Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? It is time for
Speaker 1: a classic episode, which means it's gotta be Friday Friday.
Speaker 1: Gotta get down on Friday, whether you're sitting in the
Speaker 1: front seat or kicking in the back seat. This episode
Speaker 1: originally published on January twenty, two, thousand sixteen. It is
Speaker 1: called The Phillips Story Part one that you can't guess
Speaker 1: what next week's classic episode is gonna be, Let's listen in.
Speaker 1: This is from a listener suggestion Roger actually asked this.
Speaker 1: Roger wrote, I'm an avid Tech Stuff podcast listener from
Speaker 1: the UK, especially enjoying the company histories. I have two
Speaker 1: companies that I think would be quite interesting to cover.
Speaker 1: The first is Royal Phillips. Phillips has been an innovator
Speaker 1: since the eighteen hundreds, with everything from light bulbs through
Speaker 1: to high tech medical scanning equipment, with a few consumer
Speaker 1: items such as compact sets, video recorders, laser disc and
Speaker 1: CD DVD technology thrown in for good measure. It would
Speaker 1: be great to get the history, but I really wanted
Speaker 1: to look at Phillips and talk about the history of
Speaker 1: this company. It is interesting because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people when they think of electronics, they tend to
Speaker 1: think of either American companies like General Electric or Westinghouse,
Speaker 1: or they think about Japanese companies like Sony and others
Speaker 1: are along those lines, but they tend to forget that
Speaker 1: there were European companies that were instrumental in the development
Speaker 1: of electronics, and in fact, Phillips is one of those companies.
Speaker 1: So I thought I would tackle the company history of
Speaker 1: Royal Phillips better known as just Phillips here in the USA.
Speaker 1: Although we'll get into how Phillips is changing even as
Speaker 1: I speak, Uh, that'll probably be in part two. So
Speaker 1: Part one we're gonna focus on the founding of the
Speaker 1: company and go through up to about the beginning of
Speaker 1: World War Two, or at least the Netherlands involvement in
Speaker 1: World War Two. Because the Phillips is a company that
Speaker 1: originates from the Netherlands, the company actually takes its name
Speaker 1: from a family. The patriarch of that family was Benjamin
Speaker 1: Frederick David Phillips, who went by Frederick I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: him Freddie Baby. So Freddie Baby was born in the
Speaker 1: Netherlands on December one, eighteen thirty. He was the fourth
Speaker 1: son of a family that made its money in the
Speaker 1: tobacco trade. His father, Lyon Phillips, was very successful tobacco merchant.
Speaker 1: Um probably merchant is being too narrowly defined. Uh. He
Speaker 1: was also a cousin to another notable person in history,
Speaker 1: Carl Marx, who was the author of the Communist Manifesto,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Marx would often call upon his relatives,
Speaker 1: the Phillips whenever he was in need of money. So
Speaker 1: while Marx was, you know, a communist and believed very
Speaker 1: much in the distribution of wealth across the workers, he
Speaker 1: was not above asking his wealthy merchant class uh distant
Speaker 1: family for for cash when he needed it. Frederick Phillips
Speaker 1: became a banker and he was incredibly successful. He built
Speaker 1: up a really healthy fortune, and he married a woman
Speaker 1: by the name of Mary Hayliger's. By the way, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of Dutch names in this and the
Speaker 1: next podcast that I will be butchering, largely because is
Speaker 1: Dutch is similar to German, which I know a little
Speaker 1: bit of. But different enough that my instincts on how
Speaker 1: to pronounce things are often going to be wrong. So
Speaker 1: my apologies to all of you Dutch speakers out there
Speaker 1: and really everyone else too, as I butcher these names.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna do my best anyway. Frederick Phillips and
Speaker 1: his wife had ten children, not all of them survived
Speaker 1: to adulthood, and one of those children was a son
Speaker 1: by the name of Gerard Leonardo Frederick Phillips, best known
Speaker 1: just as Gerard Phillips. Now, when Frederick was in his sixties,
Speaker 1: he became inspired by his son Gerard, who was interested
Speaker 1: in making carbon filaments for light bulbs. This would be
Speaker 1: around eighteen nine, and that was around when electricity was
Speaker 1: kind of on the verge of replacing gas lamps for lighting.
Speaker 1: But as we've talked about in tech stuff on previous occasions,
Speaker 1: it was really tricky to build an electric light bulb
Speaker 1: that could burn brightly enough and last long enough to
Speaker 1: be a practical replacement for gas lamps. A lot of
Speaker 1: those early filaments would burn out very rapidly, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of different innovators who were working
Speaker 1: in this space to try and find a way to
Speaker 1: make those filaments last long enough for an electric light
Speaker 1: bulb to really be practical. In fact, I would argue
Speaker 1: that Edison's major contribution was the development of a filament
Speaker 1: that was longer lasting than most of the predecessors. Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't invent the light bulb, he just improved upon it. Well.
Speaker 1: Gerard was interested in this as well, and was working
Speaker 1: very hard on trying to come up with a carbon
Speaker 1: filament that could be of practical use. And he went
Speaker 1: to his father and said, maybe we could create a
Speaker 1: company specifically for this purpose, and Frederick Phillips agreed to
Speaker 1: back his son Gerard, and they formed the Phillips and Company.
Speaker 1: They actually purchased a factory in the town of Eindhoven
Speaker 1: to make lightbulbs. Now, at that time, Eindhoven was sort
Speaker 1: of a modest industrial town. Today it's actually known as
Speaker 1: a center of innovation and high tech scholarship, and that's
Speaker 1: largely due to the influence of the Phillips company. But
Speaker 1: it didn't take off immediately. In fact, at first the
Speaker 1: company really struggled. So Gerard was a mechanical engineer and
Speaker 1: was really good at that. He was he was very innovative,
Speaker 1: very clever. He graduated from delf University in eighteen eighty
Speaker 1: three with a degree in mechanical engineering, and he had
Speaker 1: also worked for a company called A E G which,
Speaker 1: along with another company called Siemens and Hausk, was a
Speaker 1: dominant player in the electric lighting into street in Europe. Now,
Speaker 1: according to historical accounts, the lamps that Gerard was producing
Speaker 1: from Phillips and Company were of excellent quality. They were
Speaker 1: amazingly long lasting lamps compared to the competitors, and they're
Speaker 1: very pretty, very beautiful design. The factory itself had twenty
Speaker 1: eight people working there and they were earning good wages
Speaker 1: comparatively speaking, so everything was going well on that end,
Speaker 1: but the business itself was not doing so well. The
Speaker 1: sales weren't reflecting the quality, and by nineteen by eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, rather the business was already in trouble and
Speaker 1: in fact teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. So it
Speaker 1: was founded in eighteen by eighteen ninety four, it's already shaky.
Speaker 1: And the main problem was that Gerard Phillips, while he
Speaker 1: was an accomplished mechanical engineer, had very little business acumen.
Speaker 1: He could produce amazing work, but he had trouble managing
Speaker 1: the business side of things, and so in eighteen nine
Speaker 1: his younger brother, Anton Phillips joined the company. Now, Anton
Speaker 1: had a background in business and also was a much
Speaker 1: more outgoing personality than his brother was. Gerard was kind
Speaker 1: of a solitary worker. He preferred to do research in
Speaker 1: the lab and have a quiet environment and avoid conversation,
Speaker 1: which he often thought of as being unnecessary and a
Speaker 1: distraction from work. Meanwhile, Anton was much more outgoing. He
Speaker 1: enjoyed socializing and networking and was sort of a born salesman.
Speaker 1: So together the two brothers were able to turn the
Speaker 1: company around. Gerard was still the head of the company,
Speaker 1: but Anton became kind of the director of sales and
Speaker 1: uh soon orders were pouring in from all over Europe
Speaker 1: and beyond. One of the first big cli aiance of
Speaker 1: the Phillips and Company UH business was the Star of Russia.
Speaker 1: So the Russian Tsar actually purchased Phillips lamps to light
Speaker 1: up the Winter Palace. To a pretty big deal, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider that Karl Marx was a relative very
Speaker 1: interesting experience, and there are in fact, entire books written
Speaker 1: about Karl Marx and the Phillips family and how that
Speaker 1: relationship was complicated and how the different philosophies were at play,
Speaker 1: while the Phillips family was still sympathetic at least two
Speaker 1: Marx's plight enough so that they were giving him money
Speaker 1: when he needed it. Very interesting stuff, but kind of
Speaker 1: beyond the scope of tech stuff. I'll leave that to
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. Maybe they can do
Speaker 1: an episode about Karl Marx and his relationship with the
Speaker 1: Phillips family. At any rate, Back to Phillips, UH. While
Speaker 1: Anton was becoming something of a sales legend in Europe,
Speaker 1: his brother Gerard headed up research and development back in Eindhoven.
Speaker 1: So Gerard was constantly improving designs to build better lamps,
Speaker 1: and then Anton would go and sell those designs to customers.
Speaker 1: And because of Gerard's success, UH, and because of his
Speaker 1: his reputation as a brilliant designer, Anton was actually able
Speaker 1: to promise his clients that the company was always working
Speaker 1: on improving designs and innovating in the space. And this
Speaker 1: really became a great example of a buzzword known as synergy.
Speaker 1: You probably heard synergy a lot of times. Synergy and
Speaker 1: basically means it's the process of creating a whole that's
Speaker 1: greater than the sum of its parts. And this is
Speaker 1: really the case with the Phillips brothers. Individually, they were
Speaker 1: both intelligent men who were quite capable in their own spheres,
Speaker 1: but together they were able to accomplish a lot more
Speaker 1: than they could have done on their own. In fact,
Speaker 1: as I just mentioned, if Gerard had not received help
Speaker 1: from his brother, it's quite possible that the Phillips Company
Speaker 1: would have gone bankrupt before they were able to really
Speaker 1: make an impact. Well. By nineteen o seven, the business
Speaker 1: changed because carbon filaments went obsolete. There were there was
Speaker 1: a better technology in place that would last longer, it
Speaker 1: burned brighter and used the same amount of energy as
Speaker 1: carbon filaments, and that would be tungsten wire filament. So
Speaker 1: Phillips and Company switched to designing lamps that used tungsten wire.
Speaker 1: It could actually produce three times the amount of light
Speaker 1: with the same amount of electricity as a carbon filament lamp,
Speaker 1: so it made sense to make that change. We have
Speaker 1: more to say about the Philips story. After these messages
Speaker 1: in the company was listed on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange
Speaker 1: and became a limited company called all Right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it a shot, guys, but this is gonna be
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna sound like a three year old trying
Speaker 1: to sound out a word because it's it's very intimidating.
Speaker 1: So the company became known as in V Phillips glow
Speaker 1: is lump in fabric and gloile lump and fabrican is
Speaker 1: how I will say that, And all you Dutch speakers
Speaker 1: out there can scoff at me justifiably anyway. A limited company,
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, it's an organization made up of investors,
Speaker 1: and each of those investors is protected from liability to
Speaker 1: the extent of their own investment in the business. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, just just a simple example, if you
Speaker 1: invested ten thousand dollars in a limited company, you couldn't
Speaker 1: be held accountable for more than ten thousand dollars in
Speaker 1: liability should something go catastrophically wrong. So really, a liability
Speaker 1: company is meant to protect the people that invest in it.
Speaker 1: Thus gives you an incentive to invest in the company
Speaker 1: because you stand to gain from your investment and you're
Speaker 1: protected from anything really unfortunate. So, for example, if it's
Speaker 1: proven that the company uh mishandled funds in some criminal way,
Speaker 1: you have a level of protection because of the nature
Speaker 1: of that organization, assuming you're not the actual person committing
Speaker 1: the crime. In Phillips and Company established the NEAT Lab,
Speaker 1: which was a research and development facility be dedicated to
Speaker 1: innovation and improving existing technology. Now in that lab in
Speaker 1: a T. L a b. Is actually a nickname. The
Speaker 1: full name for the facility is again, all right, the
Speaker 1: Phillips neture Kundig Laboratorium. I'm so sorry. Anyway, the center
Speaker 1: was necessary because by this time the company was beginning
Speaker 1: to explore other technologies, not just incandescent lamps. And the
Speaker 1: company also wanted to develop its own patents so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be dependent upon third parties. So by that I mean, um,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's say that that you want to
Speaker 1: be able to use a particular process. Well, when a
Speaker 1: person or organization receives a patent, when they filed for
Speaker 1: a pen and they're granted that patent, their design is
Speaker 1: made public. That's part of the agreement to have a
Speaker 1: process or design patented. When you do that, that particular
Speaker 1: design is publicly available. Anyone can go and pull up
Speaker 1: the patent and see how it is you're doing the
Speaker 1: thing you are doing. That's all part of the filing process.
Speaker 1: But in return for publicly saying this is how we
Speaker 1: do things, the patent holder gets exclusive rights to use
Speaker 1: that particular design or approach in whatever way they want
Speaker 1: for a given amount of time, and that given amount
Speaker 1: of time has changed over the years. But it essentially
Speaker 1: says that for x amount of years, you get exclusive
Speaker 1: rights to this design. You can do whatever you want
Speaker 1: with it, and if anyone else uses that same design
Speaker 1: without your permission, you can sue them for infringement. So
Speaker 1: the design is publicly available, which gives the protection gives
Speaker 1: protection to the person who holds the patent because then
Speaker 1: they can say, well, clearly, you stole my idea because
Speaker 1: my idea is publicly available for you to read. But
Speaker 1: I am protected. I can use that idea exclusively, and
Speaker 1: I did not give you permission. So even if a
Speaker 1: company came up with its own approach that just happened
Speaker 1: to be the same approach as what has already been
Speaker 1: established in a patent, they would be liable because they'd
Speaker 1: be using a system that was already documented in the
Speaker 1: patent system. So it's a very interesting way of protecting
Speaker 1: your ideas. But one thing you can do if you
Speaker 1: own a patent is well, first, first of all, you
Speaker 1: can sell it if you want, So if you are
Speaker 1: the holder of a patent, you can actually sell your
Speaker 1: patents to another entity. In fact, there are other companies
Speaker 1: that that's all they do is just buy up patents.
Speaker 1: But you can also license your patents to other parties. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you come up with a brilliant idea
Speaker 1: on a way to design a particular style of light bulb,
Speaker 1: and a company wants to make lightbulbs using your design,
Speaker 1: so they pay you a licensing fee, and in return,
Speaker 1: you give them permission to use your patented idea. Everyone benefits.
Speaker 1: The company can sell products and make make profit. That way,
Speaker 1: you profit from being able to license your idea to
Speaker 1: someone else. And in fact, there's some companies that's all
Speaker 1: they do is licensed patents. They don't make anything. They
Speaker 1: hold the patents for making stuff, but they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have any manufacturing facilities. They just licensed it out to
Speaker 1: other people. They're also companies called patent trolls, and patent
Speaker 1: trolls are a little different. Instead of licensing a patent
Speaker 1: to other companies, they wait until a company makes a
Speaker 1: product or some other system that infringes upon a patent
Speaker 1: and then they threaten to sue unless the company settles
Speaker 1: for an enormous sum of money out of court. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's what a patent troll is. That it's an entity
Speaker 1: that has no interest in putting its patents to work
Speaker 1: in any way other than as a means of leveraging
Speaker 1: power over other companies that would want to use that process.
Speaker 1: All right, at any rate, Gerard and Anton thought it
Speaker 1: was really intelligent to develop a company specific research and
Speaker 1: development facility to help file patents so that the company
Speaker 1: itself wouldn't have to rely on licensing these third party
Speaker 1: entities in order to make stuff. The first director of
Speaker 1: the nat Lab was a man named Hiel's Host Holst
Speaker 1: was an engineer turned physicist, a doctor. Doctor Holst a
Speaker 1: former teacher. He was a professional researcher. He did early
Speaker 1: research into superconductivity. That's where you cool down a conductive substance,
Speaker 1: you know, a metal, You cool it down to a
Speaker 1: very very a low temperatures and that will eliminate electrical resistance,
Speaker 1: meaning you have a perfect conductor. Uh. Holst also had
Speaker 1: worked with Madame Curie in some of her experiments and
Speaker 1: radio activity, so very important person and Holst was a
Speaker 1: big thinker, and he was determined to give his researchers
Speaker 1: a huge amount of freedom to explore fundamental scientific questions,
Speaker 1: even if there were no immediately applicable outcomes to that
Speaker 1: that that area of inquiry. So in other words, he said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the questions you are asking immediately
Speaker 1: result in some sort of product that Phillips can sell.
Speaker 1: It's important for us to answer the questions, So go
Speaker 1: out there and do that. And the result was that
Speaker 1: then Lab became an important center of research, and Phillips
Speaker 1: and Company actually benefited as a result. It's a good
Speaker 1: example of how fundamental research can result in benefits even
Speaker 1: you didn't see the possibility when you started out. Some
Speaker 1: of that research helped in the development of infrared and
Speaker 1: X ray technology, which no one really could have been
Speaker 1: predicted at the time. Holst was also uh important because
Speaker 1: he invited individuals in the scientific field to come to
Speaker 1: nat Lab and to give lectures. For example, a physicist
Speaker 1: of certain renown named Albert Einstein gave a talk at
Speaker 1: nat Lab in nineteen twenty three, So it really was
Speaker 1: a center of learning and research and UH and kind
Speaker 1: of a point of pride in the Netherlands as well.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's go back to nineteen fifteen UH
Speaker 1: and the history of the company. So now we're getting
Speaker 1: into the time of World War one, UM, which of
Speaker 1: course back then was just the Great War. So the
Speaker 1: Netherlands maintained a neutral status during World War One, and
Speaker 1: as a result, operations at Phillips remained largely disturbed. In addition,
Speaker 1: the war was creating coal shortages, and that meant that
Speaker 1: it was harder for people for companies to produce coal gas,
Speaker 1: which meant it was harder to fuel gas lamps, and
Speaker 1: it forced a lot more people to convert to using electricity. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, World War One actually generated business for
Speaker 1: the Phillips Company. So to support the production of new lamps,
Speaker 1: Phillips invested in a couple of different properties to to
Speaker 1: really ramp up production. One of them was an argone
Speaker 1: production facility. They had a argon lamp that was efficient
Speaker 1: and inexpensive, so it was very popular. They also purchased
Speaker 1: a glass manufacturing plant in order to ramp up production
Speaker 1: on their lamps. We'll be right back with more about
Speaker 1: the history of the Phillips company. After this break, in
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, Phillips introduced a medical X ray tube, which
Speaker 1: officially diversified the company from just the incandescent lamp business.
Speaker 1: Then lab was busy researching technologies and filing patents for
Speaker 1: everything from gas diffusion to radio wave reception, and the
Speaker 1: company also began to expand to other countries. They opened
Speaker 1: up sales forces in the United States and in France,
Speaker 1: and a little bit later in Australia, Brazil and China,
Speaker 1: so they were not taking things slowly in the early
Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century. Now, the X ray business
Speaker 1: was still really new in nineteen nineteen. Phillips started in
Speaker 1: the business by repairing X ray tubes during World War
Speaker 1: One and then moved to manufacturing tubes on a small
Speaker 1: scale in the Phillips research laboratory. But early X ray
Speaker 1: tubes had some pretty distinct disadvantages. One was that they
Speaker 1: emitted radiation in all directions, not just jumber one you
Speaker 1: happen to be interested in, which is not just inefficient,
Speaker 1: it's also dangerous. Because X ray radiation is ionizing radiation.
Speaker 1: It can potentially cause cancer if you're exposed to it,
Speaker 1: So having it emit in all directions was not safe.
Speaker 1: They also relied on high voltage cables, which were exposed
Speaker 1: and thus potentially dangerous. You can electrocute yourself. Even if
Speaker 1: you were safe from the radiation, you could just die
Speaker 1: from the electricity. But a man known as A Bowers
Speaker 1: of the Phillips Research Laborator Laboratory came up with a solution.
Speaker 1: Bowers designed a cylindrical X ray tube. The earlier X
Speaker 1: ray tubes were actually spherical, so kind of like a
Speaker 1: lightbulb is. But the ones that Bowers made were cylindrical
Speaker 1: and had a grounded metal canister with a glass window
Speaker 1: on one side of the canister. So imagine that you've
Speaker 1: got a cylindrical UH glass tube. You slide that into
Speaker 1: a metal canister. The metal canstor has one side cutout,
Speaker 1: so it's like a window, and then you coat the
Speaker 1: metal canister with lead and that way, when you turn
Speaker 1: on the X ray tube, X rays can only come
Speaker 1: out the window side. They can't go through the lead
Speaker 1: lined case. So you thus made it more efficient and
Speaker 1: safer because you could you could direct the path of
Speaker 1: the X rays. UH. It took a few tweaks to
Speaker 1: get the design just right. But it was a success,
Speaker 1: and Phillips began to market it. They called it metall
Speaker 1: Licks or Metallics M E T A l I X. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a quick break from talking about X
Speaker 1: rays for a second. I'm gonna come back to that
Speaker 1: in a minute, but I want to mention a few
Speaker 1: things that also happened around this same time frame. First,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty, a company called Yeah It's happening again,
Speaker 1: all right, A company called n V Gameen shopill Lich
Speaker 1: binzit vonder Lean Phillips, Gloriamp and fabriacn formed and assumed
Speaker 1: ownership of Phillips. Boy, I sound like I've had a stroke,
Speaker 1: but the short ename for it was n Z bin Zi.
Speaker 1: Two years later, Gerard Phillips retires as CEO, so two
Speaker 1: he steps down and Anton Phillips, his younger brother, assumes
Speaker 1: the position of chairman at age Now a nineteen seven
Speaker 1: Phillips bought a company called C. H. F. Mueller of Hamburg.
Speaker 1: So this is a German company, which is why I
Speaker 1: know how to pronounce it. C h. F. Mueller was
Speaker 1: founded by Carl Heinrich Florence Mueller in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and originally was a glass company. Mule Or himself was
Speaker 1: known for being a very artistic h glassblower, and the
Speaker 1: early products from Mueller were these decorative pieces like goblets
Speaker 1: and wine glasses. But over time Mueller began to refine
Speaker 1: his process to build glass for gas diffusion and incandescent bulbs.
Speaker 1: And Mueller also had a reputation and a history that
Speaker 1: was tightly tied to X rays. So to explain that,
Speaker 1: we actually have to look back at the discovery of
Speaker 1: X rays. So let's let's look at so in while
Speaker 1: Gerard was being rescued by his brother Anton, there was
Speaker 1: a physicist named Wilhelm Conrad laurunjin Um. He was experimenting
Speaker 1: with cathode rays and produced X rays. He was not
Speaker 1: the only scientist who had been experimenting with this. Nicola
Speaker 1: Tesla is another notable old person who who noticed the
Speaker 1: the existence of X rays, although he didn't fully appreciate
Speaker 1: the the applications of it. But on November ront Gen
Speaker 1: discovered a screen coated with bury um platino cyanide with
Speaker 1: fluoresce when a nearby gas discharged tube activated, even when
Speaker 1: there was a black cardboard barrier separating the two and
Speaker 1: he was wondering, what, how is that happening, What's why
Speaker 1: is it fluorescing, What's causing that? So he began to
Speaker 1: explore this curious phenomenon and as a result, he identified
Speaker 1: X rays. He noted in one experiment that if you
Speaker 1: put your hand between the discharging tube and a screen,
Speaker 1: you could see an image of your hand on the
Speaker 1: screen with your bones a darker image than your flesh.
Speaker 1: That wasn't exactly a high resolution X ray at that time,
Speaker 1: but it showed the potential for it, and not long
Speaker 1: after he published his findings, researchers at the National Physics
Speaker 1: Laboratory reproduced the effect using a cathode ray tube from C. H. F. Mueller.
Speaker 1: The results were interesting but pretty fuzzy, and so the
Speaker 1: researchers got in direct contact with Mueller explained what it
Speaker 1: was they were trying to do, and so Mueller and
Speaker 1: the researchers together began to try and develop a better
Speaker 1: cathode ray, specifically for X ray production. So they refined
Speaker 1: their approach. Now, by the time Phillips acquired the company
Speaker 1: of C. H. F. Mueller, they had that company had
Speaker 1: already become a leading provider of X ray technology, So
Speaker 1: now Phillips had become the name and x ray tech.
Speaker 1: Also in nineteen seven, Phillips was starting to get into
Speaker 1: the radio business. Now, I've done several episodes about the
Speaker 1: history of radio, including a discussion about who invented radio
Speaker 1: in the first place. In fact, that was an episode
Speaker 1: Chris Palette and I recorded, and famously, after the first attempt,
Speaker 1: we both agreed that the episode we had just recorded
Speaker 1: was awful, and we immediately trashed it and went back
Speaker 1: and recorded it a second time. So if you go
Speaker 1: back into the archives of Tech stuff and you listen
Speaker 1: to the episode who Invented the Radio, it's actually our
Speaker 1: second try at that topic. The first one is lost
Speaker 1: forever because I think we deleted it. I don't think
Speaker 1: it even exists in our archives. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it's a tough question to answer. It's a lot more
Speaker 1: complicated than just saying Nicola Tesla invented radio or Marconi
Speaker 1: invented radio. But no matter how complex the origins of
Speaker 1: the radio, it was incredibly popular. It's pretty easy to
Speaker 1: understand why people flocked to the radio because it was
Speaker 1: a new form of receiving communication from the world at large.
Speaker 1: You could get news immediately from Miles and Miles aw
Speaker 1: a and it was a revolution in communication, and so
Speaker 1: Phillips became a leading manufacturer of radios in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: In ninety two, just five years after getting into the industry,
Speaker 1: Phillips had already sold its one million radio set and
Speaker 1: also became the leading manufacturer of radios and radio tubes,
Speaker 1: not just in Europe but in the whole world. However,
Speaker 1: the following decade, the nineteen thirties, that just they weren't
Speaker 1: all that prosperous. Uh. There was a depression in europe
Speaker 1: An economic depression, and Phillips was affected just like other
Speaker 1: companies were, and so the company had to restructure and
Speaker 1: had to lay off a lot of employees and scaled
Speaker 1: down and focus. But one thing they did not do
Speaker 1: is skimp on research and development. The company actually committed
Speaker 1: even more resources towards R and D in the hopes
Speaker 1: of becoming more nimble to a changing market. The idea
Speaker 1: being that things were going to evolve very quickly and
Speaker 1: only through scientific inquiry would the company be able to
Speaker 1: stay ahead of the game. And around that same time,
Speaker 1: engineers in then lab had been experimenting with a new
Speaker 1: technology called television that was largely an internal project within
Speaker 1: the company until about ninety eight, which is when Phillips
Speaker 1: presented a showcase of their black and white television set
Speaker 1: at the annual Fair in Utrecht. Phillips would remain a
Speaker 1: television manufacturer until two thousand eleven, when the company decided
Speaker 1: that the market was too competitive, and at that point
Speaker 1: Phillips shut down its TV manufacturing centers and entered a
Speaker 1: partnership with another company called TPV Technology out of Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: That agreement formed a new organization that would develop and
Speaker 1: market television's using the Phillips brand, but it was only
Speaker 1: thirty owned by Phillips. Tv P p V would own
Speaker 1: the remaining sevent of that organization, So the Phillips television
Speaker 1: sets you see today are Phillips in name only. Really,
Speaker 1: it's a brand that exists, but it's not manufactured in
Speaker 1: a Phillips factory. In nine Phillips stuck its toe in
Speaker 1: another area of consumer electronics, the electric shaver. Their product
Speaker 1: was called the Philip Shave, which is hilarious to me.
Speaker 1: The original model had a chord, so you had to
Speaker 1: plug it into the wall in order to operate it. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a cylindrical device with a circular little metal
Speaker 1: surface that's what contained the rotating blades that you would
Speaker 1: use to cut the hairs on your face. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like an electric cucumber. In the United States,
Speaker 1: the brand name for Philip's shaving devices was nore Elco.
Speaker 1: So if you've heard of NoREL COO, that's a Philip's brand,
Speaker 1: and the rest of the world it was just called
Speaker 1: the Philips Shave until about two thousand six. That's when
Speaker 1: Phillips began to phase out the Philips shave brand name
Speaker 1: and start to market them just under Phillips. Meanwhile, here
Speaker 1: in the US, they included Phillips with Narrelko uh, probably
Speaker 1: in anticipation of dropping the nar Elco name entirely, and
Speaker 1: so you would just get Phillips brand, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: shavers all across the world and not have this this
Speaker 1: different brand name in different countries. Nonsense going on, and
Speaker 1: as time went on, they would add other products to
Speaker 1: this line, things like beard trimmers and hair trimmers, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, and so they created sort of a
Speaker 1: consumer products division within Phillips beyond just lightbulbs and radio
Speaker 1: and television sets. No. Nine was also the year that
Speaker 1: Anton Phillips resigned as president, though he would remain an
Speaker 1: advisor to the company for several more years. His son
Speaker 1: in law, Franz Aughton became president and his actual son,
Speaker 1: Fritz Phillips became a director of the company, so UH
Speaker 1: Anton's son Fritz would report to Anton's son in law Franz.
Speaker 1: Fritz and Franz was a very tumultuous year for the company.
Speaker 1: The Netherlands didn't have the luxury of remaining neutral in
Speaker 1: World War Two the way they did in World War One,
Speaker 1: and in fact, it became clear that Germany was preparing
Speaker 1: to invade the Netherlands. So an anticipation of that upcoming invasion,
Speaker 1: Franz Autin and Anton Phillips formed the North American Phillips
Speaker 1: Corporation or in a PC in the United States, and
Speaker 1: then they began to relocate operations to America in order
Speaker 1: to avoid the conflict. UH. On paper, the business was
Speaker 1: still listed as being a Netherlands company a Netherlands based
Speaker 1: company lee for tax purposes, but effectively management was shifting
Speaker 1: to the United States, and when Germany invaded the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: it took about five days of fighting before the Dutch
Speaker 1: government surrendered. They were pretty much forced to. They just
Speaker 1: were not equipped to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: And so at that point Phillips management, the ones who
Speaker 1: had not already moved to the United States fled first
Speaker 1: to England, and then from England they went to the
Speaker 1: US to join the n a PC. Now this is
Speaker 1: where we're going to bring Part one to an end,
Speaker 1: and in part two we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: happened to Anton Phillips's son, Fritz Phillips during World War Two.
Speaker 1: Because Fritz, unlike his father and his uh you know,
Speaker 1: his brother in law, he stayed in the Netherlands. He
Speaker 1: did not move to the United States. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed that classic episode. Next week we will clued this
Speaker 1: classic series two part series of I guess you can't
Speaker 1: call it this series if it's just two right, this
Speaker 1: two part next week and if you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: things I should cover in future, you know, more current
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