more at
“Communications and communicators facilitate World War II.”
Public domain film from the Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986 when General Electric took over the company in 1985 and split it up the following year.
The RCA trademark is used by Sony Music Entertainment and Technicolor, which licenses the name to other companies such as Audiovox and TCL Corporation for products descended from that common ancestor…
Origins
Organization by General Electric
After World War I began in August 1914, radio traffic across the Atlantic Ocean increased dramatically after the western Allies cut the German transatlantic telegraph cables. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies in Europe (the Central Powers) maintained contact with neutral countries in the Americas via long-distance radio communications, as well as telegraph cables owned by neutral countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark.
In 1917 the U.S. Government took charge of the patents owned by the major companies involved in radio manufacture in the US to devote radio technology to the war effort. All production of radio equipment was allocated to the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and the U.S. Coast Guard. The War Department and the Navy Department sought to maintain a Federal monopoly of all uses of radio technology. The wartime takeover of all radio systems ended late in 1918, when the US Congress failed to pass a bill which would have extended this monopoly. The war ended in November of that year.
The ending of the Federal Government’s monopoly in radio communications did not prevent the War and Navy Departments from creating a national radio system for the US.[5] On 8 April 1919, naval Admiral W. H. G. Bullard and Captain Stanford C. Hooper met with executives of the General Electric Corporation (GE) and asked them to discontinue selling the company’s Alexanderson alternators (used in the high-power AM radio transmitters of that era) to the British-owned Marconi Company, and to its subsidiary, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America.
The proposal presented by the government was that if GE created an American-owned radio company, then the Army and Navy would effect a monopoly of long-distance radio communications via this company. This marked the beginning of a series of negotiations through which GE would buy the American Marconi company and then incorporate what would be called the Radio Corporation of America…
The incorporation of the assets of Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America (including David Sarnoff,) the Pan-American Telegraph Company, and those already controlled by the United States Navy led to a new publicly held company formed by General Electric (which owned a controlling interest) on October 17, 1919. The following cooperation among RCA, General Electric, the United Fruit Company, the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, and American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) brought about innovations in high-power radio technology, and also the founding of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in the US…
By 1926 the market for commercial radio had expanded, and RCA purchased the WEAF and WCAP radio stations and networks from AT&T, merged them with its WJZ (the predecessor of WABC) New York to WRC (presently WTEM) Washington chain, and formed the National Broadcasting Company (NBC)…
Separation from General Electric
In 1930, the U.S. Department of Justice brought antitrust charges against RCA, General Electric and Westinghouse. As a result, GE and Westinghouse gave up their ownership interests in RCA. RCA was allowed to keep its radio factories, and GE and Westinghouse were allowed to compete in that business after 30 months…
In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the cornerstone was laid for a research and development facility, RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, led for many years by Elmer Engstrom. This lab developed many innovations, such as color television, the electron microscope…
During World War II and beyond, RCA set up several new divisions, for defense, space exploration and other activities. The RCA Service Corporation provided large numbers of staff for the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line. RCA units won five Army–Navy ‘E’ Awards for Excellence in production. Also during the war, ties between RCA and JVC were severed…
