Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. And today I'm going to finally wrap
Speaker 1: up the discussion of our ci A, the four episode
Speaker 1: arc about our c A, and it'll all finish up
Speaker 1: in this episode. But that's going to mean I'll be
Speaker 1: packing a whole lot into one episode. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: go long. I'm just gonna have a light touch because
Speaker 1: we have to cover about fifty years of history in
Speaker 1: this episode, so I won't be going into so much
Speaker 1: technical detail for a lot of the stuff I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: besides which I've covered a lot of it already. However,
Speaker 1: I do need to start off with a description of
Speaker 1: how electron microscopes work, because I think I've mentioned it
Speaker 1: in at least two of the previous episodes and I
Speaker 1: haven't actually talked about it yet. So rather than put
Speaker 1: it off again, let's talk about electron microscopes. Why do
Speaker 1: you need them? What do they do well? When you
Speaker 1: start getting small and we start working with small stuff,
Speaker 1: and I mean really really small stuff. You get to
Speaker 1: a point where you can no longer rely upon optical
Speaker 1: microscopes anymore, and that's because of a couple of big problems.
Speaker 1: One of them is that a microscope's ability to magnify
Speaker 1: is limited by two major factors. One of those would
Speaker 1: be the quality of the lenses. Eventually you reach a
Speaker 1: point where you just can't make lenses of a high
Speaker 1: enough quality to get better magnification. But you also run
Speaker 1: into the physical limitation of light itself, visible light, because
Speaker 1: it's dependent upon the wavelength of that visible light. The
Speaker 1: theoretical limit of resolution for a light based microscope, not
Speaker 1: the practical, but the theoretical limit is somewhere around two
Speaker 1: D two hundred fifty nanometers, because beyond that you it
Speaker 1: beyond the wavelength of natural light, and it literally cannot
Speaker 1: image things smaller than that. The wavelengths are bigger than
Speaker 1: the thing it's trying to you're trying to look at. However,
Speaker 1: two that's that's really small, I mean that is the
Speaker 1: nano scale. That is tiny. But if you do need
Speaker 1: to look at stuff that's smaller than that, because there
Speaker 1: are things even smaller than that level, you've got to
Speaker 1: figure out some other way of doing it, because light
Speaker 1: waves can't do it, they're too big, so you've got
Speaker 1: to figure some other method out. Now, electrons have very
Speaker 1: very short wavelengths, shorter than light. So if you had
Speaker 1: a way to beam electrons at a sample, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever is you're trying to look at, and then you
Speaker 1: had some means of detecting all of the different signals
Speaker 1: that would be produced as the electrons from the beam
Speaker 1: would interact with the sample, you could use the information
Speaker 1: to construct images of the sample at that scale. So
Speaker 1: electrons you would use would be high energy beam electrons,
Speaker 1: and when they collide with a sample, the interactions would
Speaker 1: produce all sorts of stuff like secondary electrons, back scattered electrons,
Speaker 1: X rays, that kind of thing. You would have specific
Speaker 1: detectors to pick up these different signals and register them
Speaker 1: for processing to create the final image. And these microscopes
Speaker 1: have a much greater resolution than optical microscopes. But even
Speaker 1: these have their limitations. A scanning electron microscope has a
Speaker 1: limit of around one nanometer or so you're not gonna
Speaker 1: get much smaller than a single nanometer. Now that is
Speaker 1: still incredibly small, but it's still too big to look
Speaker 1: at individual atoms. The atomic scale is smaller than the nanoscale,
Speaker 1: so if you wanted to get a look at atoms,
Speaker 1: you would have to use something else, like a scanning
Speaker 1: tunneling microscope. But those wouldn't come around until the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: all right, So that's how electron microscopes work. Uh, are
Speaker 1: scanning electron mic scopes work? And our Cia had been
Speaker 1: in that business of making those, along with the consumer
Speaker 1: electronics they were making any other industries they were involved in. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get back to our CIA's history. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we left off right around the early to mid fifties,
Speaker 1: and so we've got to cover all the time from
Speaker 1: that point to present day in this episode. Fortunately, they
Speaker 1: are a large spans of time that we can kind
Speaker 1: of leap over. Now. One thing the company was gearing
Speaker 1: up to do was to introduce solid state electronics into
Speaker 1: its line of products. Bell Labs had developed the transistor
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. Although it was pretty primitive, it
Speaker 1: wasn't ready to be incorporated into consumer electronics yet. They
Speaker 1: would take several years for that, so our c A
Speaker 1: got a relative late start in the field of transistors
Speaker 1: and solid state electronics and semiconductors because they had focused
Speaker 1: more on using vacuum tubes. In fact, in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: our CIA was the largest manufacturer of vacuum tubes in
Speaker 1: the world at that point. R c A even built
Speaker 1: an experimental television with transistors as early as nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: but this was again an experiment, not meant as a
Speaker 1: consumer product. In nineteen fifty three, an engineer named Cohen
Speaker 1: built a wrist radio that quickly got the nickname the
Speaker 1: Dick Tracy wrist Radio, after the comic strip character Dick Tracy,
Speaker 1: who has an iconic wrist radio device that allows him
Speaker 1: to speak with his supervisor. Now, our c A did
Speaker 1: not build this device, Cohen wasn't working for our CIA. However,
Speaker 1: Cohen did use some of our Cier's transistors to help
Speaker 1: power and operate this device, So our CIA actually got
Speaker 1: a nice boost in publicity because everyone was really excited
Speaker 1: about this wrist radio. It seemed like the thing of
Speaker 1: the future, the gadget of the future. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, r CIA began to design and manufacture components
Speaker 1: for satellites, so at this point it's all state is
Speaker 1: ready to go and they're now looking at creating satellite technology. Specifically,
Speaker 1: they were looking at radio communications technology in satellites. R
Speaker 1: c A started doing some preliminary research and development in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, and they created a dedicated division for
Speaker 1: that purpose, and eventually they called it the r c
Speaker 1: A Astro Electronics Division. They actually got the official name
Speaker 1: in March nineteen fifty eight. Now, in turn, this particular
Speaker 1: division was under a larger department called the r c
Speaker 1: A Defense Electronic Products, because our c A was still
Speaker 1: very much in the business of designing components for defense
Speaker 1: systems for the military. They had been doing that since
Speaker 1: World War Two. The company's first satellite to launch successfully
Speaker 1: was called the Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment or
Speaker 1: SCORE as the acronym for that, and that entered into
Speaker 1: service on December eighteenth, nineteen fifty eight. Our c A
Speaker 1: was kind of exploring the possibility of establishing a network
Speaker 1: of satellites for the purposes of global communications, and that
Speaker 1: would really begin in earnest in nineteen sixty two with
Speaker 1: another communication satellite called Relay. Relay would relay communication signals
Speaker 1: between North America and Europe and between North America and
Speaker 1: South America so quickly. It was theorized that with an
Speaker 1: appropriate number of satellites in orbit, you could have global
Speaker 1: communications and just use the satellites to relay signals until
Speaker 1: they got to wherever you needed them to go. The
Speaker 1: Relay Communication satellite also worked in conjunction with another satellite
Speaker 1: called the Sincom three, and the two satellites together were
Speaker 1: able to provide live television coverage of the nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four Olympics, which were going on in Japan over to
Speaker 1: North America. So that was an amazing development being able
Speaker 1: to watch stuff live with only a slight delay really
Speaker 1: as they were going on on the other side of
Speaker 1: the world. Our c A would partner with NASA to
Speaker 1: develop weather satellites and a ground based observation station, so
Speaker 1: they were really becoming an instrumental company in the space
Speaker 1: race as well. Around the same time, our ci A
Speaker 1: contributed some of the equipment that would make up the
Speaker 1: United States Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or b MUSE
Speaker 1: b m e w S. It was a system of
Speaker 1: radar facilities and communications channels meant to detect and alert
Speaker 1: the United States to any sort of missile launch originating,
Speaker 1: particularly in the Soviet Union because this was taking place
Speaker 1: during the Cold War between the USSR and United States,
Speaker 1: and it became particularly important in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union's launch a Spootnik, which wasn't just a satellite,
Speaker 1: but also a demonstration that the Soviet Union was capable
Speaker 1: of launching a missile that had a long enough range
Speaker 1: to potentially strike the United States eights. So if the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union were to say, attached a payload of a
Speaker 1: nuclear warhead to such a missile, they could, in theory
Speaker 1: have a nuclear strike against the US. So the United
Speaker 1: States wanted to have a system in place in order
Speaker 1: to detect any potential missile launches from the U s SR.
Speaker 1: R c A would produce a radar set and a
Speaker 1: communications data processor for this system. It also relied the
Speaker 1: system that is relied on equipment from many other companies,
Speaker 1: not just our CI A. Companies like General Electric, Western Electric,
Speaker 1: and Sylvania also contributed components to this So while our
Speaker 1: CIA was prominent in the minds of consumers looking for
Speaker 1: television sets at home, the company was also working closely
Speaker 1: with government and military organizations in the United States. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, r c A dominated in the television
Speaker 1: camera industry, the consumer television industry going out and buying
Speaker 1: a television set that was really competitive, but our CIA
Speaker 1: was pretty much the name in television cameras. For actual
Speaker 1: TV studios, the t K forty four had become the
Speaker 1: industry standard, and on the consumer front, color television sales
Speaker 1: were starting to pick up in the early to mid sixties.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty six, the overall color television market was
Speaker 1: around three billion dollars a year. Now that's for all
Speaker 1: color TVs, not just the ones that are c A
Speaker 1: was making, So we're talking worldwide sales reaching three billion dollars. Hefty,
Speaker 1: but not anything close to what the television consumer market
Speaker 1: is today. Obviously now At the same time, the company
Speaker 1: was participating in larger efforts to develop new technologies, and
Speaker 1: one of those was the stereo eight format, also known
Speaker 1: as the eight track tape. This was a form of
Speaker 1: magnetic tape storage specifically for audio and music. It was
Speaker 1: largely designed for in car audio systems, and honestly, it
Speaker 1: probably merits its own episode of tech Stuff. I should
Speaker 1: probably do a full episode of tech stuff about the
Speaker 1: development of the eight track format, particularly since some of
Speaker 1: the people involved are real characters. One of those would
Speaker 1: have been the legendary Earl Madman Months, who was an
Speaker 1: important and eccentric figure in consumer electronics in the forties
Speaker 1: and fifties and and sixties as well. Anyway, prior to
Speaker 1: the eight track, gold Mark that was the brilliant engineer
Speaker 1: who had been a pain in the butt to our
Speaker 1: CISA David Sarnoff back when they were trying to race
Speaker 1: against CBS in developing color television and the thirty three
Speaker 1: and a third RPM long playing record. Gold Mark was
Speaker 1: the guy at CBS who developed both of those well.
Speaker 1: He also developed a Hi Fi car system, a system
Speaker 1: that would allow you to play recorded music in your vehicle,
Speaker 1: not just rely upon the radio, something that is pretty
Speaker 1: standard in vehicles today, but it was brand new back then. Now. However,
Speaker 1: gold marks approach relied upon vinyl records. Yep, you would
Speaker 1: have a turntable in your car instead of a cassette
Speaker 1: player or CD player or digital radio these days. So
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, this was not ideal because if
Speaker 1: you went down a bumpy road, it would start sending
Speaker 1: this needle skipping all over the record and so you
Speaker 1: would get terrible, uh experience that way. You know, the
Speaker 1: song would skip around, or you'd have this horrible scratching noise.
Speaker 1: There were other ways of getting around it. You could
Speaker 1: weigh the needle down a little bit. That would discourage skipping. However,
Speaker 1: it would also cause more wear on the actual records,
Speaker 1: so you wouldn't be able to play them as many times.
Speaker 1: You would decrease the useful lifespan of the records. Months
Speaker 1: decided that to fix this he would change the method
Speaker 1: of storing music. He wanted to use magnetic storage on tape,
Speaker 1: and he created a four track magnetic tape system, which
Speaker 1: was later refined by a different crazy person in consumer technology,
Speaker 1: William Bill Lear sometimes referred to as King Lear, which
Speaker 1: I think is a cute nod to Shakespeare, and he
Speaker 1: created the eight track system. Lear worked with numerous other
Speaker 1: companies to finalize the standard, which really helped its adoption,
Speaker 1: and one of those companies was our c A. One
Speaker 1: of the interesting things about eight track tapes is that
Speaker 1: some of the mechanics for playback are actually in the
Speaker 1: cartridges themselves, not in the playback devices. So some of
Speaker 1: the moving parts for an eight track player are not
Speaker 1: even in the player, they're inside the cartridge. Each cartridge
Speaker 1: has those parts. The eight track had about a decade
Speaker 1: long run as an in car sound system component, but
Speaker 1: it was eventually displaced by cartridges. They were actually cartridges
Speaker 1: had come out a little bit before eight tracks, but
Speaker 1: it took some time before they reached a quality level
Speaker 1: where they were reliable and provided good enough sound quality
Speaker 1: for them to compete against eight tracks. Eight tracks had
Speaker 1: their own limitations. You couldn't fast forward and rewind an
Speaker 1: eight track tape. You pretty much had to listen through
Speaker 1: it and then turn it over and listen through it again. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also because those were moving parts were inside the cartridges.
Speaker 1: Whenever a company would make cheaper eight tracks in an
Speaker 1: effort to try and build out a larger customer base,
Speaker 1: because they were kind of expensive when they first came out,
Speaker 1: they would skimp on materials. But that meant that some
Speaker 1: of the moving parts that were you know, necessary for
Speaker 1: this to work were made of cheaper materials and they
Speaker 1: would break more readily, so the format eventually fizzled out. Also,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, R c A engineers would come
Speaker 1: up with an idea for a video playback device that
Speaker 1: would work kind of like a record player, except for video,
Speaker 1: not for sound. And instead of transmitting vibrations through a
Speaker 1: stylus right, instead of having a groove with tiny vibrations
Speaker 1: that create a through the vibrations of the stylus create
Speaker 1: an electrical impulse that ends up being turned into uh
Speaker 1: into sound through an amplifier. This was a stylist that
Speaker 1: would measure differences and capacitance. Capacitance by the way, that
Speaker 1: refers to a ratio. It's the ratio of the change
Speaker 1: in an electric charge in the system compared to the
Speaker 1: change in its electric potential. And to go into further
Speaker 1: detail would require a lot of talking. It would make
Speaker 1: this episode go way too long. But I will get
Speaker 1: back to this particular device later in the show, because
Speaker 1: the work began in the sixties, but it would take
Speaker 1: almost twenty years before our c A could actually do
Speaker 1: anything commercial with this technology, and as we'll see, by
Speaker 1: that time it was a little too late. Now January one,
Speaker 1: Robert Sarnoff, David Sarnov's son becomes the president of the company,
Speaker 1: so his father steps back from being president although he
Speaker 1: was still chairman of the board of directors, and his son,
Speaker 1: Robert becomes president. He was already a seasoned executive. He
Speaker 1: had been the president of NBC since nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: and during that time he had overseen some pretty big
Speaker 1: changes in television programming, one of those being that NBC
Speaker 1: began to include black entertainers on shows, and at the
Speaker 1: time integration was pretty progressive. Robert Sarnof would end up
Speaker 1: taking over our c A and trying to grow it.
Speaker 1: Five years after he became the president of the r
Speaker 1: c A UH he would become the chairman of the board,
Speaker 1: but his role as leader of the company, as we
Speaker 1: will see, would not be permanent. In nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: r c A began producing a special machine called the
Speaker 1: Spectra seventy. This was a main frame style computer. So
Speaker 1: this was our c trying to get into the mainframe
Speaker 1: computer business, and this particular computer was semi compatible with
Speaker 1: another mainframe computer, the IBM three sixty main frame. So
Speaker 1: our c A was trying to go into competition against
Speaker 1: IBM at the height of IBM s powers, which was
Speaker 1: probably not the best idea. Now. I called it semi
Speaker 1: compatible because the Spectra seventy could run some, but not all,
Speaker 1: of the code that was written for the IBM three sixty.
Speaker 1: The hardware of the Spectra seventy was compatible with the
Speaker 1: IBM three sixty, but the operating systems, the firmware, and
Speaker 1: the OS were a little different between the two, so
Speaker 1: not every program was directly portable from IBM three sixty
Speaker 1: to the Spectra seventy. So it pursued the strategy of
Speaker 1: being in the main frame computer business for a few years.
Speaker 1: But as we will see in just a moment, that
Speaker 1: was not to last either. Now I've got a lot
Speaker 1: more to say about what r c A has been
Speaker 1: up to over the last sixty years or so, but
Speaker 1: before I get into that, let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Now we're about to enter an
Speaker 1: odd era in our CIA's history, and it's one marked
Speaker 1: with tons of acquisitions and mergers. Instead of being innovative
Speaker 1: in the technology space, although our c A was continuing
Speaker 1: to try and do that, it was growing by buying
Speaker 1: up other companies. So in nineteen sixty five, r c
Speaker 1: A purchases a book publisher, in fact, a very famous
Speaker 1: book publisher, Random House. This was an early attempt for
Speaker 1: our c A to try and diversify and and go
Speaker 1: beyond electronics and technology. R c A would hold onto
Speaker 1: Random House until nineteen eighty, at which point it would
Speaker 1: sell Random House to another company called Advanced Publications for
Speaker 1: seventy million dollars. In nineteen sixty seven, just two years
Speaker 1: after buying Random House, the company would acquire another big company,
Speaker 1: Hurts Rental Car. So you can already see that things
Speaker 1: are a little strange here. Our c A buys a
Speaker 1: book publisher than a rental car company, neither of which
Speaker 1: seems to be remotely connected to its core businesses. Our
Speaker 1: C A would allow Hurts to operate as essentially an
Speaker 1: independent subsidiary. Hurts still had its own executive leadership and
Speaker 1: had its own board of directors, and ultimately our c
Speaker 1: would hold onto Hurts until five and then they sold
Speaker 1: the company for five eighty seven point five million dollars,
Speaker 1: a princely sum. However, this was not as much as
Speaker 1: what r C A was hoping to get for Hurts.
Speaker 1: In fact, r c had already tried to sell Hurts
Speaker 1: two years earlier, in Night three, but they were soliciting
Speaker 1: bids for the company, and they were hoping to get
Speaker 1: a bid of around seven hundred million dollars. But no
Speaker 1: one was by eating at that that price, so they
Speaker 1: held onto the company for a couple more years. In
Speaker 1: eighty five they finally sold it. The company that bought
Speaker 1: Hurts was U A l which was a holding company
Speaker 1: for United Airlines. Probably have to do a full episode
Speaker 1: about that company. At some point. In ninety our c
Speaker 1: A would introduce another really cool technology, one that we
Speaker 1: depend heavily upon UH these days in various formats, and
Speaker 1: that would be the liquid crystal display. R c A
Speaker 1: displayed it publicly in nineteen sixty eight. They had a
Speaker 1: big press event. Engineers led by a guy named Richard Williams,
Speaker 1: had been working on this l c D technology for
Speaker 1: years now. Essentially, a liquid crystal display consists of a
Speaker 1: couple of sheets of polarizing material and between those sheets,
Speaker 1: sandwiched if you like, is a liquid crystal solution. So
Speaker 1: what's a liquid crystal Well, it's a substance. It's kind
Speaker 1: of in between being a solid and liquid. Molecules in
Speaker 1: a solid material all all maintain the same orientation and
Speaker 1: the same position with respect to one another. So in
Speaker 1: other words, all all the molecules are stuck where they
Speaker 1: are with respect to each other in a solid, but
Speaker 1: in a liquid it's different molecules and a liquid are
Speaker 1: free to change their orientation and position with respect to
Speaker 1: each other. They float all over the place, and they
Speaker 1: twist and turn freely. Liquid crystals tend to maintain their orientation,
Speaker 1: so they all tend to continue pointing in whatever direction
Speaker 1: they're pointing in when it starts. But the molecules are
Speaker 1: able to change their positions with respect to each other,
Speaker 1: so they all point in the same direction as they
Speaker 1: had started, but they can move around each other. They
Speaker 1: can be in one of several distinct phases, but the
Speaker 1: important phase for liquid crystal displays is a phase called
Speaker 1: the neeumatic phase. One type of liquid crystal is called
Speaker 1: a twisted pneumatic liquid crystal, and twisted tematics are very
Speaker 1: important for l c d s. They are, as the
Speaker 1: name suggests, twisted. But if you apply an electric current
Speaker 1: to a twisted pneumatic liquid crystal, it untwists. If you
Speaker 1: vary the voltage of this electric current, you change the
Speaker 1: degree to which it untwists, so you can make it
Speaker 1: untwist more or less by varying the voltage. This behavior
Speaker 1: is replicable, it's predictable. It's always going to happen exactly
Speaker 1: the same way, assuming you vary the voltage in exactly
Speaker 1: the same way. So you can use these crystals to
Speaker 1: do very specific stuff. For example, you can use them
Speaker 1: to block light from passing through a surface, and then
Speaker 1: you could use it to allow light to pass through
Speaker 1: other parts of this surface. And this is how we
Speaker 1: use liquid crystals and an electronic display. The crystals block
Speaker 1: light that's trying to come through or allow light to
Speaker 1: come through, and uh, l c D t v s
Speaker 1: work this way. It's why you would often hear people
Speaker 1: talk about how l c D television's had a problem
Speaker 1: whenever there was a very dark scene on screen because
Speaker 1: there's always a backlight in an l c D display
Speaker 1: and the liquid crystals are blocking the light, but some
Speaker 1: of that light kind of bleeds through, So you couldn't
Speaker 1: get these very dark black colors in l c D
Speaker 1: displays because there was always this light behind that screen
Speaker 1: of liquid crystals. You would have to get something like
Speaker 1: a plasma display, which actually wouldn't backlight the screen, so
Speaker 1: you could get those more deep, dark black colors on
Speaker 1: that kind of television. Anyway, I'll have to do a
Speaker 1: full episode about l c D s to describe their
Speaker 1: history and how they work in a future episode. Richard
Speaker 1: Williams was instrumental in finding the practical application for liquid
Speaker 1: crystals in electronics and our He held this big public
Speaker 1: demonstration in nineteen sixty eight. It was also one of
Speaker 1: the last big company events that David Sarnoff would attend.
Speaker 1: His health was deteriorating at this point, and remember he
Speaker 1: had been in charge of our CIA since nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: and had only stepped back in nineteen sixty five for
Speaker 1: his son takeover as president, and he had remained as
Speaker 1: chairman of the board. Nineteen sixty eight, r c A
Speaker 1: finally updates its logo. Our c A. Victor would become
Speaker 1: our c A Records, and Victor is now just a
Speaker 1: brand name that shows up on stuff like album covers.
Speaker 1: And it seems a little haphazard the way Victor shows
Speaker 1: up on albums. I'm not entirely certain that there's a
Speaker 1: particular rhyme or reason to it. But our CIA's logo
Speaker 1: would be turned into what was considered at the time
Speaker 1: to be a futuristic logo. These days we would look
Speaker 1: at and think, oh, that's a quaint retro like nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties style logo, almost And that was in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Also in sixty eight, a miniature r c A television
Speaker 1: camera was used on Apollo seven to provide the first
Speaker 1: live television pictures captured from outer space and beamed back
Speaker 1: to Earth. R c A also built the radio backpack
Speaker 1: that Neil Armstrong war when he set foot on the
Speaker 1: Moon and delivered the famous one small step for a
Speaker 1: man line in nineteen sixty nine. The company was also
Speaker 1: responsible for designing components for multiple space probes like the
Speaker 1: Viking Mars probes and much later. They were also responsible
Speaker 1: for some of the subsystems on the space shuttles. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, r c A would change its name
Speaker 1: officially from the Radio Corporation of America that was the
Speaker 1: official name of the company, to our CI A Corporation.
Speaker 1: Also in sixty nine, r c A and CBS would
Speaker 1: ignite a new feud. If you listen to the previous episodes,
Speaker 1: you know that our c A and CBS fought several
Speaker 1: times in the forties they were battling to define the
Speaker 1: standard for color television. Now in sixty nine, just at
Speaker 1: the dawn of the nineteen seventies, they were competing to
Speaker 1: try and create a new technology for home video playback.
Speaker 1: This would be a device capable of playing back video
Speaker 1: media on demand at home, sort of a precursor to
Speaker 1: the VCR and then later still to technology like DVD
Speaker 1: players and Blu Ray players. The CBS version debuted first
Speaker 1: actually debuted in sixty seven, I think, and it was
Speaker 1: called the Electronic Video Recording Device or e v R
Speaker 1: for short. Our CIA's approach was originally called the s
Speaker 1: V Hollow Tape. Later the company would dub it the
Speaker 1: select a Vision, which gets really confusing because our cier
Speaker 1: has used selective vision for a few different products over
Speaker 1: its history. But CBSS version was further along than our
Speaker 1: CIA's when our Cia debut. There's um In fact, when
Speaker 1: our Cia showed off this technology, it was not yet
Speaker 1: able to play sound. It was showing video, but it
Speaker 1: was all silent. There was no soundtrack to go along
Speaker 1: with it. The process of mastering a tape for this
Speaker 1: system was actually really cool for for our Ci, as
Speaker 1: it actually involved lasers and holograms, but our Cia would
Speaker 1: experience some financial difficulties as it was trying to develop
Speaker 1: this technology further. Those those financial difficulties were largely due
Speaker 1: to our Cia trying to extricate itself from the computer
Speaker 1: mainframe business had gotten into in the sixties. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: while our CIA was trying to weather that storm, another
Speaker 1: video technology, the VCR, came out and pretty much made
Speaker 1: both the e VR from CBS and r C as
Speaker 1: select a vision moot. They just couldn't compete against the VCR,
Speaker 1: and it would ultimately mean that our CI a would
Speaker 1: abandon its attempts to market the hollow tape as a
Speaker 1: consumer product, so it never really launched as an actual
Speaker 1: thing you could go out and buy. In nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: David Starna would retire as chairman of the board, although
Speaker 1: to be more accurate, he was really in the late
Speaker 1: stages of a long term illness and so he was
Speaker 1: effectively removed as chairman. I don't get the sense that
Speaker 1: he chose to step down so much as he was
Speaker 1: forced to. Also, in nineteen seventy, r C announced another
Speaker 1: plan for another acquisition. Uh, and you remember they had
Speaker 1: already talked about They already bought the Hurts, rent a
Speaker 1: Car and and Random House Publishing. So what was it
Speaker 1: this time? Well, it hits close to home for me. Actually,
Speaker 1: they bought Coronet Industries. What was Coronet Industries or what
Speaker 1: is it. It's a carpeting company, a flooring company. So again,
Speaker 1: this was another effort for our c A to diversify
Speaker 1: its holdings, and this acquisition would officially complete in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Now I said it hits close to home.
Speaker 1: What I mean by that, Well, the headquarters for Coronet
Speaker 1: Industries was or is in Dalton, Georgia. Dalton, Georgia is
Speaker 1: in the northwest part of Georgia. If you ever drive
Speaker 1: through that part of Georgia, you will see numerous billboards
Speaker 1: for rug and carpeting wholesalers. And uh yeah, so I
Speaker 1: actually was surprised to hear that our c A at
Speaker 1: one point owned that company. Our c A would eventually
Speaker 1: sell this off in nineteen eight six to see I
Speaker 1: Holdings Incorporated. But we'll get into that because when I
Speaker 1: say our ci A sold it off, I don't really
Speaker 1: mean our CIA. That's a that's a hint for things
Speaker 1: to come. In nineteen seventy as well, our c would
Speaker 1: also buy another company that made people scratch their heads.
Speaker 1: This would be Banquet Foods, the company that the time
Speaker 1: was most known for its TV dinners and frozen foods.
Speaker 1: Our ci A would hold onto this for a decade,
Speaker 1: but sell it in nineteen eighty and due to the
Speaker 1: efforts to diversify and the fact that there didn't seem
Speaker 1: to be any rhyme or reason for the types of
Speaker 1: companies that our CIA was going after, some people inside
Speaker 1: the company felt like our CIA was losing focus. I mean,
Speaker 1: what did our CIA even do anymore? It's core businesses
Speaker 1: used to be electronics, both for consumers and for business
Speaker 1: to business, as well as for government and military uses.
Speaker 1: But now now it had a rental car company, and
Speaker 1: had a carpeting company and a frozen food company. Some
Speaker 1: people began to joke that our ci A really stood
Speaker 1: for rugs, chickens and automobiles. In nineteen seventy one, David
Speaker 1: Sarnoff passes away, So this was the man who had
Speaker 1: largely been associated with our CIA. In fact, a lot
Speaker 1: of our CIA's history tends to get tied directly to
Speaker 1: David Sarnoff and his personality. He was a force to
Speaker 1: be reckoned with, and his passing was probably one of
Speaker 1: the more remarkable things to happen to our c A
Speaker 1: during its full history. It seems to me like this
Speaker 1: was a case of another leader of a company having
Speaker 1: an extreme influence on how that company did business. You
Speaker 1: know some leaders, you would think they would have an
Speaker 1: extreme influence, but they may just help keep the company
Speaker 1: going while other people handle stuff. They might be more decentralized.
Speaker 1: Sarnov did not come across to me as that kind
Speaker 1: of person. Also, in nineteen seventy one, our c A
Speaker 1: would get out of the mainframe computer business. They sell
Speaker 1: it off to another company called Universal Automatic Computer better
Speaker 1: known as UNIVAC, and ultimately this computer business was unprofitable
Speaker 1: for our c A. The sale represented a huge loss
Speaker 1: for the company. According to some sources I read, mostly
Speaker 1: the New York Times, it amounted to essentially a two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty million dollar rite off, which wasn't great news.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen seventy five, the board of directors decided
Speaker 1: to oust Roberts Sarnoff as chairman and CEO. They felt
Speaker 1: that the attempts to diversify our CIER had weakened the company.
Speaker 1: This uh this decide, This exit from mainframe computer business
Speaker 1: also hurt the company. So this was essentially what some
Speaker 1: people referred to as a palace coup. It came from
Speaker 1: within the company itself and our c A president and
Speaker 1: chief operating officer, Anthony Conrad, led this coup attempt. Anthony
Speaker 1: Conrad had first joined our c A way back in
Speaker 1: ninety six after being discharged from the army after World
Speaker 1: War Two, and had worked there ever since. He had
Speaker 1: made his way up the corporate ladder, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties he was the executive in charge of overseeing
Speaker 1: our Cier's missile and space tracking operations, and now he
Speaker 1: was the head of the company. He became the new CEO,
Speaker 1: and in June nineteen seventy six he was elected chairman.
Speaker 1: Our CIA's performance was starting to turn around. The company
Speaker 1: was beginning to make money. Things seemed to be on
Speaker 1: the mend. However, Conrad turned out to have some skeletons
Speaker 1: in his closet. In September nineteen seventy six, just ten
Speaker 1: months after he had taken control of the company, Conrad
Speaker 1: announced he was resigning his position, and it turned out
Speaker 1: he had kind of sort of failed to file any
Speaker 1: income taxes for five years and the I r S
Speaker 1: kind of wanted to talk to him about it because
Speaker 1: the agency had held a routine inquiry and saw some regularities.
Speaker 1: So Conrad would end up settling up with the I
Speaker 1: R S. He was essentially a fugitive in New York
Speaker 1: State for two years until he was able to reach
Speaker 1: a LEA deal in which he paid a one tho
Speaker 1: dollar fine but also an undisclosed but presumably sizeable amount
Speaker 1: of money in back taxes, interests, and penalties. So after
Speaker 1: he resigned, a guy named Edgar H. Griffith's took control
Speaker 1: of our c A. Griffith's was concerned with getting our
Speaker 1: c A back on track from a numbers perspective, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't so much of leader as far as strategy
Speaker 1: and long term plans goes. He was trying to get
Speaker 1: the numbers to line up, so he began to divest
Speaker 1: the company of many of the subsidiaries that had been
Speaker 1: accumulating throughout its history since Robert Sarnoff had taken control
Speaker 1: the stuff like Banquet foods and Hurts rental cars, so
Speaker 1: he was kind of trying to undo what Robert Sarnoff
Speaker 1: had done. In Griffith's directed our ci A to purchase
Speaker 1: another company. So he sells off a lot of companies,
Speaker 1: but then he directs r c A to acquire a
Speaker 1: different company. This would be commercial Investment Trust or c
Speaker 1: I T, and the deal was for one point three
Speaker 1: billion dollars or thereabouts, a huge sum. C I T
Speaker 1: is an investment company and as the name suggests, it
Speaker 1: provides financing to other companies. After acquiring c I T,
Speaker 1: r c A would sell off several subsidiary companies that
Speaker 1: had belonged to c I T, including an office furniture
Speaker 1: manufacturing company and a greeting card company, which just tells
Speaker 1: me corporate politics are weird and complicated and I don't
Speaker 1: understand diversification very well. Anyway, this acquisition caused our CIA's
Speaker 1: credit rating to drop, and that made the board of
Speaker 1: directors very upset, so they demanded that Griffith's resign and
Speaker 1: he did, and in ninety one a new leader was
Speaker 1: brought on or pushed to the to the front of
Speaker 1: the company. This would be Thornton F. Bradshaw. He was
Speaker 1: a member of the board of our CIA when they
Speaker 1: made this decision to get rid of Griffith's and he
Speaker 1: was also the president of the Atlantic Richfield Company, which
Speaker 1: was an oil company. So he became the new leader
Speaker 1: of our ci A and then he made Robert R. Frederick,
Speaker 1: who had previously worked at General Electric the new president
Speaker 1: of our CIA. Eventually Bradshaw becomes the chairman of the
Speaker 1: board and Frederick would become the CEO. But they continued
Speaker 1: to sell off the diversified subsidiary, and by all of
Speaker 1: those companies that had been acquired, including c I T,
Speaker 1: had been sold off except for the carpeting company Coronet Industries.
Speaker 1: That one would stick around till jumping back to r
Speaker 1: c A finally released that video disc technology I talked
Speaker 1: about earlier in this episode. It was called a c
Speaker 1: e D or capacitance electronic disc player. The tech for
Speaker 1: the video playback device only allowed you to play video.
Speaker 1: You could not record to it, but you could grab
Speaker 1: a plastic caddy kind of looked almost like a vinyl
Speaker 1: record album cover, and you would insert it into a
Speaker 1: player and you could watch a video. Each side of
Speaker 1: the disc could hold about sixty minutes of in t
Speaker 1: SC video. That's the television standard in the United States,
Speaker 1: or it was the television stenter in the United States,
Speaker 1: So movies would typically require you to take the disc
Speaker 1: out halfway through the film, flip it over, and then
Speaker 1: put it back in to continue watching the move The
Speaker 1: discs themselves were inside these protective plastic caddies, so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't handle the disks. You would handle the plastic sleeves essentially,
Speaker 1: and you they were hard plastic or semi hard plastic sleeves.
Speaker 1: At least they weren't like super floppy or anything. So
Speaker 1: you'd slide these suckers in and watch a movie. And
Speaker 1: I actually had one of these. My family had one
Speaker 1: of these when I was growing up. In fact, I
Speaker 1: now own it. My parents gave it to me, so
Speaker 1: it's at my house and I even have a few
Speaker 1: movies for it, like Raiders, Lost Arc and Singing in
Speaker 1: the Rain. The technology worked just fine. You got picture,
Speaker 1: you got audio, but by the time of debuted in
Speaker 1: nine one, it was already obsolete because you already had
Speaker 1: other video standards. You had the the VHS, you had
Speaker 1: Beta Max, you had Laser disc, and even though laser
Speaker 1: disc didn't last super long, it was definitely superior to
Speaker 1: ce ED quality and you didn't have to UH. You
Speaker 1: could have extra stuff on laser discs, stuff that would
Speaker 1: carry over into UH the DVD era. So our CIA's
Speaker 1: technology was interesting, but it never took off, and by
Speaker 1: Night four, just three years after they debuted, the tech.
Speaker 1: They discontinued manufacturing the playback machines, so I guess I've
Speaker 1: got a collectors addition thing kind of. Anyway, this is
Speaker 1: a big important year because it's the year when General
Speaker 1: Electric announced its intent to acquire our c A a
Speaker 1: huge deal, and it did so in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: for six point four billion dollars. Alright, we're coming up
Speaker 1: to the most important year in recent history for our CIA.
Speaker 1: In fact, some would argue that we're talking about the
Speaker 1: final year of our ci A. I'll explain more in
Speaker 1: just a minute, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. All Right, we're up to night.
Speaker 1: This is a monumental year because it was the year
Speaker 1: when g E would make the decision to acquire our
Speaker 1: c A, although that acquisition wouldn't be complete until nineteen
Speaker 1: and the deal was for six point four billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Now this this meant that this was the largest ever
Speaker 1: acquisition or merger business deal that didn't involve an oil
Speaker 1: company in the history of business. At this point. It
Speaker 1: has since been eclipsed, obviously, but in nine a six
Speaker 1: point four billion dollar merger between two companies that were
Speaker 1: not oil companies That was a record breaking moment, and
Speaker 1: it came in a time when our c A Chairman
Speaker 1: Thornton Bradshaw and our c A CEO Robert R. Frederick
Speaker 1: had managed to get our c A on a profitable track.
Speaker 1: They had managed to sell off these businesses, most of
Speaker 1: them anyway that didn't make any sense to our CI
Speaker 1: as core business. They were able to refocus our ci A.
Speaker 1: They were able to make it profitable. NBC was doing
Speaker 1: incredibly well toward UH five. It had started to win
Speaker 1: awards for its programming and starting to to get more viewership.
Speaker 1: Things were really looking great. And on November six, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five, after having a meeting with the Board of directors,
Speaker 1: Bradshaw would go off and meet with a guy named
Speaker 1: John F. Welch Jr. Who was the chairman and CEO
Speaker 1: of g E at that time. Now, if you've been
Speaker 1: listening to all of these episodes, you might remember g
Speaker 1: E was one of the founding partners for our c A.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was the principal partner way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen. G E owned most of our CIA for
Speaker 1: many of the early years, until it was forced to
Speaker 1: divest itself because the US government said, you can't do
Speaker 1: that anymore. However, now we're in the eighties. This is
Speaker 1: the Reagan era, when the US government was less concerned
Speaker 1: about things like monopolies and there was a very lasse
Speaker 1: fair approach to corporate politics and corporate quisitions. This was
Speaker 1: the era of hostile takeovers. But you might wonder, if
Speaker 1: r C was doing so well, why was Bradshaw willing
Speaker 1: to entertain this deal. If our CIA is actually on
Speaker 1: the right track, why go with an acquisition deal in
Speaker 1: the first place. Well, part of the problem that Bradshaw
Speaker 1: saw was the culture at the time, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: this was the era of hostile takeovers, so there was
Speaker 1: always a fear that someone would end up creating an
Speaker 1: environment where they would approach shareholders with a deal that
Speaker 1: was too good to refuse and then take over the company.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but our ci A had two billion
Speaker 1: dollars in cash because it had divested itself of all
Speaker 1: these other companies and also found that it had been
Speaker 1: over paying the pension fund, so there was actually extra
Speaker 1: cash left over because the pension fund had more money
Speaker 1: in it than it needed. It also meant that if
Speaker 1: ay came in or some investors came in and they
Speaker 1: spent a huge amount of money to acquire our c A.
Speaker 1: They could then leverage that two billion dollars in cash
Speaker 1: to pay off any debts. And more problematic than that,
Speaker 1: parts of our CIA were really, really valuable. In fact,
Speaker 1: it was thought that if you were to divide up
Speaker 1: our c A into different pieces, you can make more
Speaker 1: money selling those individual pieces off to different companies than
Speaker 1: you would if you just operated our CIA as a
Speaker 1: full company in itself. In fact, Bradshaw had even looked
Speaker 1: at offloading some more of our c A. At one point,
Speaker 1: he had looked at the possibility of selling NBC to Disney,
Speaker 1: but eventually Bradshaw realized that our c A really needed NBC.
Speaker 1: The revenue NBC was bringing in was too important to
Speaker 1: our CIA's business, so he couldn't really afford to divest itself.
Speaker 1: So the two companies g E and our ci A
Speaker 1: happened to have some divisions and departments that clearly complemented
Speaker 1: one another. Our CIA had done a lot of work
Speaker 1: for the Navy and g had done a lot of
Speaker 1: work for the army, so bringing the two comedies together
Speaker 1: would create a more unified approach for military contracts that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So after some debate, our CIA's board
Speaker 1: met and agreed to GES terms. And at that point,
Speaker 1: once g E takes over, you could argue thats the
Speaker 1: end of our c A. R c A is no
Speaker 1: longer an independent company, is now part of GE. And
Speaker 1: more than that, GE starts to make some pretty big
Speaker 1: changes over the next few years. They began to merge departments.
Speaker 1: So they began to take our ci A departments and
Speaker 1: merge them into existing GE divisions, or they liquefy parts
Speaker 1: of our CIA and sell it off U. And one
Speaker 1: of those divisions that did this with was Astro elect
Speaker 1: Electronics department. That was the the company or the part
Speaker 1: of our ci A that was specifically focused on space technology.
Speaker 1: G E would merge that department with its own Space
Speaker 1: Systems division and thus created the GE Astro Space Division.
Speaker 1: But this was not meant to stay on as a
Speaker 1: GE property forever. In ninete, GE would sell off this
Speaker 1: entire division to Martin Marietta, which turned around and merged
Speaker 1: with Lockheed and that's where we get Lockheed Martin in
Speaker 1: n Lockeed. Martin announced it would close the Astro Electronics
Speaker 1: division facility and that finally happened in so that part
Speaker 1: of our c A is no more. Uh. It ended years,
Speaker 1: forty years of research and development in space and communications
Speaker 1: tech out of that facility, So that was just part
Speaker 1: of it. You would get to a lot of other
Speaker 1: spinoffs here. GE would sell off a lot of what
Speaker 1: made our CIER the company that it was, and it
Speaker 1: would also spin off other divisions, like nb C became
Speaker 1: its own sort of autonomous unit instead of being connected
Speaker 1: to what our CIA used to be. In night six,
Speaker 1: GE would sell off r c A Records to Bertlesman,
Speaker 1: so that company would become the steward of our CIA Records,
Speaker 1: which was formerly our CI A Victor, and remember Victor
Speaker 1: was a company that even was older than our c A.
Speaker 1: In seven, g E would sell NBC Radio to Westwood One,
Speaker 1: and it would hold on to the NBC television networks,
Speaker 1: so the radio network would be sold by the TV
Speaker 1: networks stayed behind. Selling off the radio networks was one
Speaker 1: of the conditions that GE was forced to meet in
Speaker 1: order to get approval from the United States government for
Speaker 1: the acquisition. Then g would also sell the r c
Speaker 1: A name, the consumer electronics brand, essentially to a French
Speaker 1: company called Thompson Brandt. We'll get back to that in
Speaker 1: just a second. In night, Sarnoff Labs that was the
Speaker 1: R and D arm of our c A was funded
Speaker 1: for GE for several years, but then GE would transfer
Speaker 1: Sarnoff Labs to the nonprofit organization s r I International.
Speaker 1: It's another organization I should probably cover in a future
Speaker 1: tech stuff is s r I International. It's a scientific
Speaker 1: research institute. It's based in Menlo Park, California. Originally it
Speaker 1: was founded by trustees from Stanford University in the nineteen forties.
Speaker 1: In fact, s r I stood for Stanford Research Institute,
Speaker 1: but the organization formally parted ways with the university back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. Anyway, by two thousand eleven, Sarnoff Labs
Speaker 1: had become fully integrated as part of s r I International,
Speaker 1: so it does not exist as its own independent thing anymore. Uh.
Speaker 1: In two thousand four, GE would merge NBC with Vivendi
Speaker 1: Universal Entertainment, and that created NBC Entertainment, but GE would
Speaker 1: remain the majority owner at that point. Also in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, Sony M Music and the Berlman Music Group
Speaker 1: or BMG would merge together, and that brought our CIA
Speaker 1: Records under the umbrella of Sony. Interesting side note, Sony
Speaker 1: is also the parent company of Columbia Records. And if
Speaker 1: you remember from my earlier episode, Columbia Records and our
Speaker 1: CI A were fierce competitors in the early days of records.
Speaker 1: Uh now they're both part of the same overall company.
Speaker 1: As for g VC, as the Japanese Victor Company that
Speaker 1: was part of our CIA for a while, that actually
Speaker 1: had split off decades earlier. It split off from our
Speaker 1: CIA during World War Two for obvious reasons, it was
Speaker 1: operating in Japan and we were at war with Japan.
Speaker 1: J VC has a record company called Victor Entertainment. This
Speaker 1: one still uses the logo of the dog looking at
Speaker 1: the gramophone, the one that's titled his Master's Voice. In
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, Comcast would buy controlling interest in n
Speaker 1: B see, so it's no longer part of GE. Comcast
Speaker 1: has it as an enormous conglomerate. So a big question
Speaker 1: you might have is, you know, I started this all
Speaker 1: off by saying our CIA is celebrating its one hundredth year,
Speaker 1: So what is it? What what is actually left? What
Speaker 1: is what is celebrating its one hundred year. The company,
Speaker 1: which had ballooned into an enormous and troubled conglomerate in
Speaker 1: the sixties and seventies, has been through so many different
Speaker 1: sales and spinoffs and mergers that there's no longer an
Speaker 1: r ci A company. There's no longer an independent company
Speaker 1: called our ci A. The name our Cia still exists,
Speaker 1: the brand still exists. It is a trademarked brand today.
Speaker 1: The owner of that trademark is the French company Technic
Speaker 1: Color Essay that was the one that used to be
Speaker 1: known as Thompson. The company licensed the name r c
Speaker 1: A to other companies that wish to use it on
Speaker 1: various products. So that includes our Cia records, which I
Speaker 1: mentioned as part of Sony Music, our ci A telephones,
Speaker 1: and our Cia projectors. A company called Telefield uses those.
Speaker 1: R c A Audio and video and r CEO r
Speaker 1: c A accessories are both licensed by Vox International, that's
Speaker 1: v o x X. Our c A Television is licensed
Speaker 1: by ON Corporation. UM you have our c A computers,
Speaker 1: which is licensed to American Future Technology Corporation. You get
Speaker 1: the idea like there's there's the brand. The name still exists,
Speaker 1: but the company doesn't. So to say that our c
Speaker 1: A is celebrating it's one year is I think a
Speaker 1: little misleading, maybe more than a little misleading, because the
Speaker 1: company itself hasn't really existed since n uh. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to see how a company that was so instrumental in
Speaker 1: very important moments in consumer electronic history, like the development
Speaker 1: of color television, could ultimately whittle get whittled or way
Speaker 1: down to nothing. Really, but I thought I would cover
Speaker 1: this as it was a fascinating story and it has
Speaker 1: had such an important impact on various parts of technology.
Speaker 1: Our next episode will not be so deep and and
Speaker 1: grave a subject as the one year history of a company.
Speaker 1: We're instead going to look at a popular video game
Speaker 1: and how it got so popular and its story. I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Fortnite. That will be the next episode. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you have suggestions
Speaker 1: for future episodes of tech Stuff, get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: The email address for the show is tech Stuff at
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