back and rejoin Dutch society under the 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:50.960 Nazi occupation, But in nineteen forty three Germany declared that 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:55.000 those three hundred thousand soldiers would be conscripted and forced 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:59.640 into labor on behalf of Germany, so they become, you know, 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:04.480 a said slave labor to the Nazis, and the Phillips 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:08.200 employees decided to go on strike to protest this move. 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:12.560 It wasn't and move against Fritz Phillips. It was a 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:17.239 move against the Nazis. But Germany held Fritz Phillips personally 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:20.760 responsible and captured him and put him in a concentration 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:25.639 camp and essentially was trying to use him as leverage 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:31.600 to force Phillips employees back to work. Meanwhile, while in captivity, 0:03:31.720 --> 0:03:35.040 Fritz was put in charge of a camp workshop in 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:38.440 that concentration camp, and it was staffed by Jewish prisoners. 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:43.240 So again he did his best to protect his workers 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:49.000 in the concentration camp, trying to make sure that he 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.400 he made it clear that each one of them was 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:54.160 necessary for him to do the work that the Nazis 0:03:54.200 --> 0:04:00.640 were demanding. Tragically, uh, he started with four sixty nine 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.600 Jewish employees. Only two of them survived to the end 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:08.320 of the war. Um and I say only three two 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:12.080 because it's just a tragedy for any of those lives 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:18.280 to be lost. Obviously, however, it's almost I can't even 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:20.960 say it's a silver lining. But he did manage to 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:23.440 protect quite a few of those people. In fact, if 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:28.800 you compare those numbers with the Dutch Jewish population, overall, 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.920 almost all the Jews in the Netherlands had been completely 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:40.400 eliminated eradicated. So Fritz Phillips actually did succeed in saving lives, 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:44.120 and I'm sure that he would have wish that he 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.200 could have saved all of them for his efforts. Israel 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:51.719 actually decorated Fritz Phillips with the yad Vashim metal in 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:58.160 and he was alive to accept that that honor. Fritz 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:01.960 survived the war, as I just indicated. After his release, 0:05:02.000 --> 0:05:06.799 he dedicated the next several years to rebuilding the Phillips 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:10.640 presence in the Netherlands because during the course of World 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.520 War Two, Phillips factories were hit hard. They had been 0:05:14.560 --> 0:05:18.960 bombed by the Allies twice and then once by the Germans. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.120 When the Germans were withdrawing during their retreat, they also 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:28.640 bombed the Phillips manufacturing factories. He would eventually become the 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.080 president of Phillips in nineteen sixty one. He retired in 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.960 nineteen seventy one, and he passed away in two thousand 0:05:36.080 --> 0:05:40.840 five at the age of one hundred years old. But 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.839 going back to just after World War Two, during that era, uh, 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.360 you know, it was it was a period of rebuilding, 0:05:48.720 --> 0:05:55.200 and by six most of the facilities had recovered. Meanwhile, 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:01.040 Phillips research focused on things like transistors and integrated circuits 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.640 over the next couple of decades. Really the nineteen fifties 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:08.600 was the era of the integrated circuit and the transistor. Uh. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.960 That work was really being pioneered at places like Bell Labs. 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.400 But Phillips were, you know, the companies like Phelps were 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:19.080 able to jump on that bandwagon, as it were, and 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:26.160 add their own expertise in advancing the technology of integrated 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.839 circuits and building a foundation for future work in electronics. 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:37.760 In nineteen forty nine, Phillips introduced the syncro cyclotron, which 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:41.159 sounds like a really wicked amusement park ride, but the 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:46.120 syncro cyclotron was actually a particle accelerator. Now that might 0:06:46.360 --> 0:06:49.960 sound unusual. You're talking about a company that's largely known 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.000 for its work in electronics and stuff some that's fairly simple, 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:57.400 things like radios and lamps, and a little bit in 0:06:57.440 --> 0:07:00.960 the medical field with X ray technology. But this was 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:05.880 another example of how Phillips was really valuing pure scientific research. 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:09.120 Not only was Phillips looking to join and create new 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.800 markets and electronics, but also push our understanding of the 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:17.200 fundamental nature of the universe. Uh. There was a physicist, 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.880 a famous physicist named Kasimir who worked on this project, 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.600 and Kasimir was a notable scientist. His name was actually 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.520 used to describe a certain physical force that results from 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:32.240 a quantized field. It's called the Kasimir effect. That research 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:35.840 would later become important for micro electro mechanical systems known 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:40.360 as mems. So there's another good example of how some 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:44.600 fundamental understanding of science can end up being a huge 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:47.000 benefit further down the line, something that you could not 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:51.360 possibly have anticipated when you first set out to study it. 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:54.640 I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I 0:07:54.760 --> 0:07:59.760 really do believe deeply in this philosophy that pure science 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.240 has value, and often it has value that we cannot 0:08:04.320 --> 0:08:09.840 anticipate when we set out to answer questions. And so 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.040 if you happen to ever be in a position where 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.840 you can help fund pure science, I urge you to 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:21.240 do it, even if you don't have an immediate return 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.320 on what that investment will mean, because you never know 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:26.600 what's going to turn into in the future. All right, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.320 lecture over, let's get back to it. In nineteen three, 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:35.439 skipping ahead quite a bit, Phillips introduced the compact audio cassette. 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.160 This is what we in the eighties called a cassette tape. 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.760 Cassette tape is essentially a little plastic cartridge, inside of 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:48.240 which is a real that has a ribbon of magnetic 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:53.120 tape upon which you can record audio. So magnetic tape 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:55.840 was not a brand new medium. It's not like Phillips 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:00.320 invented magnetic tape. Previous versions were already in existence and 0:09:00.400 --> 0:09:03.360 had been used for both commercial and home uses. But 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:07.640 the home use was pretty limited because really, the predecessor 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:12.960 to the cassette tape was real to real audio. Some 0:09:13.000 --> 0:09:16.480 people had real to real audio sets, but they were 0:09:16.480 --> 0:09:19.000 pretty expensive, so it was one of those things that 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.400 only people with a lot of money and a lot 0:09:22.400 --> 0:09:25.880 of interest in technology actually owned. The average person didn't 0:09:25.920 --> 0:09:28.920 have a real to real tape player, and the cassette 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:32.160 tape was kind of uh an effort to bring this 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.800 sort of technology into the realm of the consumer market, 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:42.720 creating a brand new space. UH. The Phillips innovation meant 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:47.000 that you had a compact, portable and eventually an expensive 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:50.400 alternative to real to real tape, and that was great. 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:54.480 They debuted the cassette tape at the nineteen sixty three 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:58.480 Berlin Radio Show. It would be introduced to the United 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:02.360 States the following year, in ninet sixty four. Other companies 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:05.080 were also attempting to establish a standard for personal audio 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:08.360 at the same time. So that raises a question, how 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:12.880 did Phillips end up making its design the cassette tape 0:10:13.160 --> 0:10:16.079 the standard. Why Why is that the standard and not 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.719 something else that was being developed at the same time 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:23.640 by another company, And the answer is mostly due to 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:29.200 a strategy that was forced on Phillips. Phillips ended up 0:10:29.280 --> 0:10:33.840 licensing the design for free to Sony the design of 0:10:33.880 --> 0:10:38.160 the cassette tape to Sony. Sony had really been pressuring 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:42.240 Phillips to do this. At that time. Japanese companies were 0:10:43.160 --> 0:10:48.600 really on the rise. They were rapidly overtaking other companies 0:10:48.600 --> 0:10:53.199 in other parts of the world, and so Phillips the 0:10:53.640 --> 0:10:56.040 writing was on the wall. If Phillips did not do this, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.360 then some other company stood to gain the most by 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:05.439 becoming the standard in home audio formats. So they agreed, 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:11.199 and as Sony adopted that Phillips form factor for cassette tapes, 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.360 the standard was set, and and that is how we 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.640 have cassette tapes and not some other format format. But 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.000 it wouldn't be until the late nineteen seventies that the 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:25.480 cassette form factor really became popular among consumers. So it 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:29.240 was more than a decade later that people actually started 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.960 to buy cassette tapes in large amounts. And the big 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:36.600 reason for that was because the quality just wasn't there 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:40.880 early on, but for both playback and for recording, and 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:46.640 vinyl records had much higher fidelity. The sound was better 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:48.840 from a vinyl record. If you bought a cassette tape 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:50.480 and tried to listen to the same music that you 0:11:50.520 --> 0:11:54.480 could get on vinyl, you'd be disappointed in the noise 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:59.040 that would be present on the recording. So cassette tapes 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:01.960 originally could not compete with the fidelity of records, but 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.679 as soon as that quality reached a good enough standard, 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:10.199 cassettes began to overtake vinyl. So this is an example 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:14.439 of a format that you could argue is of an 0:12:14.440 --> 0:12:18.160 inferior quality. There are people who will argue to their 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.800 deathbed that vinyl records are the highest fidelity you can 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:26.400 possibly achieve, um because it's a very true representation of 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:29.600 the sound that was generated at the time of recording. 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:35.079 But you could also argue that ultimately that doesn't matter 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:37.319 to the consumer. You just have to make the quality 0:12:37.400 --> 0:12:42.240 good enough and make it super convenient, and if it's 0:12:42.280 --> 0:12:47.640 more convenient than the alternative and it's not prohibitively expensive, 0:12:47.679 --> 0:12:50.320 people will switch to that format. That's what happened with 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:54.280 cassette tapes. They weren't superior in quality to vinyl records, 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:57.560 but you could carry them around with you much easier 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.199 than you could with records. You could even in all 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.600 something like a tape deck in your car and listen 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:06.200 to him on the go. Couldn't really do that with vinyl, 0:13:06.679 --> 0:13:11.600 at least not without taking the smoothest roads possible, because 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:16.560 any bump would totally ruin your record collection. And it 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:19.440 didn't matter that the quality wasn't as good because the 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.320 convenience was there. But quick aside, you might wonder how 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.880 does magnetic tape work? And I thought it might be 0:13:25.920 --> 0:13:29.880 cool to just quickly cover the basics to explain what 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:33.120 magnetic tape is actually doing. So the tape itself is 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.320 a plastic base. So the ribbons is plastic, and it 0:13:36.360 --> 0:13:41.280 has a coating of ferric oxide powder which is ferro 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:45.720 magnetic um, and it's usually paired with some sort of 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:50.520 binding agent so it sticks to the plastic film properly. Now, 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:54.800 if you expose that feric oxide to a magnetic field, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:59.200 the magnetic field will cause the particles to align in 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:03.320 a particular a. So if you move a ribbon coated 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:09.600 with ferric oxide powder through a varying magnetic field, so 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:12.800 you're changing the magnetic field over time as the ribbon 0:14:12.920 --> 0:14:18.439 passes through it. The ribbon actually becomes a record of 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.640 the changes in that magnetic field. Like in other words, 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:27.640 if you were to visually represent the changes of that 0:14:27.680 --> 0:14:30.000 magnetic field across the ribbon, it would be like a 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:34.480 timeline your reconstruction, reconstructing the time from the beginning to 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:38.560 the end of how that magnetic field changed. Now that 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:45.120 magnetic field represents music or or sound. You get an 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:51.080 electric current, you put it through an electro magnet. The 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:55.040 changing current in the electromagnetic creates this variable magnetic field 0:14:55.680 --> 0:15:00.280 that gets recorded onto this tape. You play the tape 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.440 back through a playback device. Moving this ribbon with the 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.160 magnetic material past an electro magnet that's not turned on 0:15:07.920 --> 0:15:11.560 will expose the electro magnet to a changing magnetic field 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:15.480 that ends up inducing electric current to flow in the 0:15:15.520 --> 0:15:18.600 electro magnet, which then can be sent to an amplifier, 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:21.920 which then can be sent to speakers, and then you 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:27.760 get your sound. It's really amazing, like it's it's actually 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.280 pretty simple when you think about it. It's it's translating 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.440 one type of energy into another and then using magnetic 0:15:34.480 --> 0:15:39.160 field to record it. But there's something in my mind 0:15:40.000 --> 0:15:44.120 that refuses to dismiss the possibility that all of this 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:48.000 is magic. I understand on a physical level what's happening, 0:15:48.040 --> 0:15:50.640 but it's so phenomenal to me that you might as 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:52.720 well have a wand in your hand and be speaking 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:57.760 faux Latin. At any rate, that's how magnetic tape works. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.640 So let's get back to Phillips. They had set the 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:05.960 standard for home audio with the cassette tape, and as 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:10.360 a result they they managed to change the world of 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:12.920 home media, but it took more than a decade for 0:16:12.960 --> 0:16:16.160 that to really take hold. The nineteen seventies were really 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:19.760 challenging for Phillips. I mentioned that Fritz Phillips had retired 0:16:19.880 --> 0:16:23.440 in nineteen seventy one as president after a really prosperous decade. 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:27.080 The sixties were pretty good, but the seventies were getting tough. Uh. 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:32.760 The replacement was Hank Faun reems Ditch, that's my best 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:36.560 guess at how to pronounce his last name, and he 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:39.520 became the new president, but he was facing some pretty 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:45.440 hefty challenges. Those Japanese companies were becoming increasingly powerful and competitive, 0:16:46.120 --> 0:16:50.640 and that really forced another round of reorganization over at Phillips. 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.640 So one of the things that reems Ditch did was 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.200 shut down some of the smaller factories that were owned 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:02.240 by Phillips because these smaller companies, these smaller factories weren't 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:06.800 as efficient as larger operations, so the smaller ones got 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:12.400 shuttered and the larger ones were prioritized. In nineteen seventy two, 0:17:12.520 --> 0:17:18.000 Phillips introduced the first successful consumer home video cassette recorder system. 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:22.840 The company called it Video Cassette Recording or vc R, 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:28.639 but you shouldn't confuse this with the VHS or Beta 0:17:28.720 --> 0:17:32.200 Max formats. It was a different style of cassette tape. 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.120 The vc are cassettes were actually kind of these chunky 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:40.120 squares rather than rectangles, and they housed two coaxial reels 0:17:40.119 --> 0:17:43.879 of magnetic tape. They were available in three different varieties. 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:46.680 You can get them in thirty minute, forty five minute, 0:17:46.800 --> 0:17:50.840 or sixty minute versions, although supposedly the sixty minute ones 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:57.720 were particularly tricky. They could snag and and foul pretty easily, 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:02.240 so they were not reliable. Uh and unless you're from Europe, 0:18:02.440 --> 0:18:05.880 you're probably not terribly familiar with the format. Because Phillips 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:09.120 never sold the devices in any other regions. They were 0:18:09.160 --> 0:18:12.040 looking at getting into North America, and in fact it 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.960 even started marketing campaigns in North America to try and 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:21.600 introduce the VCR, but before they could, the VHS debuted 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:27.440 in America and became adopted as the standard UM and 0:18:27.520 --> 0:18:30.680 that pretty much foiled the plans of Phillips during the 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:34.320 late nineteen seventies to to bring the VCR to the US. 0:18:35.320 --> 0:18:39.320 In nineteen seventy four, Phillips purchased another company called Magnavox. 0:18:40.080 --> 0:18:43.119 Magnavox was an American electronics company that started all the 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:46.280 way back in nineteen seventeen, and it produced a lot 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:48.800 of different types of devices, but My favorite was the 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:53.160 Magnavox Odyssey, which was the first home video game console. 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:56.760 Now Phillips purchased it, and in the nineteen eighties they 0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:01.199 would combine Magnavox with a couple of other acquisitions that 0:19:01.280 --> 0:19:06.320 the company had made, Philco and Sylvania, so you had Magnavox, Philco, 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:10.359 and Sylvania all combined into one division underneath the Phillips 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:16.479 brand by the mid nineteen eighties. The president, Reems ditch Uh, 0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.120 stepped down in nineteen seventy seven. He was replaced with 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:24.160 a man named Nico Rawdenburg, and the next few years 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:28.120 saw an increase in sales, but revenue didn't really go anywhere. 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.520 So even though they were selling more products, revenues were 0:19:32.960 --> 0:19:40.240 remaining kind of static. And in nine Visa Decker became 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.080 president and chairman of the board of Phillips, and he 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:48.399 restructured the company again. So you could almost argue that 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:52.879 the history of Phillips is a series of restructuring and 0:19:53.000 --> 0:19:58.679 reorganizing to try and uh get more focus. It seemed 0:19:58.720 --> 0:20:02.520 like the company would pare down, then build up again, 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:05.840 and then the next regime, if you will, would come 0:20:05.880 --> 0:20:08.080 in and pare down all over again in order to 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:13.600 try and get some some laser like focus for this company. Well, 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:17.080 Decker's plan ended up closing more than a quarter of 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:20.919 all the plants located in Europe, and so this leanard 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:23.640 company was able to turn things around and increase revenues 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.320 once again. But Decker also started making some big acquisitions, 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:33.280 including buying a lighting division from Westinghouse. So again an 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:36.560 example of paring down but building back up again. Over 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:39.399 the next several years, Phillips would have a few different presidents, 0:20:39.520 --> 0:20:42.159 so I thought I would lump them all together in 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.760 this section rather than peppering them throughout the rest of 0:20:45.800 --> 0:20:48.359 the podcast. So I'm gonna just tell you all the 0:20:48.400 --> 0:20:53.280 people who have led Phillips from Decker to present day, 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:58.000 so and keep in mind restructuring was pretty much a 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:02.359 a go to strategy with each person. There was a 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:06.520 Cornelis van der Kluet who led the company in nineteen six, 0:21:07.440 --> 0:21:12.359 Yon Tremor came on board in nine, Core Boonstra in 0:21:12.480 --> 0:21:18.159 nineteen six, Gerard Cloister Lee in two thousand eleven, and 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:22.760 the current CEO is Franz von Houghton. So I decided 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:24.800 to just sum them up all now so that we 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:30.359 could get back into the technology. So Phillips. The company 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:33.960 partnered with m c A to develop a new product 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:38.240 called the Laser Disc that originally was marketed in the 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:40.679 United States under the name of the m c A 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:44.440 Disco Vision, which I think is a phenomenal product name. 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.560 I wish Disco Vision had been its name forever. Uh. 0:21:48.680 --> 0:21:52.240 The first place it went on sale was actually Atlanta, 0:21:52.320 --> 0:21:56.040 Georgia in ninety eight. It went on sale there before 0:21:56.080 --> 0:22:00.000 it appeared anywhere else in the United States, So shout 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:03.960 out to my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Now, both m 0:22:04.000 --> 0:22:07.840 c A and Phillips have been working on an optical 0:22:08.800 --> 0:22:13.720 video technology separately optical meaning that you're using some form 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:17.760 of light to record and read the information off a 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:21.280 disk in order for you to get the video and 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:25.280 audio that has been put on that disc. And both 0:22:25.359 --> 0:22:27.120 m c A and Phillips have been working on this 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:33.159 at the same time. But they both also noted that 0:22:33.240 --> 0:22:39.840 there had just been this massive war of formats between 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:45.160 VHS and Beta Max, and m c A and Phillips 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:47.399 came to the conclusion that it made more sense for 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:50.879 them to join together and to combine their knowledge and 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:55.640 come out with a united product rather than try and 0:22:55.680 --> 0:23:00.239 have another format war, which could hurt both companies, so 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.880 they entered a partnership and created laser disc, which never 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:07.879 really met with widespread success here in the United States. 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.000 There are other markets, like in Asia where it did 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:15.280 quite well. In the US, there was a passionate market, 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.040 but it was very small. So there were some home 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:23.040 theater enthusiasts, again mostly people who had a decent amount 0:23:23.040 --> 0:23:27.400 of money at their disposal, who adopted laser disc technology, 0:23:27.440 --> 0:23:30.879 but for the most part it was kind of an afterthought. 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:33.000 Part of that was because you couldn't use it to 0:23:33.119 --> 0:23:39.080 write stuff to the discs. Now you're you're consumer products. 0:23:39.119 --> 0:23:41.560 They were read only, so you could buy movies and 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:45.760 watch them, but you couldn't record anything. VHS had an 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:49.439 advantage there you could record stuff from television onto tape 0:23:49.760 --> 0:23:53.880 and keep it forever. So even though laser disc quality 0:23:54.000 --> 0:23:59.320 was better than VHS quality, at least initially, again it 0:23:59.480 --> 0:24:02.280 didn't matter that the quality was better, it wasn't It 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:05.840 wasn't practical and convenient enough for people who wanted to 0:24:05.920 --> 0:24:12.520 have that home theater experience. So ultimately it didn't really 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.280 take off here in the US, and uh it still 0:24:16.359 --> 0:24:19.040 was a very interesting story, but it did lead to 0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:22.879 another partnership. This time it was a partnership between Phillips 0:24:23.000 --> 0:24:27.760 and Sony. They decided to work together to develop a 0:24:27.840 --> 0:24:31.479 digital audio disc. The two companies poured time, money, and 0:24:31.600 --> 0:24:35.639 other resources into research and development, and the result was 0:24:35.720 --> 0:24:40.919 the Compact Disc, which became a worldwide standard. And there 0:24:40.960 --> 0:24:43.320 are a lot of interesting stories about the history of 0:24:43.359 --> 0:24:47.240 the Compact disc, including things like how did they come 0:24:47.280 --> 0:24:50.360 to decide what were the standards for things like bit 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:54.239 rate that you record to on a disk. Maybe one 0:24:54.320 --> 0:24:56.720 day I will do a full episode just about the 0:24:56.760 --> 0:24:59.959 compact disc and why compact discs are the way they 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:02.600 are because those were decisions that were made. It's not 0:25:02.640 --> 0:25:05.520 like it it was just the magical properties of the CD. 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:10.000 But in order to make sure that this standard survived 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:13.320 the test of time, Sony and Phillips decided to do 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:17.080 something similar to what Phillips had done with cassette tapes. 0:25:17.200 --> 0:25:21.720 They granted manufacturing rights for CD players to other manufacturers. 0:25:22.480 --> 0:25:24.880 In other words, they gave competition the right to make 0:25:24.920 --> 0:25:29.440 their own CD players because if they didn't, the fear 0:25:29.560 --> 0:25:32.880 was that these other manufacturers would try to create standards 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:36.600 of their own and that would fracture the market. So 0:25:36.840 --> 0:25:39.040 just imagine that you're trying to buy music and there 0:25:39.080 --> 0:25:44.280 are five different formats out there, hard hard copy formats 0:25:44.720 --> 0:25:47.159 that are similar to c d s, but they aren't 0:25:47.160 --> 0:25:50.159 compatible with each other. So, in other words, you have 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:53.119 a system at home, it will only play one version 0:25:53.840 --> 0:25:57.080 of the media. You have to go out there and 0:25:57.160 --> 0:26:00.439 hope that whatever album you want is available on media. 0:26:00.520 --> 0:26:02.560 You have advantage, you know, you can take advantage of. 0:26:03.600 --> 0:26:06.120 That's what Sony and Phillips wanted to avoid. They did 0:26:06.160 --> 0:26:09.320 not want that world to happen because consumers wouldn't be 0:26:09.440 --> 0:26:13.280 very happy. It would end up hurting all the parties involved. 0:26:13.359 --> 0:26:16.919 So that's why they granted the rights to other manufacturers 0:26:16.960 --> 0:26:21.639 to make things like CD players. In Phillips would change 0:26:21.640 --> 0:26:26.840 its name to Phillips Electronics Envy, which finally is pronounceable, 0:26:27.240 --> 0:26:30.840 so I thank them for that decision. They also introduced 0:26:30.840 --> 0:26:33.960 a console in the home video game market called the 0:26:34.000 --> 0:26:39.119 Phillips c d I c D DASH lowercase I that 0:26:39.160 --> 0:26:43.000 actually stood for Compact Disc Interactive and it was meant 0:26:43.000 --> 0:26:45.800 to combine the functionality of a CD player and a 0:26:45.880 --> 0:26:49.080 video game console while still being less expensive than a 0:26:49.200 --> 0:26:53.760 PC that had a CD ROM drive. In the mid nineties, 0:26:53.800 --> 0:26:57.080 Phillips increased the functionality of the c d I by 0:26:57.080 --> 0:27:00.720 introducing Internet connectivity and making it one of the first 0:27:00.720 --> 0:27:04.440 consoles capable of browsing the web or playing games online. 0:27:04.480 --> 0:27:06.040 In order to do that, you actually had to buy 0:27:06.040 --> 0:27:09.480 an expansion for the c d I, which caused something 0:27:09.520 --> 0:27:12.040 like a hundred and fifty bucks, which at the time 0:27:12.119 --> 0:27:16.520 was pretty expensive. I mean it's expensive now, but you 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:18.520 have to adjust for inflation because that was the mid 0:27:18.640 --> 0:27:22.439 nineties with a d fifty dollars on top of the 0:27:22.480 --> 0:27:27.080 price of the c d I by itself. Now, what 0:27:27.200 --> 0:27:29.159 was really interesting to me is that the c d 0:27:29.359 --> 0:27:31.840