Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot Com. Eitherre and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host job in Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works in iHeart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And we are continuing our story about
Speaker 1: our ci A and its history. It's celebrating one hundred
Speaker 1: years in two thousand nineteen, so we're looking at how
Speaker 1: this company came to be, and we left off in
Speaker 1: the last episode talking about how our ci A formed
Speaker 1: r k O Pictures, largely in an effort to establish
Speaker 1: its sound on film technology called r C A photophone.
Speaker 1: That effort began in nineteen twenty nine, just as the
Speaker 1: world was hurtling toward the Great Depression, which wasn't that
Speaker 1: great if you ask me. But in October of that year,
Speaker 1: of the stock market crashed and a panic ensued, ultimately
Speaker 1: wiping out the fortunes of millions of investors large and small.
Speaker 1: The effect on numerous industries was devastating. Millions of people
Speaker 1: were out of work. Businesses like theaters and restaurants were closing,
Speaker 1: but one industry remained strong, and that was radio. Radios
Speaker 1: were seen as an important element in the home because
Speaker 1: they provided a means of escape through entertainment programming, they
Speaker 1: allowed families to keep up with the news of the world.
Speaker 1: The radio would even play an important part in economic
Speaker 1: recovery when on March twelve, nineteen thirty three, which is
Speaker 1: still in the middle of the Great Depression, US President
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt FDR and O the Words, addressed the
Speaker 1: country in a broadcast fireside chat to talk about the
Speaker 1: bank crisis. Roosevelt urged Americans to be patient and to
Speaker 1: trust the government as it worked to stabilize the banks.
Speaker 1: That helped reverse a trend in which people had been
Speaker 1: participating in numerous runs on banks uh and they were
Speaker 1: in fear of losing their savings, so they were withdrawing
Speaker 1: all their money from the banks, and it helped make
Speaker 1: stabilization a reality and helped set the ground for recovery now.
Speaker 1: In the mid nineteen thirties, FDR started the Rural Electrification Administration,
Speaker 1: which was tasked with extending electric utilities to rural areas,
Speaker 1: particularly farms. The national estimate for rural farms with electricity
Speaker 1: was just at ten percent in the mid nineteen thirties.
Speaker 1: Some areas like Texas were even lower, with only two
Speaker 1: point three percent of farms having electricity. But as more
Speaker 1: communities were getting access to electricity, more people began to
Speaker 1: invest in radios, and so the industry continued to do
Speaker 1: well even through the depression, and the depression wouldn't end
Speaker 1: until nineteen thirty nine. That put our c A in
Speaker 1: a particularly strong position. It had the National Broadcast Company
Speaker 1: or NBC, and it's Blue and Red Networks. That was
Speaker 1: a network of radio stations to networks of radio stations
Speaker 1: technically stretching across the country that would broadcast material that
Speaker 1: had been created in our CIA's New York and New
Speaker 1: Jersey studios. This was the golden age of radio. Popular
Speaker 1: formats included music, such as live performances from famous concert
Speaker 1: halls and opera houses, but there was also a boom
Speaker 1: in radio drama and radio comedy, as well as news
Speaker 1: and game shows. All of those formats were debuting around
Speaker 1: this time. These were programs that would precede the era
Speaker 1: of television, and we're sort of experiencing these are new
Speaker 1: today in the form of podcasts. We're getting a lot
Speaker 1: of those sort of things like the various radio programs
Speaker 1: and radio dramas. You can find lots of examples of
Speaker 1: that on podcast today, and they kind of have their
Speaker 1: history back in these old radio programs. Some of the
Speaker 1: more notable programs that played on NBC included the Jack
Speaker 1: Benny Program, Dick Tracy, The Spike Jones Show, Dragnet, Burns
Speaker 1: and Allen and dozens more. Tons of programs came out
Speaker 1: around this time. Now, one thing I find really interesting
Speaker 1: is that NBC sort of created its own rivals. It
Speaker 1: was an effective monopoly heading into the late twenties. In fact,
Speaker 1: it really was a monopoly. It owned a huge network
Speaker 1: of radio stations. There were still some independent radio stations,
Speaker 1: but there were no competing networks. There was, however, a
Speaker 1: talent agent named Arthur Judson, and he was getting really
Speaker 1: fed up WITHINBC. He was frustrated. He kept meeting with
Speaker 1: resistance when he was trying to get his clients onto
Speaker 1: radio programs that were carried by NBC. And so Judson
Speaker 1: did what any reasonable person would do. He created his
Speaker 1: own network of radio stations, and originally it was called
Speaker 1: the United Independent Broadcasters. But shortly after Judson founded this
Speaker 1: effort in n he agreed to a merger with the
Speaker 1: column be a phonograph and records company, and this new
Speaker 1: company became known as the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting Company. The company, however,
Speaker 1: didn't do so well. It was up against NBC, which
Speaker 1: was a giant in radio, and so they weren't really
Speaker 1: able to mount a strong offense while they were starting
Speaker 1: to accrue a whole lot of debt and they came
Speaker 1: up with a big loss of money, uh, and that
Speaker 1: led to an acquisition. In nine a rich dude named
Speaker 1: william S. Paley, who had come into a lot of
Speaker 1: money due to his father's successful businesses, bought the struggling
Speaker 1: concern and he renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System or CBS.
Speaker 1: So you could argue that our c A created NBC
Speaker 1: directly and CBS indirectly. And we're not done with all
Speaker 1: of that yet. But first let's get back to our
Speaker 1: c A. In the time around nineteen thirty and nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one, R. C. A. Victor would create the first
Speaker 1: record albums to be played back at the speed of
Speaker 1: thirty three and a third revolutions per minute. Now, this
Speaker 1: isn't what we would call a long play or LP
Speaker 1: record today, even though it was at thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third revolutions. Now, I kind of covered all of
Speaker 1: this in the history of turntables, so I'm just going
Speaker 1: to give a relatively brief overview. In the early days
Speaker 1: of flat disc records, most records were made out of
Speaker 1: a shell ick compound material because it could hold up
Speaker 1: to multiple playbacks. They needed something that was going to
Speaker 1: maintain its shape as you played it over and over again. However,
Speaker 1: shellec was not ideal. It was an abrasive material. It
Speaker 1: had bumps on it, and that meant that a needle
Speaker 1: going through the groove would occasionally hit these bumps and
Speaker 1: it would cause the needles to move around a bit
Speaker 1: and create noise in the process, So it wasn't ideal.
Speaker 1: Standard playback speed at the time was seventy eight revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute for a couple of big reasons. One was
Speaker 1: technical limitations. The motors manufactured at that time were largely
Speaker 1: in the thirty six hundred rpm range, so that was
Speaker 1: readily available. They were inexpensive, so that's what these these
Speaker 1: various companies were going after. They went with these motors
Speaker 1: that would turn at three thousand six centered revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: and then they would use a gear ratio to uh
Speaker 1: change that revolutions per minute for the actual platter. So
Speaker 1: the motors turning at three thousand six center revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: and the gear ratio that was most frequently used, the
Speaker 1: one that was again easy to get therefore cheap, was
Speaker 1: a forty six to one ratio gear. So if you
Speaker 1: do that math, you say, like, all right, for every
Speaker 1: forty six times this thing turns, this other thing turns
Speaker 1: one time, you end up with the seventy eight revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute. The higher speed had a secondary function. It
Speaker 1: helped smooth out some of that noise that would otherwise
Speaker 1: be present when you're playing back one of these seventy
Speaker 1: eight RPM records. It wasn't a perfect solution, but it
Speaker 1: was better than playing them back slower, because if you
Speaker 1: played them back more slowly, the noise was amplified. You
Speaker 1: you just heard it more. But when Warner Brothers started
Speaker 1: its vitaphone system for films, which I talked about in
Speaker 1: the last episode, the company realized that it would need
Speaker 1: a more efficient system than one that played back at
Speaker 1: r p M. So, if you remember, the vitaphone system
Speaker 1: was where you would record the audio for a film
Speaker 1: onto a disk, and then you would synchronize the playback
Speaker 1: of the disc with the playback of the film, and
Speaker 1: that's how you got a talking picture like the Jazz Singer.
Speaker 1: But using a seventy eight RPM disc was not a
Speaker 1: great idea for that because at that speed it only
Speaker 1: takes about five minutes for a a back device like
Speaker 1: a turntable to play through one side of a twelve
Speaker 1: inch disk. Slowing down the RPMs. Reducing the number of
Speaker 1: RPMs would increase the playback time. It would take longer
Speaker 1: for the needle to travel through the groove, and so
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers used a gear ratio that had a hundred
Speaker 1: eight to one and that created the thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third revolutions per minute speed. R c A decided
Speaker 1: to embrace that approach and introduced new thirty three and
Speaker 1: a third rpm turntables in nineteen thirty one that would
Speaker 1: playback discs that were recorded at that speed. These turntables
Speaker 1: still use the larger groove that the seventy rb M
Speaker 1: records had. However, this is before the micro groove invention. Now,
Speaker 1: if you know your history of turntables, you've heard that
Speaker 1: the company that introduced the long play album, the LP.
Speaker 1: The vinyl LP was Columbia Records, and that this didn't
Speaker 1: happen until the nineteen forty these And that's true. When
Speaker 1: Columbia Records would bring this innovation forward, it did so
Speaker 1: on a new material that was called vinyl, made from
Speaker 1: PVC plastic, and it introduced the micro groove technology that
Speaker 1: brought the width of the groove to the records down
Speaker 1: to about a millimeter wide, and that meant you could
Speaker 1: fit way more grooves on each side of a record,
Speaker 1: and you could extend playtime to about twenty two minutes
Speaker 1: for a twelve inch disc. But if our Cia introduced
Speaker 1: a thirty three and a third format in nineteen thirty one,
Speaker 1: why does Columbia Records get the credit for a thirty
Speaker 1: three and a third album in the nineteen forties. Well,
Speaker 1: it's because our Cier's efforts were a total failure. The
Speaker 1: company had tried to introduce a brand new format and
Speaker 1: technology right at the beginning of the Great Depression, and
Speaker 1: while families were willing to make payments on their radio sets,
Speaker 1: because a lot of families were buying these things on credit,
Speaker 1: they would end up paying for their radio, say they
Speaker 1: were leaves that would get rid of other luxuries, but
Speaker 1: they would keep that radio because it was such an
Speaker 1: important element of home life. They were not ready to
Speaker 1: dip in and buy a whole new piece of electronic equipment.
Speaker 1: They didn't have the money for it, they didn't have
Speaker 1: the interest in it. They would rather just stick with
Speaker 1: the thing they already had. So the economics just weren't
Speaker 1: there for our Cia, so the company ultimately abandoned the
Speaker 1: thirty three and a third format. When Columbia Records was
Speaker 1: ready to debut its technology more than a decade later,
Speaker 1: executives reached out to our Cia to see if the
Speaker 1: company would want to license the technology and build its
Speaker 1: own thirty three and a third turntables. But David Sarnoff,
Speaker 1: who you'll remember from the last episode was the very
Speaker 1: strong willed guy who was in charge of our Cia, refused.
Speaker 1: He did not like the idea of conforming to someone
Speaker 1: else's standards, particularly since our Cia had tried to do
Speaker 1: it earlier. Instead, he would push our Cier to market
Speaker 1: its own disc format, which would play back at forty
Speaker 1: five revolutions per minute, and thus another format war began.
Speaker 1: The speed wars. Our Cer would sell seven inch discs
Speaker 1: that would play back at forty five rpm, and Columbia
Speaker 1: focused on twelve inch discs at thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third rpm. This took place in the late nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: and by nineteen fifty, after seeing several artists leave our
Speaker 1: c A to join Columbia, the company finally gave up
Speaker 1: and began to create its own thirty three and a
Speaker 1: third rpm long playing records. The forty five RBM disc
Speaker 1: would become the favorite format for singles and juke boxes,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't a total loss. R c A still
Speaker 1: made money off of its format, it just did not
Speaker 1: become the standard. I have a lot more to say
Speaker 1: about our ci A and its innovations, but first let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we
Speaker 1: gotta jump back to the nineteen thirties. Now, we went
Speaker 1: ahead a little bit to talk about the thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third versus forty five rpm speed wars that
Speaker 1: stretched all the way into the late nineteen forties back
Speaker 1: to the nineteen thirties. In nineteen thirty two, under pressure
Speaker 1: from the United States federal government, the partners that formed
Speaker 1: our ci A all jumped ship at issue was the
Speaker 1: monopoly like status that our CIA enjoyed as both an
Speaker 1: operator of radio stations and as an arm for these
Speaker 1: various companies to develop and sell technologies. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the government that had created this monopoly now felt that
Speaker 1: maybe things have gone a bit too far, because remember,
Speaker 1: the United States made this monopoly, they encouraged it, and
Speaker 1: now they were saying, well, this is getting a bit uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: So General Electric, Westinghouse and A. T and T All
Speaker 1: sold their interest in our Cia to the new company.
Speaker 1: It became an independent company called the r C A Corporation.
Speaker 1: David Sarnov would remain in charge of this new independent company.
Speaker 1: Our CIA was a pioneer and another big consumer electronic category,
Speaker 1: which would be television. Our Cia had employed Vladimir's Warkin,
Speaker 1: the television developer who had fought for the title of
Speaker 1: inventor of television, a title that most people would give
Speaker 1: to his rival Filo Farnsworth. Farnsworth first demonstrate electronic television
Speaker 1: back in nine seven. Zorekin, however, had worked with a
Speaker 1: guy named Boris Rosing in Russia who had been working
Speaker 1: on a similar experiment more than a decade before. Farnsworth's demonstration,
Speaker 1: but Rossing's work had not really reached a level of
Speaker 1: sophistication interesting enough for big business at the time, and
Speaker 1: it was crewed by comparison to Farnsworth's invention. Sarnov would
Speaker 1: hires Warrikin to head up a division in our c
Speaker 1: A to develop electronic television technology with the goal of
Speaker 1: creating a consumer product in the future. Now as a whole,
Speaker 1: our c A would invest around fifty million dollars into
Speaker 1: this project, which is a princely sum today, but remember
Speaker 1: this was back in the late twenties and into the
Speaker 1: third season forties. That was a truly gargantuan sum of
Speaker 1: money back then, and it shows how Sarnoff, the man
Speaker 1: who had proposed the radio music box before becoming the
Speaker 1: head of our CIA, could see how the future of
Speaker 1: an entertainment might unfold. He was convinced that television would
Speaker 1: be the next big thing after radio, and you certainly
Speaker 1: could say he was absolutely right. Now, all of that
Speaker 1: work that this investment would bring about would gets shown
Speaker 1: off on a very large stage the nineteen nine World's
Speaker 1: Fair in New York City. R c A demonstrated the
Speaker 1: electronic television system there and broadcast the first televised address
Speaker 1: by a US president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That same year,
Speaker 1: our CI A would pay Farnsworth some licensing fees to
Speaker 1: use some of his patents, and our CIA began selling
Speaker 1: television sets. They were pretty darn small. The picture tubes
Speaker 1: measured five by twelve inches or twelve point seven by
Speaker 1: twenty five point four centimeters. So you might wonder how
Speaker 1: do these electronic television's work. The heart of the technology
Speaker 1: is the CRT, or a cathode ray tube. This is
Speaker 1: not just how the images get generated, it's also what
Speaker 1: serves as the screen that you look at in these
Speaker 1: old televisions. I'm talking about the old big TVs, the
Speaker 1: wide deep TVs, not flat screen or anything like that.
Speaker 1: That's a different method to produce the same sort of result.
Speaker 1: So the CRT is essentially an electron generator. A CRT
Speaker 1: is kind of like a giant lightbulb, a more sophisticated lightbulb.
Speaker 1: Inside the CRT is a filament, a small piece of
Speaker 1: material that's meant to heat up and then shed electrons.
Speaker 1: If you run current through the filament, it causes it
Speaker 1: to heat up and as the atoms in the filament
Speaker 1: gain energy they begin to shed these electrons. The elect
Speaker 1: trons pop off of the atoms. Positively charged elements called anodes,
Speaker 1: attract the electrons. Because opposite charges attract right electrons have
Speaker 1: a negative charge, they get attracted to things that have
Speaker 1: a positive charge. The old CRT sets had essentially a
Speaker 1: focusing anode which would pull the stream of electrons into
Speaker 1: a very tight beam, and an accelerating anode, which would
Speaker 1: you know, accelerate the stream of electrons. The destination for
Speaker 1: this stream of electrons is the backside of the television
Speaker 1: screen itself. So you're looking at a screen on a TV.
Speaker 1: On the reverse side of that screen, that's the backside
Speaker 1: for you. That is where the electrons are making impact. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's like looking at the fat end of a light
Speaker 1: bulb if you think about it. That's what the television
Speaker 1: screen is. So on the back side of this TV
Speaker 1: screen is a coding a phosphor, which is a material
Speaker 1: that will give off light when it's sighted by energy,
Speaker 1: in this case, when it's struck by electrons. And coding
Speaker 1: the rest of the inside of the tube is a
Speaker 1: conductive material that's meant to soak up electrons as they
Speaker 1: build up on the screen side of the tube. Wrapped
Speaker 1: around the base of the CRT are two sets of
Speaker 1: steering coils. One set runs parallel to the base of
Speaker 1: the CRT and one set wraps across the base of
Speaker 1: the CRT. These are copper windings, the kind you would
Speaker 1: find in an electromagnet. In fact, they are essentially electromagnets,
Speaker 1: and when you run electricity through the coils, you create
Speaker 1: magnetic fields. These sets of windings are at perpendicular angles
Speaker 1: to each other. Right, you've got the parallel kind and
Speaker 1: the perpendicular kind. And one set is used to steer
Speaker 1: the beam of electrons vertically and the other one steers
Speaker 1: the beam of electrons horizontally. And if you change the
Speaker 1: voltage in the coils, that directs the electron beam to
Speaker 1: specific points on the screen. Now, when you turn on
Speaker 1: this electron beam, it starts to paint the back side
Speaker 1: of the screen. That is, it's shooting electrons at the
Speaker 1: phosphors on the back side of the screen, causing those
Speaker 1: phosphors to glow. The beam scans across the screen one
Speaker 1: line at the time, from the top to the bottom.
Speaker 1: So the beam first moves left or right across the
Speaker 1: top of the screen. When it reaches the right side,
Speaker 1: the beam turns off the electron flow and then rapidly
Speaker 1: redirects back to the left and down one line, so
Speaker 1: it goes down a notch, and then it does it again.
Speaker 1: When it gets all the way down to the bottom
Speaker 1: right side of the screen, the beam turns off and
Speaker 1: it returns back to the upper left position and starts over.
Speaker 1: It would take a while before broadcast standards would really
Speaker 1: define how all televisions would work in the United States,
Speaker 1: but eventually it evolved into this approach where a CRT
Speaker 1: television would paint a screen sixty times per second. However,
Speaker 1: it would only paint half the lines per for frame,
Speaker 1: so in the first frame it might paint all the
Speaker 1: odd lines so one, three, five, seven, and so on,
Speaker 1: and the second frame would have the electron beam paint
Speaker 1: all the even lines. So while the electron beam would
Speaker 1: be moving across the screen sixty times per second the
Speaker 1: entire frame of odd and even lines, the total screen
Speaker 1: would be painted thirty times per second. Eventually, TVs had
Speaker 1: a standard of five twenty five lines, so every second
Speaker 1: the electron beam would paint a total of fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred fifty lines. So our c shows off this
Speaker 1: technology in nine. The company also broadcast the first televised
Speaker 1: baseball game on May sevent ninety nine. It was between
Speaker 1: Columbia University and Princeton. I don't know who won. I
Speaker 1: didn't look it up, but it was all done on
Speaker 1: a single camera, which I imagine created a somewhat limited
Speaker 1: effect for watching on TV, especially considering that at the
Speaker 1: time you needed a whole lot of light to get
Speaker 1: a good picture on these on these televisions because the
Speaker 1: cameras were limited, early television broadcasts were tricky in general.
Speaker 1: The camera technology, like I said, required a whole lot
Speaker 1: of light to create a strong enough signal to send
Speaker 1: out to t VS, and a lot of light meant
Speaker 1: that television personalities, you know, actors, newscasters, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: They were all pretty much exclusively white people at that time.
Speaker 1: They would appear washed out on screen because they had
Speaker 1: so much light on them. To deal with that, the
Speaker 1: actors would often have to wear dark makeup, frequently green makeup.
Speaker 1: It would show up better. And remember all TVs at
Speaker 1: this point are black and white sets, so no one
Speaker 1: knew that the people were all green because they're seeing
Speaker 1: a black and white image. The actors, newscasters, etcetera. Would
Speaker 1: often also wear black lipsticks so that their lips would
Speaker 1: actually be visible on screen. Early TV sales were a
Speaker 1: little slow. The nation was still climbing out of the
Speaker 1: Great Depression, and it was an expensive new technology. And
Speaker 1: another event meant that the entire industry would be put
Speaker 1: on pause for several years. And that little event would
Speaker 1: be World War Two. Now, if you listen to my
Speaker 1: last episode, if you haven't, you should, you know that
Speaker 1: the First World War was what led to the formation
Speaker 1: of our CIER in the first place. World War two
Speaker 1: would slow down the consumer electronics business, but our ci
Speaker 1: A wasn't put into moth balls and storage. They weren't struggling. Instead,
Speaker 1: the company opened up the r c A Research Laboratories
Speaker 1: in Princeton, New Jersey, and for years the company had
Speaker 1: relied upon its close association with General Electric for R
Speaker 1: and D. But now it could pursue its own research
Speaker 1: with its own facility with I think a hundred scientists
Speaker 1: when they first opened up, and much of that early
Speaker 1: research would be dedicated to the war effort on the
Speaker 1: part of the United States. Our c A would develop
Speaker 1: a smaller version of its Icono scope for the military.
Speaker 1: The iconoscope was uh the television camera tube that Zorakin
Speaker 1: had developed. So I described how the cathode ray tube
Speaker 1: worked in a effort to display images. The econoscope was
Speaker 1: how these images were initially captured to be transmitted to
Speaker 1: a television And it's an element that has a particularly
Speaker 1: peculiar shape. It would be inside the television camera. I've
Speaker 1: seen the shape referred to as a barrel shaped bulb
Speaker 1: and an angled neck. And there were a couple of
Speaker 1: different versions of the econoscope that did not take that
Speaker 1: particular shape, but most of them did. I do not
Speaker 1: think I can adequately describe what this looks like. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's within my powers of description. So
Speaker 1: I suggest if you are interested in seeing what these
Speaker 1: things look like, because they're kind of funky looking, you
Speaker 1: go onto an image search and look for icona scope
Speaker 1: I C O IN O S c O p E
Speaker 1: because they do look pretty unusual. So they consisted of
Speaker 1: a few parts. One part was called the target. This
Speaker 1: was the area of the icono scope that would receive
Speaker 1: the focused light coming from the camera's lens. All right,
Speaker 1: So you've got a scene in front of you. Let's
Speaker 1: say that it's a news scene. There's a desk, a
Speaker 1: news anchor. You have very bright lights shining on that scene,
Speaker 1: and that light is some of that light anyway, is
Speaker 1: traveling through the camera's lens and it gets focused onto
Speaker 1: this target. The target itself has an array of photo
Speaker 1: sensitive dots on it, or pixels if you like, and
Speaker 1: they would end up generating a different voltage based upon
Speaker 1: how much light was hitting them. An electron beam would
Speaker 1: sweep across the target. The electron beam is generated by
Speaker 1: an electron gun that's in that angled neck I had
Speaker 1: explained about just a minute ago. So you get this
Speaker 1: proportional current flow from the dots based upon how much
Speaker 1: light is hitting them, and the electron beams sweeps across
Speaker 1: this and then it would send this signal out through
Speaker 1: to an amplifier for transmission to television receivers that would
Speaker 1: then reverse this process. Our ci A developed a lightweight
Speaker 1: version of this for the United States military. By the
Speaker 1: time the war would end, the company and the rest
Speaker 1: of the industry would move toward alternative camera designs that
Speaker 1: didn't rely so heavily on brightly lit environments, which, as
Speaker 1: it turns out, are a difficult thing to insist upon
Speaker 1: during wartime operations, so a lot of the television based
Speaker 1: technologies that are c A developed for the military were
Speaker 1: of limited use. I'll explain more in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: One of the things the modified iconoscope would be used
Speaker 1: for was in a very early attempt to create unmanned drones.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty one, the United States military converted some
Speaker 1: manned aircraft so that they could be controlled remotely. The
Speaker 1: camera would mount on top of the drone and beam
Speaker 1: back a signal to the operator, which meant there didn't
Speaker 1: need to be visual contact between the remote pilot and
Speaker 1: the actual aircraft. In ninety two, the military was able
Speaker 1: to pilot such a drone on a test flight to
Speaker 1: land on a target ship, and it was controlled from
Speaker 1: a control aircraft at a distance of thirty miles or
Speaker 1: fifty kilometers from that target ship. Pretty incredible now. One
Speaker 1: of the projects that used this technology was called Operation Afrodite,
Speaker 1: in which old B seventeen and B twenty four bombers
Speaker 1: were loaded up with explosives and launched under human control.
Speaker 1: You would have a tailing aircraft following behind and at
Speaker 1: a certain distance from the intended target. The human pilot
Speaker 1: of that B seventeen or B twenty four would bail
Speaker 1: then parachute out of the bomber. The trailing aircraft would
Speaker 1: have two pilots aboard it. One of them would be
Speaker 1: controlling the actual trailing aircraft and the other one would
Speaker 1: be manning the remote controls for the bomber. Actually, in
Speaker 1: several cases it would require two pilots to control the
Speaker 1: the remote controlled aircraft. Joe Kennedy, brother to John Kennedy,
Speaker 1: a former US President, actually died while serving as a
Speaker 1: volunteer pilot for this operation. Our c A also developed
Speaker 1: technologies that would be used in glider bombs, and also
Speaker 1: a program called the t d r drone, but the
Speaker 1: technical limitations of camera and television technologies meant these were
Speaker 1: of limited use. The tdr drone was probably the most
Speaker 1: successful of all the different experiments, but at that stage
Speaker 1: uh the United States had entered a part of the
Speaker 1: war where it was more about brute force and less
Speaker 1: about precision strikes, and so the tdr drone only had
Speaker 1: limited use during the war, but the military contracts really
Speaker 1: helped justify Starnov's massive investment in developing television technology and
Speaker 1: admit that our CI a had the money to build
Speaker 1: out its manufacturing facilities. So on top of those projects,
Speaker 1: are Cia engineers at the R and D facility also
Speaker 1: worked on radar antenna phosphors for radar screens, They worked
Speaker 1: on acoustic fuses for various types of munitions, and they
Speaker 1: also helped develop things like infrared cameras and navigation equipment.
Speaker 1: It became one of the indispensable companies that the United
Speaker 1: States would rely upon to develop wartime technologies that weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, weapons and of themselves. Meanwhile, as the war
Speaker 1: raged in Europe, our Cia would make another big move
Speaker 1: back at home. In ninety three, the company was forced
Speaker 1: to sell off its NBC Blue network and sold it
Speaker 1: to a guy named Edward J. Noble. Now, if you
Speaker 1: remember from our last episode, NBC was originally two different networks.
Speaker 1: You had a Blue network and you had a Red network.
Speaker 1: The heart of the Blue network was a radio station
Speaker 1: that had originally been established by Westinghouse, and the heart
Speaker 1: of the Red network was a radio station originally created
Speaker 1: by A. T and T. The Blue network was mostly
Speaker 1: known for non sponsored content like news reports and culture broadcasts,
Speaker 1: and the Red network was the one known for commercially
Speaker 1: sponsored entertainment and was the more popular and more profitable
Speaker 1: of the two networks. Well. A few years earlier, in
Speaker 1: ninety four, the Mutual Broadcasting System filed a complaint to
Speaker 1: the FCC and said that NBC and CBS had a
Speaker 1: d woppoli over the national radio market, that those two
Speaker 1: companies had pretty much come completely dominated the industry, and
Speaker 1: this case made its way through the court system because
Speaker 1: the FCC agreed and ordered NBC to divest itself of
Speaker 1: either the NBC Blue Network or the NBC Red Network.
Speaker 1: R c A appealed to the Supreme Court but lost,
Speaker 1: which led to the sale of the less popular Blue
Speaker 1: network to Edward J. Noble, who had made his fortune
Speaker 1: in life savers the candy not the emergency flotation device anyway.
Speaker 1: Noble paid eight million dollars for NBC Blue A Prince Lisa,
Speaker 1: and on June NBC Blue would officially be renamed the
Speaker 1: American Broadcasting Company, or ABC, and so our c A
Speaker 1: had a hand in creating all three of the original
Speaker 1: major broadcasters in the United States. Radio and television broadcast companies.
Speaker 1: The company directly created NBC, it inadvertently created CBS, and
Speaker 1: then created the network that would become ABC. At the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two, our c A was in
Speaker 1: a strong position to build out the consumer television market.
Speaker 1: The company had used its military contract money to build
Speaker 1: out manufacturing facilities, and it can now rededicate those facilities
Speaker 1: to making consumer goods instead of military equipment. Our c
Speaker 1: A started selling black and white television sets in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty six, so remember they had demonstrated it in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, but World War two pretty much put a
Speaker 1: complete stop to that effort. So in forty six they
Speaker 1: start selling these sets and to create content, our c
Speaker 1: A would rely upon NBC, which would not just make
Speaker 1: radio content, but now television content as well. Many of
Speaker 1: the popular radio series would be converted into TV series,
Speaker 1: and this created a new challenge because now personalities couldn't
Speaker 1: just sound great, they needed to look great too. This
Speaker 1: was kind of the opposite of how things changed when
Speaker 1: sound came to motion pictures, because before sound, it was
Speaker 1: important that you look really good for the camera. After sound,
Speaker 1: you also had to sound good for the microphones. Now
Speaker 1: this leads us up to nineteen and what I call
Speaker 1: the Great Talent Raid. CBS, which was also getting into
Speaker 1: television production, needed some good looking stars and NBC had
Speaker 1: a lot of them. So William S. Paley, the guy
Speaker 1: who had purchased CBS, who had formed it out of
Speaker 1: the company that Judson had tried to create years earlier,
Speaker 1: ordered a talent raid on NBC. This involved CBS executives
Speaker 1: offering lucrative contracts to many of NBC's big stars. And
Speaker 1: previous to this there had been sort of an understanding,
Speaker 1: a gentleman's agreement, if you will, that the two networks
Speaker 1: would not dare raid each other for talent. And now
Speaker 1: Paley says, you know what, Yeah, So they ended up
Speaker 1: luring people like George Burns and Gracie Allen and Jack
Speaker 1: Benny to jump ship from NBC to CBS. So our
Speaker 1: c A and NBC built the network and a lot
Speaker 1: of the technologies that led to the rise of television,
Speaker 1: and CBS was able to pull a fast one and
Speaker 1: make the transition from radio to television smoothly by hiring
Speaker 1: away some of NBC's talent. Saranov had been a little
Speaker 1: slow to adapt to the world that Paley had been forging.
Speaker 1: Sarnov was really good at leading his company to sell
Speaker 1: radio sets and televisions, and Paley had been more effective
Speaker 1: at designing programming so as to say that the stuff
Speaker 1: that it would actually air on those radio sets and television's.
Speaker 1: Paley had embraced advertising as a source of revenue. He
Speaker 1: was also wholeheartedly into creating sponsored content, in which a
Speaker 1: company would pay for the production costs of a show
Speaker 1: in return ver receiving heavy promotion, sometimes in ad breaks,
Speaker 1: sometimes even within a show itself. Sarnov wasn't really crazy
Speaker 1: about that type of business. He thought of it as
Speaker 1: being distasteful, and reportedly he wouldn't meet with ad executives
Speaker 1: at all. He delegated all of that to his direct reports. Paley,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, would seek out those ad executives,
Speaker 1: and so while NBC had a huge headstart on CBS,
Speaker 1: Paley was able to catch up pretty quickly, even before
Speaker 1: the TV era had begun. Sarnof did rise to meet
Speaker 1: Paley's challenge and had the benefit of our c A
Speaker 1: backing NBC up, whereas Paley was running CBS without a
Speaker 1: larger corporation behind it. In nineteen fifty Just four years
Speaker 1: after our CIA had introduced a consumer television black and
Speaker 1: white set, the company showed off a new innovation. It
Speaker 1: was one that would change television dramatically. This would be
Speaker 1: color television, and it would take some time for the
Speaker 1: format to become the standard and American households, but it
Speaker 1: was another big innovation from our CI, a that had
Speaker 1: a major impact on technology and culture. In our next episode,
Speaker 1: I will explain how color television works. I'll explain how
Speaker 1: our CIA's version of color television became the standard for
Speaker 1: broadcast in America, and we'll also talk about some of
Speaker 1: the other businesses that our CIA got involved in, including
Speaker 1: things like semiconductors, electron microscopes VCRs, and how the fifties
Speaker 1: through the seventies would be a boon time for the company,
Speaker 1: but it would lead to some troubled times a little
Speaker 1: later on, and what would happen in the eighties. So
Speaker 1: we'll be following all of that in our next episode.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this one. If you have any
Speaker 1: suggestions for future topics I should cover on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me a message. You can email me the address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can visit our website that's tech Stuff podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You'll find other ways to contact me and the archive
Speaker 1: of all of our episodes on there. Don't forget to
Speaker 1: visit our merchandise store over at t public dot com
Speaker 1: slash tech stuff. Every purchase you make goes to help
Speaker 1: the show, and we greatly appreciate it, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. For more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.