RCA was a major proponent of the eight-track tape cartridge , which it launched in The eight-track cartridge initially had a huge and profitable impact on the consumer marketplace.
Sales of the 8-track tape format peaked early as consumers increasingly favored the compact cassette tape format developed by Philips. David Sarnoff, whose ambition and business acumen had helped RCA become one of the world's largest companies, turned the company over to his son Robert in David died the next year, aged This marked a milestone in RCA's move away from technology and into a diversified conglomerate.
The introduction by IBM of the series required RCA to make a substantial new investment in its computer division, and the Board decided against making that investment.
During the late s and s, RCA Corporation , as it was now formally known, ventured into other markets. Under Robert Sarnoff's leadership, RCA diversified far beyond electronics and communications, in a broader American corporate trend toward "conglomerates. Robert Sarnoff was ousted in a boardroom coup by Anthony Conrad, who resigned a year later after he admitted failing to file income tax returns for six years. RCA maintained its high standards of engineering excellence in broadcast engineering and satellite communications equipment, but ventures such as the NBC radio and television networks declined.
In about , RCA corporate strategy reported on moving manufacture of its television sets to Mexico. Forays into new consumer electronics products lost money. The SelectaVision videodisc system, not to be confused with the same trademark that RCA applied to its VCRs, never developed the manufacturing volumes to substantially bring down its price, could not compete against cheaper, recordable videotape technology, and was abandoned in for a write-off of several hundred million dollars.
In the years that followed, the broadcast product lines developed in Camden were terminated or sold off, and most of the buildings demolished, except for a few of the original RCA Victor buildings that had been declared national historical buildings. For several years, RCA spinoff L-3 Communications Systems East was headquartered in the building, but has since moved to an adjacent building built by the city for them.
The building now houses shops and luxury loft apartments. GE then sold the rights to make RCA- and GE-branded televisions and other consumer electronics products in to the French Thomson Consumer Electronics, in exchange for some of Thomson's medical businesses. Sarnoff Labs was put on a five-year plan whereby GE would fund all the labs' activities for the first year, then reduce its support to near zero after the fifth year. This required Sarnoff Labs to change its business model to become an industrial contract research facility.
In , a controlling interest in the National Broadcasting Company , by this time part of the multimedia venture NBC Universal , was sold to Comcast , and in , Comcast acquired the remaining interest in the company from General Electric. A former RCA facility in Taiwan's northern county of Taoyuan now Taoyuan City polluted groundwater with toxic chemicals and led to a high incidence of cancer among former employees. These companies set up a new organization in to run the stations, and called it the Radio Corporation of America RCA.
For a time, RCA operated radio stations still almost entirely used for transmitting Morse Code and sold radio equipment manufactured by its parent companies.
However, many amateur operators were now on the air, and the resulting popularity of radio listening encouraged the parent companies to move in this direction. Westinghouse obtained a license from the U. S government to launch a commercial broadcasting station in and launched KDKA, the first commercial radio station.
The huge research effort necessary for television encouraged the company to create a permanent research facility. After the war RCA returned its attention to television, designing inexpensive receivers and sponsoring the creation of a new NBC television network to provide programming.
Its research laboratories produced innovative technologies in these years and helped advance computers, integrated circuits, lasers, and other devices.
It introduced innovative products like the rpm record and the solid-state television camera. However, the company was finding it increasingly difficult to sell its traditional line of products. By the s Asian firms had captured almost all of the consumer electronics market TVs, radios, etc.
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Send comparison to a friend. Friend's email address. With the introduction of the NTSC standard, the Federal Communications Commission authorized the start of commercial television transmission on July 1, In the years that followed, RCA was responsible for the development of a myriad of innovations and key technology such as color television, the electron microscope, CMOS based technology, heterojunction physics, optoelectronic emitting devices, Liquid Crystal Displays LCDs , video cassette recorders, direct broadcast television, direct broadcast satellite systems and high-definition television would be invented and developed during ensuing years.
RCA was a major proponent of the eight-track tape cartridge, which it launched in The eight-track cartridge initially had a huge and profitable impact on the consumer marketplace. Thomson sold the rights to the brand to Audiovox Corporation, first for consumer accessory products and then two years later for consumer audio and video products excluding televisions.
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