WEBVTT - RCA and its 100th Year 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.760 stuff Works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:17.080 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:19.280 How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I love 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.280 all things tech. And today I'm going to finally wrap 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:26.800 up the discussion of our ci A, the four episode 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:30.160 arc about our c A, and it'll all finish up 0:00:30.160 --> 0:00:32.680 in this episode. But that's going to mean I'll be 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:35.720 packing a whole lot into one episode. I'm not gonna 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.440 go long. I'm just gonna have a light touch because 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:41.760 we have to cover about fifty years of history in 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:44.640 this episode, so I won't be going into so much 0:00:44.680 --> 0:00:47.600 technical detail for a lot of the stuff I'm talking about, 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:51.159 besides which I've covered a lot of it already. However, 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:53.720 I do need to start off with a description of 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.840 how electron microscopes work, because I think I've mentioned it 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.440 in at least two of the previous episodes and I 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:04.360 haven't actually talked about it yet. So rather than put 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:07.520 it off again, let's talk about electron microscopes. Why do 0:01:07.560 --> 0:01:09.520 you need them? What do they do well? When you 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.160 start getting small and we start working with small stuff, 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.720 and I mean really really small stuff. You get to 0:01:17.760 --> 0:01:20.800 a point where you can no longer rely upon optical 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.840 microscopes anymore, and that's because of a couple of big problems. 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:28.800 One of them is that a microscope's ability to magnify 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.440 is limited by two major factors. One of those would 0:01:32.440 --> 0:01:34.720 be the quality of the lenses. Eventually you reach a 0:01:34.720 --> 0:01:36.800 point where you just can't make lenses of a high 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:40.080 enough quality to get better magnification. But you also run 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:44.720 into the physical limitation of light itself, visible light, because 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.600 it's dependent upon the wavelength of that visible light. The 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:52.560 theoretical limit of resolution for a light based microscope, not 0:01:52.600 --> 0:01:56.280 the practical, but the theoretical limit is somewhere around two 0:01:56.640 --> 0:02:00.120 D two hundred fifty nanometers, because beyond that you it 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:04.320 beyond the wavelength of natural light, and it literally cannot 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.840 image things smaller than that. The wavelengths are bigger than 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.320 the thing it's trying to you're trying to look at. However, 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:15.440 two that's that's really small, I mean that is the 0:02:15.480 --> 0:02:18.000 nano scale. That is tiny. But if you do need 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:21.200 to look at stuff that's smaller than that, because there 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.200 are things even smaller than that level, you've got to 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:27.120 figure out some other way of doing it, because light 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:29.600 waves can't do it, they're too big, so you've got 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:33.440 to figure some other method out. Now, electrons have very 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:37.760 very short wavelengths, shorter than light. So if you had 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.000 a way to beam electrons at a sample, you know, 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.280 whatever is you're trying to look at, and then you 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:46.679 had some means of detecting all of the different signals 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.200 that would be produced as the electrons from the beam 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.040 would interact with the sample, you could use the information 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:59.680 to construct images of the sample at that scale. So 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.840 electrons you would use would be high energy beam electrons, 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:06.839 and when they collide with a sample, the interactions would 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:11.760 produce all sorts of stuff like secondary electrons, back scattered electrons, 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.359 X rays, that kind of thing. You would have specific 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:17.680 detectors to pick up these different signals and register them 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:22.200 for processing to create the final image. And these microscopes 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:27.000 have a much greater resolution than optical microscopes. But even 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:30.920 these have their limitations. A scanning electron microscope has a 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:33.800 limit of around one nanometer or so you're not gonna 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.360 get much smaller than a single nanometer. Now that is 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:40.240 still incredibly small, but it's still too big to look 0:03:40.280 --> 0:03:45.400 at individual atoms. The atomic scale is smaller than the nanoscale, 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:47.360 so if you wanted to get a look at atoms, 0:03:47.400 --> 0:03:49.840 you would have to use something else, like a scanning 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:54.280 tunneling microscope. But those wouldn't come around until the nineteen eighties, 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:58.960 all right, So that's how electron microscopes work. Uh, are 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:02.800 scanning electron mic scopes work? And our Cia had been 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:06.720 in that business of making those, along with the consumer 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:10.480 electronics they were making any other industries they were involved in. Now, 0:04:10.560 --> 0:04:13.920 let's get back to our CIA's history. In the last episode, 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.600 we left off right around the early to mid fifties, 0:04:18.000 --> 0:04:20.480 and so we've got to cover all the time from 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:24.040 that point to present day in this episode. Fortunately, they 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:26.960 are a large spans of time that we can kind 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:30.839 of leap over. Now. One thing the company was gearing 0:04:30.920 --> 0:04:34.719 up to do was to introduce solid state electronics into 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:38.719 its line of products. Bell Labs had developed the transistor 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:41.560 in the nineteen forties. Although it was pretty primitive, it 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.479 wasn't ready to be incorporated into consumer electronics yet. They 0:04:45.520 --> 0:04:48.040 would take several years for that, so our c A 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.600 got a relative late start in the field of transistors 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:55.960 and solid state electronics and semiconductors because they had focused 0:04:56.000 --> 0:04:59.360 more on using vacuum tubes. In fact, in nineteen fifty 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.279 our CIA was the largest manufacturer of vacuum tubes in 0:05:03.320 --> 0:05:05.839 the world at that point. R c A even built 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:10.080 an experimental television with transistors as early as nineteen fifty two, 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.120 but this was again an experiment, not meant as a 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:17.120 consumer product. In nineteen fifty three, an engineer named Cohen 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.560 built a wrist radio that quickly got the nickname the 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:25.520 Dick Tracy wrist Radio, after the comic strip character Dick Tracy, 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:29.600 who has an iconic wrist radio device that allows him 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.560 to speak with his supervisor. Now, our c A did 0:05:32.560 --> 0:05:35.760 not build this device, Cohen wasn't working for our CIA. However, 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.559 Cohen did use some of our Cier's transistors to help 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:44.000 power and operate this device, So our CIA actually got 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:48.280 a nice boost in publicity because everyone was really excited 0:05:48.320 --> 0:05:50.719 about this wrist radio. It seemed like the thing of 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:53.240 the future, the gadget of the future. In the late 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:57.120 nineteen fifties, r CIA began to design and manufacture components 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:00.560 for satellites, so at this point it's all state is 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:06.200 ready to go and they're now looking at creating satellite technology. Specifically, 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.400 they were looking at radio communications technology in satellites. R 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:13.279 c A started doing some preliminary research and development in 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:17.680 nineteen fifty seven, and they created a dedicated division for 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.640 that purpose, and eventually they called it the r c 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:25.000 A Astro Electronics Division. They actually got the official name 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:29.479 in March nineteen fifty eight. Now, in turn, this particular 0:06:29.520 --> 0:06:32.640 division was under a larger department called the r c 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:37.279 A Defense Electronic Products, because our c A was still 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:41.719 very much in the business of designing components for defense 0:06:41.839 --> 0:06:44.720 systems for the military. They had been doing that since 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:49.120 World War Two. The company's first satellite to launch successfully 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:53.599 was called the Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment or 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:57.240 SCORE as the acronym for that, and that entered into 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.080 service on December eighteenth, nineteen fifty eight. Our c A 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:04.160 was kind of exploring the possibility of establishing a network 0:07:04.240 --> 0:07:07.919 of satellites for the purposes of global communications, and that 0:07:07.960 --> 0:07:11.280 would really begin in earnest in nineteen sixty two with 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:16.920 another communication satellite called Relay. Relay would relay communication signals 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:19.520 between North America and Europe and between North America and 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:25.320 South America so quickly. It was theorized that with an 0:07:25.360 --> 0:07:28.480 appropriate number of satellites in orbit, you could have global 0:07:28.520 --> 0:07:32.160 communications and just use the satellites to relay signals until 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:34.440 they got to wherever you needed them to go. The 0:07:34.520 --> 0:07:38.760 Relay Communication satellite also worked in conjunction with another satellite 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:42.520 called the Sincom three, and the two satellites together were 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:46.280 able to provide live television coverage of the nineteen sixty 0:07:46.280 --> 0:07:49.720 four Olympics, which were going on in Japan over to 0:07:49.840 --> 0:07:53.760 North America. So that was an amazing development being able 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.160 to watch stuff live with only a slight delay really 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:00.680 as they were going on on the other side of 0:08:00.680 --> 0:08:02.960 the world. Our c A would partner with NASA to 0:08:03.000 --> 0:08:07.120 develop weather satellites and a ground based observation station, so 0:08:07.320 --> 0:08:12.120 they were really becoming an instrumental company in the space 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:15.800 race as well. Around the same time, our ci A 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:18.360 contributed some of the equipment that would make up the 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:22.600 United States Ballistic Missile Early Warning System or b MUSE 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:26.640 b m e w S. It was a system of 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:31.920 radar facilities and communications channels meant to detect and alert 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.319 the United States to any sort of missile launch originating, 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.920 particularly in the Soviet Union because this was taking place 0:08:40.280 --> 0:08:43.880 during the Cold War between the USSR and United States, 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:47.440 and it became particularly important in the wake of the 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:51.679 Soviet Union's launch a Spootnik, which wasn't just a satellite, 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:55.400 but also a demonstration that the Soviet Union was capable 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:58.120 of launching a missile that had a long enough range 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:01.959 to potentially strike the United States eights. So if the 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:05.640 Soviet Union were to say, attached a payload of a 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.000 nuclear warhead to such a missile, they could, in theory 0:09:09.679 --> 0:09:12.840 have a nuclear strike against the US. So the United 0:09:12.880 --> 0:09:14.800 States wanted to have a system in place in order 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.680 to detect any potential missile launches from the U s SR. 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:21.480 R c A would produce a radar set and a 0:09:21.480 --> 0:09:26.040 communications data processor for this system. It also relied the 0:09:26.080 --> 0:09:29.240 system that is relied on equipment from many other companies, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.720 not just our CI A. Companies like General Electric, Western Electric, 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:37.000 and Sylvania also contributed components to this So while our 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:39.640 CIA was prominent in the minds of consumers looking for 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:42.760 television sets at home, the company was also working closely 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:46.760 with government and military organizations in the United States. In 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.920 the nineteen sixties, r c A dominated in the television 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:56.520 camera industry, the consumer television industry going out and buying 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:59.480 a television set that was really competitive, but our CIA 0:09:59.600 --> 0:10:04.480 was pretty much the name in television cameras. For actual 0:10:04.559 --> 0:10:08.160 TV studios, the t K forty four had become the 0:10:08.200 --> 0:10:12.160 industry standard, and on the consumer front, color television sales 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.800 were starting to pick up in the early to mid sixties. 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:19.440 By nineteen sixty six, the overall color television market was 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:23.160 around three billion dollars a year. Now that's for all 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.320 color TVs, not just the ones that are c A 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:31.720 was making, So we're talking worldwide sales reaching three billion dollars. Hefty, 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:36.640 but not anything close to what the television consumer market 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.079 is today. Obviously now At the same time, the company 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:44.560 was participating in larger efforts to develop new technologies, and 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:48.320 one of those was the stereo eight format, also known 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.040 as the eight track tape. This was a form of 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:55.520 magnetic tape storage specifically for audio and music. It was 0:10:55.640 --> 0:11:00.560 largely designed for in car audio systems, and honestly, it 0:11:00.640 --> 0:11:03.079 probably merits its own episode of tech Stuff. I should 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:06.440 probably do a full episode of tech stuff about the 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:11.360 development of the eight track format, particularly since some of 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:16.040 the people involved are real characters. One of those would 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:21.040 have been the legendary Earl Madman Months, who was an 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:25.520 important and eccentric figure in consumer electronics in the forties 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.200 and fifties and and sixties as well. Anyway, prior to 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:33.000 the eight track, gold Mark that was the brilliant engineer 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:35.319 who had been a pain in the butt to our 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:40.000 CISA David Sarnoff back when they were trying to race 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.920 against CBS in developing color television and the thirty three 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:48.800 and a third RPM long playing record. Gold Mark was 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.040 the guy at CBS who developed both of those well. 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:55.040 He also developed a Hi Fi car system, a system 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.679 that would allow you to play recorded music in your vehicle, 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:01.800 not just rely upon the radio, something that is pretty 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:05.280 standard in vehicles today, but it was brand new back then. Now. However, 0:12:06.000 --> 0:12:11.280 gold marks approach relied upon vinyl records. Yep, you would 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:15.640 have a turntable in your car instead of a cassette 0:12:15.679 --> 0:12:20.280 player or CD player or digital radio these days. So 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.280 as you can imagine, this was not ideal because if 0:12:23.320 --> 0:12:25.440 you went down a bumpy road, it would start sending 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:28.679 this needle skipping all over the record and so you 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:32.120 would get terrible, uh experience that way. You know, the 0:12:32.440 --> 0:12:35.040 song would skip around, or you'd have this horrible scratching noise. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:37.520 There were other ways of getting around it. You could 0:12:37.640 --> 0:12:41.240 weigh the needle down a little bit. That would discourage skipping. However, 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:44.199 it would also cause more wear on the actual records, 0:12:44.240 --> 0:12:46.920 so you wouldn't be able to play them as many times. 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:51.400 You would decrease the useful lifespan of the records. Months 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.600 decided that to fix this he would change the method 0:12:55.840 --> 0:12:59.439 of storing music. He wanted to use magnetic storage on tape, 0:12:59.800 --> 0:13:03.240 and he created a four track magnetic tape system, which 0:13:03.280 --> 0:13:07.240 was later refined by a different crazy person in consumer technology, 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:11.920 William Bill Lear sometimes referred to as King Lear, which 0:13:11.960 --> 0:13:14.960 I think is a cute nod to Shakespeare, and he 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.680 created the eight track system. Lear worked with numerous other 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:22.319 companies to finalize the standard, which really helped its adoption, 0:13:22.559 --> 0:13:25.280 and one of those companies was our c A. One 0:13:25.320 --> 0:13:28.000 of the interesting things about eight track tapes is that 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.280 some of the mechanics for playback are actually in the 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:35.440 cartridges themselves, not in the playback devices. So some of 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:38.880 the moving parts for an eight track player are not 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.359 even in the player, they're inside the cartridge. Each cartridge 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:46.080 has those parts. The eight track had about a decade 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:50.200 long run as an in car sound system component, but 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:55.320 it was eventually displaced by cartridges. They were actually cartridges 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:57.800 had come out a little bit before eight tracks, but 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:00.320 it took some time before they reached a quality level 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:05.480 where they were reliable and provided good enough sound quality 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:08.520 for them to compete against eight tracks. Eight tracks had 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.959 their own limitations. You couldn't fast forward and rewind an 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:13.839 eight track tape. You pretty much had to listen through 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.360 it and then turn it over and listen through it again. Uh. 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:21.960 And also because those were moving parts were inside the cartridges. 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:26.720 Whenever a company would make cheaper eight tracks in an 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.200 effort to try and build out a larger customer base, 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.320 because they were kind of expensive when they first came out, 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:36.440 they would skimp on materials. But that meant that some 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.840 of the moving parts that were you know, necessary for 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.440 this to work were made of cheaper materials and they 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:48.040 would break more readily, so the format eventually fizzled out. Also, 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:51.600 in nineteen sixty four, R c A engineers would come 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.560 up with an idea for a video playback device that 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:58.040 would work kind of like a record player, except for video, 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:01.600 not for sound. And instead of transmitting vibrations through a 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.920 stylus right, instead of having a groove with tiny vibrations 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:10.000 that create a through the vibrations of the stylus create 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:13.880 an electrical impulse that ends up being turned into uh 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:18.560 into sound through an amplifier. This was a stylist that 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:23.160 would measure differences and capacitance. Capacitance by the way, that 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:26.680 refers to a ratio. It's the ratio of the change 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:30.160 in an electric charge in the system compared to the 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.160 change in its electric potential. And to go into further 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:36.240 detail would require a lot of talking. It would make 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:38.360 this episode go way too long. But I will get 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.840 back to this particular device later in the show, because 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:45.600 the work began in the sixties, but it would take 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.920 almost twenty years before our c A could actually do 0:15:49.000 --> 0:15:53.040 anything commercial with this technology, and as we'll see, by 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:57.720 that time it was a little too late. Now January one, 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:04.080 Robert Sarnoff, David Sarnov's son becomes the president of the company, 0:16:04.120 --> 0:16:07.200 so his father steps back from being president although he 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.400 was still chairman of the board of directors, and his son, 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.840 Robert becomes president. He was already a seasoned executive. He 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:20.040 had been the president of NBC since nineteen fifty six, 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.520 and during that time he had overseen some pretty big 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.960 changes in television programming, one of those being that NBC 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:30.640 began to include black entertainers on shows, and at the 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:35.680 time integration was pretty progressive. Robert Sarnof would end up 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:38.560 taking over our c A and trying to grow it. 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:41.040 Five years after he became the president of the r 0:16:41.120 --> 0:16:43.920 c A UH he would become the chairman of the board, 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.720 but his role as leader of the company, as we 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:51.240 will see, would not be permanent. In nineteen sixty five, 0:16:51.400 --> 0:16:55.000 r c A began producing a special machine called the 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:59.000 Spectra seventy. This was a main frame style computer. So 0:16:59.040 --> 0:17:01.280 this was our c trying to get into the mainframe 0:17:01.360 --> 0:17:06.359 computer business, and this particular computer was semi compatible with 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.159 another mainframe computer, the IBM three sixty main frame. So 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.400 our c A was trying to go into competition against 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:17.280 IBM at the height of IBM s powers, which was 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.719 probably not the best idea. Now. I called it semi 0:17:20.800 --> 0:17:24.600 compatible because the Spectra seventy could run some, but not all, 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:27.840 of the code that was written for the IBM three sixty. 0:17:27.960 --> 0:17:31.240 The hardware of the Spectra seventy was compatible with the 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:36.480 IBM three sixty, but the operating systems, the firmware, and 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.080 the OS were a little different between the two, so 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:45.119 not every program was directly portable from IBM three sixty 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:50.840 to the Spectra seventy. So it pursued the strategy of 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:53.240 being in the main frame computer business for a few years. 0:17:53.560 --> 0:17:55.560 But as we will see in just a moment, that 0:17:55.720 --> 0:17:58.200 was not to last either. Now I've got a lot 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.359 more to say about what r c A has been 0:18:00.440 --> 0:18:04.360 up to over the last sixty years or so, but 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.480 before I get into that, let's take a quick break 0:18:06.680 --> 0:18:16.760 to thank our sponsor. Now we're about to enter an 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:19.760 odd era in our CIA's history, and it's one marked 0:18:19.760 --> 0:18:24.840 with tons of acquisitions and mergers. Instead of being innovative 0:18:24.880 --> 0:18:27.520 in the technology space, although our c A was continuing 0:18:27.560 --> 0:18:30.480 to try and do that, it was growing by buying 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.520 up other companies. So in nineteen sixty five, r c 0:18:33.720 --> 0:18:38.040 A purchases a book publisher, in fact, a very famous 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:42.720 book publisher, Random House. This was an early attempt for 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:45.639 our c A to try and diversify and and go 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:50.280 beyond electronics and technology. R c A would hold onto 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.879 Random House until nineteen eighty, at which point it would 0:18:53.880 --> 0:18:57.520 sell Random House to another company called Advanced Publications for 0:18:57.640 --> 0:19:01.200 seventy million dollars. In nineteen sixty seven, just two years 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.320 after buying Random House, the company would acquire another big company, 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:09.920 Hurts Rental Car. So you can already see that things 0:19:09.960 --> 0:19:12.320 are a little strange here. Our c A buys a 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:16.080 book publisher than a rental car company, neither of which 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:20.560 seems to be remotely connected to its core businesses. Our 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:23.199 C A would allow Hurts to operate as essentially an 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.680 independent subsidiary. Hurts still had its own executive leadership and 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:30.800 had its own board of directors, and ultimately our c 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:35.080 would hold onto Hurts until five and then they sold 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:39.840 the company for five eighty seven point five million dollars, 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.439 a princely sum. However, this was not as much as 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:45.680 what r C A was hoping to get for Hurts. 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:49.840 In fact, r c had already tried to sell Hurts 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:54.960 two years earlier, in Night three, but they were soliciting 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:56.840 bids for the company, and they were hoping to get 0:19:56.840 --> 0:19:59.360 a bid of around seven hundred million dollars. But no 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.320 one was by eating at that that price, so they 0:20:02.320 --> 0:20:04.080 held onto the company for a couple more years. In 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:07.359 eighty five they finally sold it. The company that bought 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.920 Hurts was U A l which was a holding company 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.720 for United Airlines. Probably have to do a full episode 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:19.280 about that company. At some point. In ninety our c 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:24.879 A would introduce another really cool technology, one that we 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:29.960 depend heavily upon UH these days in various formats, and 0:20:30.040 --> 0:20:33.560 that would be the liquid crystal display. R c A 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:36.200 displayed it publicly in nineteen sixty eight. They had a 0:20:36.240 --> 0:20:40.919 big press event. Engineers led by a guy named Richard Williams, 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.199 had been working on this l c D technology for 0:20:44.400 --> 0:20:49.399 years now. Essentially, a liquid crystal display consists of a 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:53.520 couple of sheets of polarizing material and between those sheets, 0:20:53.680 --> 0:20:57.560 sandwiched if you like, is a liquid crystal solution. So 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.440 what's a liquid crystal Well, it's a substance. It's kind 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:04.359 of in between being a solid and liquid. Molecules in 0:21:04.359 --> 0:21:08.399 a solid material all all maintain the same orientation and 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:11.560 the same position with respect to one another. So in 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:14.880 other words, all all the molecules are stuck where they 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:17.520 are with respect to each other in a solid, but 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.080 in a liquid it's different molecules and a liquid are 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:23.840 free to change their orientation and position with respect to 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:26.080 each other. They float all over the place, and they 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:32.160 twist and turn freely. Liquid crystals tend to maintain their orientation, 0:21:32.800 --> 0:21:36.159 so they all tend to continue pointing in whatever direction 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:40.080 they're pointing in when it starts. But the molecules are 0:21:40.119 --> 0:21:42.720 able to change their positions with respect to each other, 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:45.120 so they all point in the same direction as they 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:49.000 had started, but they can move around each other. They 0:21:49.000 --> 0:21:52.399 can be in one of several distinct phases, but the 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.359 important phase for liquid crystal displays is a phase called 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:00.800 the neeumatic phase. One type of liquid crystal is called 0:22:00.880 --> 0:22:05.480 a twisted pneumatic liquid crystal, and twisted tematics are very 0:22:05.480 --> 0:22:07.720 important for l c d s. They are, as the 0:22:07.800 --> 0:22:12.399 name suggests, twisted. But if you apply an electric current 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:17.760 to a twisted pneumatic liquid crystal, it untwists. If you 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.119 vary the voltage of this electric current, you change the 0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:24.639 degree to which it untwists, so you can make it 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:29.560 untwist more or less by varying the voltage. This behavior 0:22:30.119 --> 0:22:33.800 is replicable, it's predictable. It's always going to happen exactly 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.240 the same way, assuming you vary the voltage in exactly 0:22:37.280 --> 0:22:39.600 the same way. So you can use these crystals to 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:42.600 do very specific stuff. For example, you can use them 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:46.720 to block light from passing through a surface, and then 0:22:46.800 --> 0:22:49.280 you could use it to allow light to pass through 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.280 other parts of this surface. And this is how we 0:22:52.359 --> 0:22:57.119 use liquid crystals and an electronic display. The crystals block 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:00.320 light that's trying to come through or allow light to 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:03.480 come through, and uh, l c D t v s 0:23:03.560 --> 0:23:06.560 work this way. It's why you would often hear people 0:23:06.560 --> 0:23:09.960 talk about how l c D television's had a problem 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:14.040 whenever there was a very dark scene on screen because 0:23:14.560 --> 0:23:18.160 there's always a backlight in an l c D display 0:23:18.200 --> 0:23:22.239 and the liquid crystals are blocking the light, but some 0:23:22.320 --> 0:23:24.720 of that light kind of bleeds through, So you couldn't 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:29.280 get these very dark black colors in l c D 0:23:29.760 --> 0:23:33.720 displays because there was always this light behind that screen 0:23:33.960 --> 0:23:36.240 of liquid crystals. You would have to get something like 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:41.080 a plasma display, which actually wouldn't backlight the screen, so 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:45.720 you could get those more deep, dark black colors on 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:48.199 that kind of television. Anyway, I'll have to do a 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:50.840 full episode about l c D s to describe their 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:53.840 history and how they work in a future episode. Richard 0:23:53.840 --> 0:23:57.639 Williams was instrumental in finding the practical application for liquid 0:23:57.680 --> 0:24:01.359 crystals in electronics and our He held this big public 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:04.320 demonstration in nineteen sixty eight. It was also one of 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:08.520 the last big company events that David Sarnoff would attend. 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:12.399 His health was deteriorating at this point, and remember he 0:24:12.440 --> 0:24:16.480 had been in charge of our CIA since nineteen nineteen 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:19.639 and had only stepped back in nineteen sixty five for 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:22.520 his son takeover as president, and he had remained as 0:24:22.600 --> 0:24:25.800 chairman of the board. Nineteen sixty eight, r c A 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:29.440 finally updates its logo. Our c A. Victor would become 0:24:29.480 --> 0:24:33.520 our c A Records, and Victor is now just a 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:36.080 brand name that shows up on stuff like album covers. 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:39.720