Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech. And in our
Speaker 1: last episode, we looked at how co founders Edwin Priddham
Speaker 1: and Peter Jensen, not only kept their young company alive
Speaker 1: by creating a moving coil loudspeaker, but they also came
Speaker 1: up with the name of the company and is Magnavox,
Speaker 1: after first calling the loudspeaker that name, so originally Magnavox
Speaker 1: was the name for a type of technology, a loud speaker.
Speaker 1: We also learned about how the two engineers created noise
Speaker 1: canceling microphones for use in aircraft during World War One,
Speaker 1: as well as how the company tried to get into
Speaker 1: the consumer electronics business and the young business of radio
Speaker 1: once the war was over. We also learned that in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five, after having disagreements with leadership, Peter Jensen,
Speaker 1: one of the co founders, left the company and he
Speaker 1: would go on to found his own companies and later
Speaker 1: on pass away in nineteen sixty one. But back to
Speaker 1: Magnavox and the mid to late nineteen twenties, the company
Speaker 1: was actually too pretty unsteady ground in nive. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just because Jensen had left. Magnavox had overestimated the demand
Speaker 1: for radio sets in the early days and had overproduced radios,
Speaker 1: so it expanded operations. It had opened up a warehouse
Speaker 1: and distribution center in New York, But by the end
Speaker 1: of nineteen twenty five, with the costs of operation so
Speaker 1: high in the radio business so cut throat, Magnavox chose
Speaker 1: to close those New York offices because those offices weren't
Speaker 1: really serving a purpose. Because the company was finding it
Speaker 1: hard to sell consumer radios. There's just too many on
Speaker 1: the market and there wasn't enough you know, demand there yet,
Speaker 1: and the business owns began to consider alternatives to having
Speaker 1: a base of operations in California as well. There was
Speaker 1: no denying that California was a huge market, a lot
Speaker 1: of people live there, but shipping components like copper wire,
Speaker 1: which largely came out of the Midwestern states in America,
Speaker 1: and and shipping them all the way across the states
Speaker 1: to California and or the manufacture stuff that was really expensive.
Speaker 1: Now the company also hit a stumbling block when it
Speaker 1: started to produce its own vacuum tubes. The company was
Speaker 1: trying to get off the dependence of other manufacturing companies
Speaker 1: and to become more self sufficient and thus produce all
Speaker 1: the different components that would go into things like a radio.
Speaker 1: The earliest Magnavox tubes had a tendency to short out,
Speaker 1: which is not good. Like some of them wouldn't even
Speaker 1: last longer than a few hours of operation. Later tubes
Speaker 1: continued to have some reliability issues, and this gave Magnavox
Speaker 1: a bad reputation among distributors and independent radio manufacturers. They
Speaker 1: realized that if they built their radios and they used
Speaker 1: Magnavox tubes as amplifiers, that they would frequently stop functioning
Speaker 1: not long after they were first print in use. That's
Speaker 1: not that's not good. And this was bad enough that
Speaker 1: by mid ninety seven, the board of directors from Magnavox
Speaker 1: ordered the two production facilities to shut down. They also
Speaker 1: shut down consumer radio production, so for the next decade
Speaker 1: or so, Magnavox didn't make consumer radios. Instead, it would
Speaker 1: make components for independent radio companies, and they just sold
Speaker 1: those directly to manufacturers. Now, the reason for that shutdown
Speaker 1: was that Magnavox still had more radios produced than it
Speaker 1: could sell. They were literally taking up space and warehouses
Speaker 1: in the company had built radio sets that had five
Speaker 1: tubes in them for the purposes of tuning, you know,
Speaker 1: receiving tuning and amplifying signals. And despite the fact that
Speaker 1: analysts had predicted that people would want six tube radio
Speaker 1: sets that had gray or functionality by nine, Magnifux said,
Speaker 1: we're going to stick with the five tube design. The
Speaker 1: reason they did that was that they were worried that
Speaker 1: if they moved to a six tube design for the
Speaker 1: new models, no one would ever buy the old sets
Speaker 1: that were sitting around in warehouses, and so you know,
Speaker 1: Magnifux would be stuck with all these obsolete radios. But
Speaker 1: then no one bought the new five tube sets that
Speaker 1: Magnavox produced, so it was an even bigger loss. Right,
Speaker 1: Instead of a warehouse filled with old five tube sets
Speaker 1: while the six tube sets were selling, there were warehouses
Speaker 1: full full filled with even more five tube sets. And
Speaker 1: all told, Magnifox lost around a million dollars due to
Speaker 1: the issues with tube reliability and performance of their radio sales. UH.
Speaker 1: And remember we're talking about the nineteen twenties here. A
Speaker 1: million dollars is a lot of money, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: but when you factor in inflation, it's an astronomical amount
Speaker 1: of money. Uh So, not only wasn't an expensive blow,
Speaker 1: but also tarnished Magnavox's reputation, so it would make it
Speaker 1: harder for Magnuvox to win back the confidence of distributors
Speaker 1: and manufacturers in the future. Magnavox also tried to branch
Speaker 1: out and diversify beyond loudspeakers and radios. In nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: four of the company introduced an electric heater. Electric heaters
Speaker 1: work on a pretty simple principle, which is that of
Speaker 1: electrical resistance. So every conductor, every material that is electrically
Speaker 1: conductive under normal conditions, has some amount of electrical resistance,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of like friction in the world of electricity.
Speaker 1: Electrical resistance depends on a few factors, first and foremost
Speaker 1: the material itself. So, for example, copper is a really
Speaker 1: good electrical conductor, and as a fairly low resistance, silver
Speaker 1: is an even better electrical conductor. In fact, silver would
Speaker 1: be a great conductor if it weren't for the fact
Speaker 1: that one it's pretty scarce and to will think it's
Speaker 1: pretty so they want to turn it into jewelry and stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, the material is not just the only
Speaker 1: factor that you know ends up affecting resistance. The gauge
Speaker 1: or thickness of a wire also matters. Thin wires, which
Speaker 1: somewhat paradoxically on on casual glance, have a higher gauge,
Speaker 1: they have greater electrical resistance than thicker wires or wires
Speaker 1: that have a low gauge. And again that might seem
Speaker 1: counterintuitive in the gauge factor, right, like a sixteen gauge
Speaker 1: wire is actually thinner than a twelve gauge wire. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the thicker the wire or cable, the lower the electrical resistance.
Speaker 1: Other things, by the way, can also change electrical resistance.
Speaker 1: For example, if you were too super cool a good
Speaker 1: conductor like copper. In other words, if you were to
Speaker 1: reduce the temperature of the copper too close to absolute zero,
Speaker 1: you can reduce or even eliminate electrical resistance entirely. This
Speaker 1: is what facilities like the large hadron collider do. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like a playground slide if you want to
Speaker 1: think of it. That way, So the surface of a
Speaker 1: slide resists stuff sliding down it to some degree, right,
Speaker 1: Like you might slide a slide and you go like
Speaker 1: it's kind of stop and start. On a hot day,
Speaker 1: you might just stick to it um so you can
Speaker 1: slide down, but you feel the friction between you and
Speaker 1: the slide. But let's say you were to coat that
Speaker 1: slide in I don't know, baby oil, you would drastically
Speaker 1: reduce the friction and kids on that playground would just
Speaker 1: zoom right off that slide. By the way, don't do that,
Speaker 1: you'll hurt people. Don't hurt people. But anyway, even with
Speaker 1: the baby oil, you'd still have some friction, but it
Speaker 1: would be much much less than normal, and you would
Speaker 1: slide much faster. Kind Of similar when we're talking about
Speaker 1: electrical resistance. But let's get back to electric heaters, all right.
Speaker 1: So electric current runs through a conductive material, which again
Speaker 1: has some amount of electrical resistance. Well, that resistance means
Speaker 1: that some of that electrical energy converts into heat. Now,
Speaker 1: typically we think of this as waste. The electronics heat
Speaker 1: up and the heat gets released into the environment, and
Speaker 1: we don't typically do anything with that extra heat. In fact,
Speaker 1: electronics like computers and such typically have fans in them
Speaker 1: to help disperse the heat that's generated through electrical resistance,
Speaker 1: because if electrical components overheat, they typically fail. An electric heater, however,
Speaker 1: makes heat through electrical resistance on purpose. The electric circuits
Speaker 1: in electric heater have resistors built into them specifically so
Speaker 1: that they heat up and convert more of the electric
Speaker 1: current into heat. The resistors are made of materials that
Speaker 1: can with stand high temperatures for a long time, so
Speaker 1: they don't break down due to this heating process. The
Speaker 1: same is true for the elements that are in an
Speaker 1: electric toaster or in an electric oven, and that's how
Speaker 1: electric heaters work in a nutshell, all right. Back to
Speaker 1: some of the other products that Magnavox was making around
Speaker 1: this time. There was also an on demand water heater,
Speaker 1: which you would mount directly onto a faucet, heating the
Speaker 1: water just before it came out of the pipes and
Speaker 1: through the faucet itself. This, by the way, it works
Speaker 1: in a very similar way to an electric heater. You
Speaker 1: have pipes that are surrounded by electric or sometimes gas
Speaker 1: powered heating elements, and so when you want hot water,
Speaker 1: these elements turn on and they get really hot, and
Speaker 1: the water passing through the pipes picks up some of
Speaker 1: that thermal energy and heats up, so that eventually the
Speaker 1: water comes out hot. The company also created a laying
Speaker 1: cage for chickens and apparently also created an automatic egg cooker.
Speaker 1: These designs never really went into full production, so they
Speaker 1: were in very limited runs as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't able to find much information on them
Speaker 1: before I went to record this episode. So I wish
Speaker 1: I could tell you more about an automatic egg cooker
Speaker 1: from Magnifux, but I don't have that info. One item
Speaker 1: that did come out that was success full was the
Speaker 1: Magna Lux adjustable lamp, which was a death lamp that
Speaker 1: was on an articulated arm, and it looks a lot
Speaker 1: like common desk lamps of today, you know, like the
Speaker 1: lamps that have the hinged arm in them so that
Speaker 1: you can position them in different ways. Magnavox made one
Speaker 1: of those that was pretty successful, but the bread and
Speaker 1: Butter from Magnavox remained. The loud speaker. The company continued
Speaker 1: to sell cone based loud speakers. This was the backbone
Speaker 1: of their business. Speakers were what the company really uh
Speaker 1: you know, made their name on literally and still were
Speaker 1: the most important product they were creating. They weren't generally
Speaker 1: meant for the average consumer. They weren't selling these two
Speaker 1: customers directly. They were selling them to other companies like
Speaker 1: They became the component of choice for several independent radio
Speaker 1: manufacturing companies. So you might buy a radio set that
Speaker 1: has a different brand on it, but it had Magnavox
Speaker 1: speakers in it. They did, however, try to create a
Speaker 1: retail market for consumer speakers. By the time of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine to nineteen thirty, the leaders of Magnifux realized
Speaker 1: that they needed to change operations. Their main customers were
Speaker 1: now independent radio manufacturers who were purchasing Magnafux speakers to
Speaker 1: go into their radio sets, and they were mostly located
Speaker 1: in the Midwest of the United States. And as I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, copper cable also primarily was coming out of
Speaker 1: the Midwest. So in nineteen twenty nine, Magnavox opened up
Speaker 1: an assembly plant in Chicago, Illinois, with the goal of
Speaker 1: shifting operations to the Midwest. Then the stock market crashed.
Speaker 1: Now this had a massive effect across nearly every industry,
Speaker 1: not just in the United States, but in the world,
Speaker 1: Magnavox was forced to go through a company reorganization to
Speaker 1: stay afloat the leaders decided to shut down the California
Speaker 1: operations and they moved everything to Chicago. Forty five employees
Speaker 1: would actually make that move, although almost all of them
Speaker 1: would end up leaving the company over the following couple
Speaker 1: of years and Magnafux would end up hiring all new
Speaker 1: people to work the company. Magnafux would relocate again, however,
Speaker 1: not long after relocating to Chicago. This time they moved
Speaker 1: to Fort Wayne, Indiana. That's where the company set up
Speaker 1: a new manufacturing facility, and it wouldn't produce consumer products
Speaker 1: for several more years. Instead, it focused on tech that
Speaker 1: would go into products coming out of other manufacturers. In
Speaker 1: nine Magnavox founded the Magnavux Company Limited. You might wonder
Speaker 1: why it did that. This has to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that the earlier incorporation of Magnavox was out of
Speaker 1: the state of Arizona. So even though the company headquarters
Speaker 1: were located in California, the leaders chose to incorporate in Arizona. Well.
Speaker 1: The business leaders now wanted to switch this to Delaware,
Speaker 1: and you might wonder why that's so. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you were to just look at a list of Fortune
Speaker 1: companies in the United States, you would see that more
Speaker 1: than half of them are incorporated in Delaware. Delaware is
Speaker 1: not a big state and it has less than a
Speaker 1: million people living in it, so you might wonder what
Speaker 1: the heck is going on here. Well, the big reason
Speaker 1: is that Delaware leads the US when it comes to
Speaker 1: laws that define what corporations can and cannot do. Plus,
Speaker 1: Delaware has a special court called the Court of Chancery
Speaker 1: that only focuses on cases involving corporate law. So cases
Speaker 1: appear before a judge. There's no jury trial, it's just
Speaker 1: a judge, and they get fast tracked into that system.
Speaker 1: So that means there's fewer delays compared to other court systems.
Speaker 1: If you were in a different state and you had
Speaker 1: to bring a matter to court, you would be put
Speaker 1: on a waiting list along with every other case that
Speaker 1: was being tried by those courts. But because Delaware has
Speaker 1: the specific court for corporate law matters, things are much faster.
Speaker 1: So being incorporated in Delaware, even if the company's headquarters
Speaker 1: are in some other state, has legal advantages. Anyway, the
Speaker 1: Magnafucx Come and He Limited became a holding company. It
Speaker 1: purchased all the stock from the Magnavox Company that was
Speaker 1: incorporated in Arizona, so effectively it shifted the incorporation to Delaware.
Speaker 1: So this was an example of jumping through some legal
Speaker 1: hoops to change the incorporation status of the company. Uh,
Speaker 1: Magnavox Company Limited didn't really do anything. It was just
Speaker 1: a holding company for the Magna Magnafux Company Incorporated, that
Speaker 1: was the company that was actually doing the manufacturing. Around
Speaker 1: this time, Magnavox also acquired part of the AMRAD Corporation.
Speaker 1: AMRAD stands for Amateur Radio Research and Development. It previously
Speaker 1: merged with the Crosley Radio Corporation, which is a fastening
Speaker 1: company in its own right. Crosley Radio made home radio sets,
Speaker 1: including some budget models, but by the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: the am RED division had very little to do, and
Speaker 1: this kind of gets back into that oversaturation problem in
Speaker 1: the radio industry. And after the stock work crashed, the
Speaker 1: am RED division effectively shut down. So Magnavox purchased part
Speaker 1: of the am RED division and brought it into the
Speaker 1: fold of Magnavox am Red mostly created components for radios,
Speaker 1: including tubes that would be used like gas tubes that
Speaker 1: would be used rectifiers in radio. So Magnavox supplement its
Speaker 1: own capabilities with this acquisition. In Magnavox purchased a stake
Speaker 1: of ownership in a company called Electro Acoustics Products located
Speaker 1: out of New York. The company created stuff like the
Speaker 1: Illustra vox, and you might wonder what the heck that was. Well,
Speaker 1: the Illustra vox was a combination phonograph that's the vox
Speaker 1: or voice and film strip projector presumably the Illustra part.
Speaker 1: It looked a lot like a film projector that had
Speaker 1: a record turntable smacked on top of it, so you
Speaker 1: would load a film into the projector, which would indicate
Speaker 1: where you were when you were to put the needle
Speaker 1: down on the accompanying phonograph that had the soundtrack for
Speaker 1: the film strip, and then you would play the audio
Speaker 1: back along with the projected film. Now, obviously getting it
Speaker 1: just right was kind of an art in itself, so
Speaker 1: that the sound and images would match up, and they
Speaker 1: were used for a lot of stuff like training films
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. The acquisition of this company
Speaker 1: would mean that Magnavox was poised to return to the
Speaker 1: consumer market. By nineteen thirty six, seven Electroacoustics Products would
Speaker 1: initially be a subsidiary of Magnavox, and in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: Magnavox introduced a tabletop radio unit designated as high Fidelity.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about what that means after this quick break.
Speaker 1: All right, it's time to talk high fidelity. And by
Speaker 1: that I don't mean the Nick Hornby novel or the
Speaker 1: movie adaptation of that novel starring John Cusack, or the
Speaker 1: Broadway musical adaptation or the TV series adaptation. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking the concept of high fidelity. So usually, though not always,
Speaker 1: when you record a sound, what you want the recorded
Speaker 1: version of the sound to sound like is to be
Speaker 1: as close to the original sound as you can possibly
Speaker 1: make it. You are recreating the original sound through playback,
Speaker 1: but there are a lot of things that can interfere
Speaker 1: with the reproduced sound and it can make it fall short.
Speaker 1: The recording itself could be faulty that would be a
Speaker 1: big problem, or there could be issues with the playback
Speaker 1: devices wiring, or the speakers might not be capable of
Speaker 1: playing back the sound without introducing distortion. Now, the word
Speaker 1: fidelity describes how pure a reproduced sound is. That is,
Speaker 1: a high fidelity experience is one in which there is
Speaker 1: little or no distortion introduced into the experience of the sound,
Speaker 1: so that you get a more pure playback experience. If
Speaker 1: you listen to a cordings of old gramophone or phonograph
Speaker 1: playback devices, you've probably heard teny warbly sounds that are interesting,
Speaker 1: but they're clearly you know, they're not the identical to
Speaker 1: the original performance. You know, it's you're getting some components
Speaker 1: in there that were not intended necessarily. By the late
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, companies were refining the components and playback devices
Speaker 1: and recording devices, and they were ferreting out the things
Speaker 1: that were introduced distortion. This led to the marketing concept
Speaker 1: of high fidelity. And to be clear, it's not just
Speaker 1: a marketing concept, but high fidelity or hi fi became
Speaker 1: a way to say, this audio device makes sound real good.
Speaker 1: In seven Magnifux filed to reorganize with the federal government
Speaker 1: under the Bankruptcy Act, and the reorganization allowed the Magnifux
Speaker 1: Company Incorporated, which remember that's the subsidiary of the man
Speaker 1: Magnafux Company Limited. Magnifus Company incorporates the company that actually
Speaker 1: makes stuff. Well, they were then able to absorb Electroacoustics
Speaker 1: Products Company and merge it directly with Magnavox Company Incorporated.
Speaker 1: So what this means is the version of Magnavox what
Speaker 1: actually made stuff, absorbed the subsidiary and gobbled it on up,
Speaker 1: while the holding company that doesn't make stuff remain the same.
Speaker 1: This was also when Frank Freeman would become a vice
Speaker 1: president of Magnavox. Now, Freeman had founded Electroacoustics Products years earlier.
Speaker 1: He was the head of that company when Magnavox acquired
Speaker 1: it as a subsidiary. So he joined Magnavox in the
Speaker 1: process of the merger, and he would become a vice
Speaker 1: president of Magnavox, and he'll be a very important part
Speaker 1: of our story a little bit later on too. Now,
Speaker 1: the corporate structure became a little bit simpler a few
Speaker 1: years later, in nineteen forty two, that's when Magnavox Company Limited,
Speaker 1: that is the holding company what doesn't make anything, changed
Speaker 1: its name to the Magnavox Company. Meanwhile, the Magnavox Company Incorporated.
Speaker 1: As in the part of the company what made things dissolved,
Speaker 1: So now there was just the Magnavox Company. It was
Speaker 1: no longer a holding company. Now that was everything. It
Speaker 1: was an electronics and components manufacturing company. So we've simplified
Speaker 1: things dramatically at this point from a corporate structure point
Speaker 1: of view. In Magnavox introduced the first of its FM tuners,
Speaker 1: which had the name of cright, because these model names,
Speaker 1: they're great, really easy to remember. Now, keep in mind,
Speaker 1: AM radio uses a carrier wave of a specific frequency
Speaker 1: somewhere between five forty to sixty killer hurts and uh.
Speaker 1: You encode information on this carrier wave by varying or
Speaker 1: modulating the amplitude of that wave. So if you were
Speaker 1: to visualize a wave plotted on a chart, this would
Speaker 1: mean that you are changing the height of the peaks
Speaker 1: and the depth of the troughs. And by doing this
Speaker 1: you can encode information on top of a carrier wave.
Speaker 1: And by demodulating it, by essentially taking the carrier wave
Speaker 1: out of it, you're left with the modulation part that
Speaker 1: that represents the original information. In this case audio like
Speaker 1: you know radio waves, So FM radio that is frequency modulation.
Speaker 1: That means we take a carrier wave, this time in
Speaker 1: the eight mega hurts range, and we vary or modulate
Speaker 1: the frequency of the wave to encode information on those waves.
Speaker 1: FM radio had better audio quality or fidelity, and it
Speaker 1: first had emerged in the nineteen thirties, but took a
Speaker 1: while for companies to start creating consumer radios that had
Speaker 1: FM tuning capability to them. This was also around the
Speaker 1: time that the United States got involved in World War Two,
Speaker 1: and again, like with the First World War, companies in
Speaker 1: America began shifting focus to create products and components to
Speaker 1: support the war effort. Magnavox was no different and in
Speaker 1: fact received the first Navy E Award that was given
Speaker 1: to an electronics manufacturer That happened in ninety two. What
Speaker 1: was Magnavox producing well, largely kept on making the stuff
Speaker 1: it was known for, loud speakers and the components needed
Speaker 1: to drive them, and those were incredibly useful in military
Speaker 1: vehicles like large ships and submarines and aircraft. At the
Speaker 1: end of the war, Magnavox refocused on the consumer market
Speaker 1: and the post World War two era would really be
Speaker 1: the golden years for Magnavox. In general, the post war
Speaker 1: economy in America was really really strong. You had all
Speaker 1: these returning soldiers who were able to take advantage of
Speaker 1: government programs to establish a new life for themselves state side.
Speaker 1: Uh And just to clarify, the returning white soldiers were
Speaker 1: really able to take advantage of those programs. Other soldiers,
Speaker 1: while technically being eligible for that same sort of aid,
Speaker 1: found themselves effectively excluded from taking advantage of the programs
Speaker 1: due to various policies that were you know, when you
Speaker 1: get down to it racist, but that's a subject for
Speaker 1: another podcast. It just feel we have to acknowledge it,
Speaker 1: because if you don't acknowledge it, you are just denying
Speaker 1: something that was a very important and painful part of history. Anyway,
Speaker 1: for Magnavox, the company, this meant that a return to
Speaker 1: consumer electronics came right as the demand was on the
Speaker 1: rise for them. In fact, demand was high enough that
Speaker 1: the company decided to make another important acquisition, and this
Speaker 1: time it wasn't an electronics company now. Instead, Magnavox opened
Speaker 1: up a new subsidiary to build out the cabinets that
Speaker 1: would house radios. Now, remember, in these days, pre transistor
Speaker 1: radios were pretty big. Even the tabletop models were hefty,
Speaker 1: and a lot of home models were effectively full pieces
Speaker 1: of furniture, like almost you know, a full set of
Speaker 1: drawers or a hutch or something. They were enormous. So
Speaker 1: your average radio consisted of electronic components that the manufacturer
Speaker 1: would then mount inside a wooden cabinet. So Magnavox opened
Speaker 1: up the Greenville Cabinet Company in Greenville, Tennessee in ninety
Speaker 1: seven to design and build the cabinetry that would house
Speaker 1: Magnavox radio sets. Not only was there a strong market
Speaker 1: for radios, there was the temptation to get into another
Speaker 1: fledgling technology, television. Electronic television's predated World War Two, but
Speaker 1: the war had pretty much put TV evolution on hold
Speaker 1: for several years. Magnavux joined in the TV craze after
Speaker 1: World War two, announcing in nine that the company would
Speaker 1: begin producing television sets. Now, at this point, Magnavox's reputation
Speaker 1: was firmly aligned with the concept of audio quality and capability,
Speaker 1: not with moving pictures. An engineer named and Thank the
Speaker 1: Right became the chief of television engineering at Magnavox, and
Speaker 1: his team got to work creating a technology the company called,
Speaker 1: of course, Magna Scope. Now, interestingly, the first TV that
Speaker 1: Magnavox produced was called the Modular, which had the model
Speaker 1: named MV ten, and the company introduced this first in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight, so just a year after they announced they
Speaker 1: were going to get into the TV business. Clearly they
Speaker 1: had already been working on it for a while before then.
Speaker 1: The Greenville Manufacturing Company provided the cabinet for the device
Speaker 1: which housed the electronics, which came out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 1: In in set in the face of this cabinet was
Speaker 1: the MVY tens screen, which was not huge, little black
Speaker 1: and white screen and add from the time claims quote
Speaker 1: it provides the finest picture quality in television and sharper
Speaker 1: contrast for better visibility end quote. The add by the way,
Speaker 1: was really for a record player slash radio combination. The
Speaker 1: one in the photo I'm looking at was called the Cosmopolitan.
Speaker 1: And these sets, the radio sets that had a phonograph
Speaker 1: player built into them, ranged in price from a hundred
Speaker 1: seventy nine dollars and fifty cents all the way up
Speaker 1: to eight dollars. And remember we're talking like nineteen forties
Speaker 1: money that that would be truly astronomically expensive today. Uh.
Speaker 1: On top of that bass price, you could add on
Speaker 1: what they called a duo matic changer. This was a
Speaker 1: piece of equipment that could hold up to twelve records,
Speaker 1: and so you would play a record and when the
Speaker 1: the tone arm would get all the way to the
Speaker 1: end of the record, it would automatically lift up, go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning like the rest position, and set down.
Speaker 1: Then the machine could drop the next record onto the spindle.
Speaker 1: The tone arm would come back up, move back over
Speaker 1: and start playing the next record. So you could hold
Speaker 1: up to twelve records with this thing, and it would
Speaker 1: automatic drop in the next record in the sequence. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this would only cost you a cool two dollars
Speaker 1: or so. Then to have the television on top of that,
Speaker 1: that would set you back an additional two and fifty
Speaker 1: cents all the way up to nine fifty bucks. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind this is again all in the nineties,
Speaker 1: so with inflation, these prices would be truly enormous, especially
Speaker 1: if you wanted to top of the line system. Some
Speaker 1: thing's never change, right, So the TV receiver was called
Speaker 1: the modular not because the television itself was made up
Speaker 1: of modules. It's not like you could take the TV apart. Instead,
Speaker 1: the TV on its own was a module. And as
Speaker 1: the ad I alluded to hinted at Magnafucs, the company
Speaker 1: knew that it was most associated with audio equipment, and
Speaker 1: so this company was essentially saying, hey, you could also
Speaker 1: get a television to incorporate into the audio equipment and
Speaker 1: enhance your audio equipment, rather than, you know, try to
Speaker 1: create it on all new marketing line dedicated solely to
Speaker 1: selling televisions. Now, I haven't found a specific source that
Speaker 1: confirms my suspicion, but I believe the m V ten
Speaker 1: did not have its own incorporated speaker system, or at
Speaker 1: least not a very robust speaker system. Instead, you would
Speaker 1: actually connect the m V ten to your Magnavox Hi
Speaker 1: Fi audio set, and the sound would play out through
Speaker 1: the audio set. You had the picture on the TV,
Speaker 1: but the sound would come through the same speakers that
Speaker 1: you know, the radio and phonograph were attached to, which
Speaker 1: honestly would make this one of the first home entertainment
Speaker 1: all in one setups that I've ever heard about the
Speaker 1: television market. You know, the whole industry as a whole
Speaker 1: proved to be a profitable one. It was also a
Speaker 1: very competitive one. Magnavox would go on to establish new
Speaker 1: manufacturing facilities in Greenville, Tennessee that primarily focused on TV production,
Speaker 1: building Facility number two in nineteen fifty two. Remember the
Speaker 1: first facility was dedicated to building cabinetry for radios. And
Speaker 1: it was around this time that Frank Freeman, originally the
Speaker 1: founder of the Electroacoustics Products Company, became president of Magnavox.
Speaker 1: Freeman head and a reputation as a real high fidelity fanatic,
Speaker 1: and under his leadership, Magnavox would develop a strategy to
Speaker 1: make sure that each of the components that produced for
Speaker 1: its radios worked really well together. Now that seems like
Speaker 1: a no brainer, but hear me out. Let's say you're
Speaker 1: making various components, and the components you're making are all
Speaker 1: necessary to enable something like a radio set to work. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's all the parts of a radio set. Now
Speaker 1: you could treat them all as separate individual technologies, So
Speaker 1: you could make the best tuner, for example, and the
Speaker 1: best amplifier and the best loud speaker, and on their own,
Speaker 1: when you hook them up with sensitive instruments, you can
Speaker 1: of that they all work fantastic, that they are, you know,
Speaker 1: best of class, They perform well within whatever your specifications are. However,
Speaker 1: this does not necessarily mean that once you connect them
Speaker 1: all together in your radio set that they're all going
Speaker 1: to play nice with each other. Sometimes different components can
Speaker 1: start to introduce stuff like distortion when they are connected together,
Speaker 1: and that obviously has a negative impact on the sound
Speaker 1: produced by the end product. So Freeman's directive was that
Speaker 1: the engineers had to create a more holistic system that
Speaker 1: would produce the best overall result when they all work together.
Speaker 1: And that meant that sometimes maybe the amplifiers not quite
Speaker 1: as powerful, or the receiver might not be quite as
Speaker 1: sensitive as you could make it. But the end result
Speaker 1: for the customer was that you had a radio set
Speaker 1: that produced great sound. It created a way to provide
Speaker 1: the best experience on a per dollar basis. And while
Speaker 1: there were audio files who were seeking out individual components
Speaker 1: in order to produce their own systems, they would have
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort,
Speaker 1: and a lot of money to do this and swap
Speaker 1: out components to find out which combination would actually provide
Speaker 1: the best experience. Magnavox was looking to create that rail
Speaker 1: the box, and as a result, the company's reputation for
Speaker 1: Hi Fi audio grew year over year. Freeman, by the way,
Speaker 1: he was born in Austria Hungry, Hungary in nineteen or nine,
Speaker 1: but his family had moved to America when he was
Speaker 1: just nine years old. In the nineteen twenties. He had
Speaker 1: studied the young field of radio research, and that's when
Speaker 1: he founded Electroacoustic Products in nineteen thirty. His tenure as
Speaker 1: president of Magnavox began in nineteen fifty, and during that
Speaker 1: time he would see the company reach its height as
Speaker 1: far as its reputation and revenue were concerned. He would
Speaker 1: lead Magnavox until his death in uh in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: He died at the age of sixty three. While he
Speaker 1: was president, Freeman oversaw Magnufux's explosive growth in sales, so
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty the company generated thirty two million dollars
Speaker 1: in revenue. By nineteen sixty seven, the year before Freeman
Speaker 1: passed away, annual revenue was up to four hundred fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars. Now, granted, revenue and profit are two different things.
Speaker 1: You've got to subtract the cost of business from your
Speaker 1: revenue before you start getting to profits. So for profit,
Speaker 1: that went from two million dollars in nineteen fifty to
Speaker 1: thirty million dollars by nineteen sixty seven. So not only
Speaker 1: was he making more revenue, he was making a greater
Speaker 1: profit in in turn, so it's not like the expenses
Speaker 1: rose at the same rate as revenue did. Rayman saw
Speaker 1: a big technological advancement, and a couple of them actually
Speaker 1: while he was in charge of Magnufux. One of those
Speaker 1: was that he saw the birth of color television. Granted,
Speaker 1: color TV, actually the development of it had been around
Speaker 1: for a few years, but it really emerged in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen fifties. However, rival company r c A would
Speaker 1: have a pretty effective monopoly on that uh color TV
Speaker 1: area first, and that was largely because there were a
Speaker 1: few different ways you could create color television. CBS initially
Speaker 1: had a lock on creating the standard, but our c
Speaker 1: A was able to push really hard to have its
Speaker 1: version adopted as the standard. Um you know, the only
Speaker 1: reason why CBS is didn't take hold was because the
Speaker 1: Korean War put everything on standby for a while. But
Speaker 1: I've covered that story before in my series about r
Speaker 1: c A, and it's a heck of a story. If
Speaker 1: you were curious about how our c A and CBS
Speaker 1: battled it out to try and determine what standard would
Speaker 1: be used for color television, you should check out those series.
Speaker 1: It's a heck of a story, has elements of political
Speaker 1: intrigue as well as technical evolution. But anyway, our CIA
Speaker 1: eventually one out and other TV manufacturers had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to make color TVs without violating our c
Speaker 1: S patents or they would have to, you know, pay
Speaker 1: a licensing fee to our c A in order to
Speaker 1: create their own technologies, which of course drives up production costs.
Speaker 1: So while color TV essentially launched in the US in
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties, Magna Bux didn't really get into
Speaker 1: the color TV space until the early nineteen sixties. However,
Speaker 1: another big jump in tech came in the form of
Speaker 1: the transistor. Just as the vacuum tube had revolutionized electronics
Speaker 1: decades earlier, the transistor would really shake things up. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit more after we take this
Speaker 1: quick break. So the transistor emerged out of Bell Labs
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen forties. But early transistors were large
Speaker 1: and unfit for practical application. They were more of a
Speaker 1: proof of concept, and they proved that it was possible
Speaker 1: to create an amplifier or switch using semiconduct your material
Speaker 1: rather than a vacuum tube. And over time engineers figured
Speaker 1: out how to reduce the size of the original transistors
Speaker 1: so that they were small, much much smaller than vacuum tubes,
Speaker 1: and they would emit less heat as well. Uh And
Speaker 1: they also weren't quite as delicate as vacuum tubes were.
Speaker 1: You know, if you were carrying a case of vacuum
Speaker 1: tubes and they dropped, you might end up shattering all
Speaker 1: of them. Transistors were a little bit more sturdy than that.
Speaker 1: So transistors can do the same job as a vacuum
Speaker 1: tube amplifier. That is, they can take an incoming weak
Speaker 1: electric signal and then they can boost the strength of
Speaker 1: that so that it comes out greater than the way
Speaker 1: it came in. And the way it does this is
Speaker 1: a little different from a vacuum tube, but the basic
Speaker 1: principle is the same. So you've got a weak signal
Speaker 1: going into the transistor, you apply voltage to another part
Speaker 1: of the transistor, and this induces a stronger output signal.
Speaker 1: So you are having to put energy into a transistor
Speaker 1: to make this happen. It's not like you've got a
Speaker 1: magical switch that just takes a week signal and boosts
Speaker 1: it into a strong signal without you having to do anything.
Speaker 1: But you didn't need big, bulky hot vacuum tubes in
Speaker 1: your giant radio set cabinet in order to amplify a
Speaker 1: signal so that it could drive loudspeakers. So it was
Speaker 1: possible for transistors to do that job, which meant you
Speaker 1: can miniaturize the design of the overall product without compromising
Speaker 1: on the end user experience. So Magnavox produced its first
Speaker 1: all transistor radio in nineteen fifty seven. It cost seventy
Speaker 1: nine dollars and cents. Now I did go ahead and
Speaker 1: run that through the inflation calculator just to see how
Speaker 1: much it would cost today if it were at the
Speaker 1: same you know, cost level. So brace yourselves, because that
Speaker 1: eight is dollar transistor radio would set you back more
Speaker 1: than seven eight bucks today. Seven dollars for a transistor radio.
Speaker 1: That means the inflation between nineteen fifty seven and today.
Speaker 1: It means it means a dollar today is worth about
Speaker 1: a tenth of what it was earth back then Yelsa. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the price tag probably drives home the fact that these
Speaker 1: electronics were adopted really by people who are well off right.
Speaker 1: The average person could not afford to buy these sorts
Speaker 1: of things. Now that has largely always been the case,
Speaker 1: particularly in the world of consumer electronics. We see new
Speaker 1: technology hit consumer shelves and when it first debut is
Speaker 1: it is exorbitantly expensive, like we saw that with h
Speaker 1: D t V s. We saw it with DVD players,
Speaker 1: we saw it with Blu ray players, we're seeing it
Speaker 1: now with oh LED screens. But then eventually manufacturers, once
Speaker 1: they see that there's a demand for these technologies, invest
Speaker 1: in more ways to make the manufacturing process more efficient
Speaker 1: and less expensive, and the cost starts to come down
Speaker 1: and becomes more accessible to the average consumer. Um we
Speaker 1: would see this happen a lot more frequently today if
Speaker 1: it weren't for the fact that obsolescence is a really
Speaker 1: big thing. It drives a near constant cycle of new
Speaker 1: tech that drives up prices. So while the television's five
Speaker 1: years from now should be less expensive, they're gonna have
Speaker 1: new features we don't even think about right now that
Speaker 1: we'll drive those prices up even more. Whether we want
Speaker 1: those new features or not, that remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, we saw that with three D television's that
Speaker 1: was a big failure. I'm getting off track. Let's get
Speaker 1: back to Magnavox. So in nineteen fifty eight the company
Speaker 1: produced its first Hi fi stereo system. So up to
Speaker 1: that point, the sets that Magnavox were selling were mono.
Speaker 1: That is, each speaker in the system was getting the
Speaker 1: same output signal. So even if you had multiple speakers
Speaker 1: attached to your system, they were all playing the exact
Speaker 1: same sound. Right, the sound in the left channel and
Speaker 1: the sound in the right channel. There's no such thing there.
Speaker 1: It's the same channel going to two speakers, and the
Speaker 1: sound is identical. Stereo allowed for left and right channels
Speaker 1: independent of each other, so you could have some sounds
Speaker 1: coming out of one speaker and other sounds coming out
Speaker 1: of the other, or maybe it's really loud in one
Speaker 1: speaker and softer in the other. I've done a whole
Speaker 1: episode on the history of stereo sound. The history of
Speaker 1: StereoSound dates much further back, by the way, but it
Speaker 1: took a while for artists to really embrace stereo, particularly
Speaker 1: in genres like rock and roll. That's because a lot
Speaker 1: of artists knew that their fans were relying on older
Speaker 1: mono sets, so they were more interested in developing records
Speaker 1: that were really engineered for mono sets, not for stereo sets.
Speaker 1: The Beatles famously would spend countless hours in the studio
Speaker 1: engineering their mono recordings, but they would leave the stereo
Speaker 1: recordings to other people because they knew most of their
Speaker 1: fans were using mono sound systems well. In nineteen three,
Speaker 1: Magnavox built a third manufacturing facility in Greenville, Tennessee. It
Speaker 1: was at the time the largest TV manufacturing facility under
Speaker 1: one roof in the United States, and for the following years,
Speaker 1: Magnifux continued to produce stereo systems and televisions, and it
Speaker 1: also developed plasma panels for the military. So a plasma
Speaker 1: display is just pretty cool technology. So for a while,
Speaker 1: plasma displays were really competitive with L E D screens,
Speaker 1: largely because plasma displays have a much better contrast ratio,
Speaker 1: which would be the difference and the number of differences
Speaker 1: between the darkest colors you can display and the brightest
Speaker 1: colors you can display. So with L e D screens,
Speaker 1: essentially every section of the screen has a backlight behind it.
Speaker 1: So even if you're watching something that has a lot
Speaker 1: of dark colors in it, there's a backlight and some
Speaker 1: of that light bleeds through the screen, So the darkest colors,
Speaker 1: like like black, might come out more like a charcoal gray.
Speaker 1: But plasma is different. Each pixel, each point of light
Speaker 1: in the panel has a little bit of gas in
Speaker 1: a cell that represents that pixel, and the controller sends
Speaker 1: an electric current to the cells that are associated with
Speaker 1: a picture. Let's say you're just showing up the letter
Speaker 1: A on screen. Well, the cells that make up that
Speaker 1: letter A will get current sent to them, and the
Speaker 1: current excites a gas something like mercury vapor, And when
Speaker 1: mercury vapor gets excited, it's electrons jump to higher energy levels.
Speaker 1: Those electrons have to come back down, but in order
Speaker 1: to come back down, they have to release that energy.
Speaker 1: They do that in the form of ultra violet radiation. Well,
Speaker 1: we can't see ultra violet light. However, if we pair
Speaker 1: that mercury vapor with say certain noble gases, then the
Speaker 1: ultra violet light will stimulate those gases to release energy
Speaker 1: in the form of visible light. So if you were
Speaker 1: to look at a color plasma display like a color
Speaker 1: plasma television, every single pixel that represents a point of
Speaker 1: light on that display has three subpixels. There's one for red,
Speaker 1: one for green, and one for blue. And by timing
Speaker 1: out the electric pulses going to these subpixels and selectively
Speaker 1: choosing which subpixels need to fire, plasma display can create
Speaker 1: images of lots of different colors. Now, in the early
Speaker 1: panels of the nineteen sixties, we're talking monochromatic displays, so
Speaker 1: we didn't have to worry about the subpixel part. They
Speaker 1: were expensive. They were generally reserved for stuff like military use,
Speaker 1: and eventually plasma televisions would come on the scene for
Speaker 1: consumers much much much later. Uh, they would struggle to
Speaker 1: be profitable because other types of televisions would ultimately win
Speaker 1: out and manufacturers would drop out of plasma TV production.
Speaker 1: There's some other issues that plasma displays have, but that's
Speaker 1: not really important for this episode, so we're gonna move on. Now.
Speaker 1: We're running up to the end of our story here,
Speaker 1: and I already talked a bit about Ralph Bayer and
Speaker 1: Bill Harrison and Bill Rush in some recent episodes I did,
Speaker 1: or an episode I did about the nineteen three video
Speaker 1: game crash. So, these three guys, working for a company
Speaker 1: called Sanders Associates Incorporated, developed a video game console that
Speaker 1: could play an electronic version of table tennis. Uh. There
Speaker 1: were also some other programs that the machine could run.
Speaker 1: It was a limited number because it was hardwired to
Speaker 1: play certain number of games. Uh. There was a checkers game.
Speaker 1: There was a game that used a very early light gun.
Speaker 1: The detector for the light is built in the gun itself,
Speaker 1: so the gun can tell if it's pointed towards the
Speaker 1: pixels that are should be created on a display. Uh.
Speaker 1: The bears thought was that he could create a system
Speaker 1: that would give people the chance to play games on
Speaker 1: their TVs. So by the late nineteen sixties, TV prices
Speaker 1: had declined enough so that the average family could afford one,
Speaker 1: and this would give more functionality to the television. Sanders
Speaker 1: Associates shot this idea around because you know, they weren't
Speaker 1: gonna make it. They just wanted to, you know, license
Speaker 1: the idea to someone else, and Magnavox was interested, so
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, Magnavox entered into a licensing
Speaker 1: agreement with Senders Associates for the brown Box that was
Speaker 1: the nickname given to Beyar's invention. He had covered it
Speaker 1: with vinyl tape that had a wood grain pattern on
Speaker 1: it in order to make it a little more attractive
Speaker 1: and not look like, you know, a big metal box
Speaker 1: with switches and knobs on it. Magnavox would design a
Speaker 1: new console to house the electronics and introduce the device
Speaker 1: as the Magnavox Odyssey in nineteen seventy two, the first
Speaker 1: home video game console, and had a handful of programs
Speaker 1: that were coded into the console itself, and you would
Speaker 1: activate it by putting in a what they called game
Speaker 1: cards that sort of a predecessor for cartridges, and the
Speaker 1: game cards completed circuits that would allow the console to
Speaker 1: play a specific game. It was different from later video
Speaker 1: game consoles. You couldn't like, program a new game for
Speaker 1: this to run. It was a limited number of pre
Speaker 1: determined games that this would run, So you couldn't build
Speaker 1: Pac Man for the Magnavox Odyssey. In other words, so
Speaker 1: the Odyssey could only display very blocky graphics and it
Speaker 1: can only display monochromatic graphics, so black and white. To
Speaker 1: compensate for that limited Asian, Magnavox also produced color screen overlays.
Speaker 1: So it's like a plastic overlay that had color in
Speaker 1: specific spots on there, and you would slap that onto
Speaker 1: your TV screen and thus the light coming from the
Speaker 1: TV screen would show through this clear plastic and you
Speaker 1: would get quote unquote color graphics. Pretty low tech work
Speaker 1: around for the limitations of the device. Well, the Odyssey
Speaker 1: ended up being a modest success. Magnavox sold a few
Speaker 1: hundred thousand units, but that would be later dwarfed by
Speaker 1: other video game consoles that would enter the market later
Speaker 1: in the seventies and into the eighties. In nineteen seventy four, Phillips,
Speaker 1: the electronics company based in the Netherlands, made an offer
Speaker 1: that Magnavox couldn't refuse. So Phillips was looking to establish
Speaker 1: a foothold in America, primarily as a way of creating
Speaker 1: a distribution network for Phillips products. Magnavox would become a
Speaker 1: subsidiary of Phillips, while Magnafox would continue producing products, it
Speaker 1: was doing so under the direction of Phillips, with the
Speaker 1: goal of pushing Phillips based technologies. So Magnavox did play
Speaker 1: a part in certain Phillips products, like the manufacturer and
Speaker 1: distribution of the LaserDisc format, but the division didn't do
Speaker 1: a whole lot more. They did make some home pinball
Speaker 1: machines in late nineteen seventies. That's kind of cool, but
Speaker 1: that was pretty much the end of Magnavox the company.
Speaker 1: It still existed as a brand, so Magnavox the brand
Speaker 1: was still a thing, but that was something that Phillips
Speaker 1: would sometimes slap on certain products because the brand recognition
Speaker 1: was important in the American market. Also, today, around the world,
Speaker 1: there are different companies that own the rights to the
Speaker 1: Magnavox brand in those specific regions, which means you could
Speaker 1: buy two different products, each of them have the Magnavox
Speaker 1: logo on them. You buy one in one part of
Speaker 1: the world, you buy another one in the other part
Speaker 1: of the world, and ultimately they were made by two unconnected,
Speaker 1: different independent companies. Right, they have no connection to each
Speaker 1: other apart from the fact that they each have the
Speaker 1: regional rights to use the Magnavox brand. So we don't
Speaker 1: really have a Magnavox company anymore. But it was really
Speaker 1: fun tracking down the history of Magnavox and talking about
Speaker 1: its role in the consumer electronics UH industry, particularly in
Speaker 1: the United States. If you have suggestions for topics I
Speaker 1: should cover on tech Stuff, whether it's another company or
Speaker 1: a specific technology or trend in tech, anything like that,
Speaker 1: let me know the best way to do that is
Speaker 1: on Twitter. The handle we use is tech stuff hs
Speaker 1: W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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