Sorry, I nearly forgot about this and the deadline for replies is close. Easter got in the way, so did other matters. ;-)

Come to think of it, I reckon you're right, I've never seen a book on the history of RCA either, and there ought to be a detailed one given the worldwide importance of the company.

It's strange that I've not given much thought about RCA's history from a broader perspective because in recent years I'd thought that some of the work in the prototype lab where I worked was pioneering enough to be documented for posterity (as far as I'm aware it's never been documented). Given RCA's enormous size and its huge product range what we did was small scale (RCA was the largest electronics company in the world at the time), but the broadcast and telecommunications products we developed were leading edge and were not only copied by other RCA divisions but also later by competitors.

Let me explain. Although I've been there I didn't work in Camden, NJ but rather for RCA Australia and I'll use that fact to segue into the little I know about RCA's demise. Unfortunately, RCA closed down its Australian operation in the 1970s as part of its reorganization/rationalization under Sarnoff's son Robert. I'm not privy to inside information as to why RCA closed down its operation here but I've heard it was a combination of reasons including that at the time the US Government was seeking to reign in foreign investment abroad in the wake of the Vietnam War and it put pressure on US companies, this neatly dovetailed into Sarnoff Jr's rationalization plans for the company.

The argument that reigning in of foreign investment never made sense to me so I assume the closure of the local operation was primarily to satisfy Sarnoff Jr's reorganization plans for RCA in the light of falling profits. By the time RCA Australia closed, I'd already left so I wasn't around during its closure. Also, for a time I'd lost contact with most of those with whom I'd worked although over the years I caught up with a few of the key players including the chief engineer (my immediate boss) at broadcasting engineering exhibitions such as SMPTE. Nevertheless, I never thought to ask them about the division's demise which I now much regret (most are now dead including my old boss whose funeral I attended several years ago).

Thus, for me, the local closure is still a matter of conjecture (it's also another reason why a well researched history of RCA is needed), but I suppose it's not surprising when we examine RCA from when Robert Sarnoff became president in 1965. It's public knowledge that by the late '60s under his leadership RCA's fortunes slowly started to change for the worse and unsurprisingly they accelerated after Sarnoff Sr was ousted as chairman in 1970. One would assume that when Sarnoff Sr died in '71 any constraints imposed on Jr by his father would have lifted and he'd been freer to pursue his reorganization. Nevertheless, it didn't work out and the company never fully returned to the good times of the '50s and '60s. Robert Sarnoff wasn't a patch on his father, he was disliked and ousted around '75 in a boardroom coup. Subsequent presidents were mediocre which led to the company's further decline.

Whilst no doubt RCA suffered from bad management under the leadership of Robert Sarnoff I believe there were also other mitigating factors that lead to its decline. From my outside perspective here in Australia I was able watch the growth of the Japanese electronics industry with perhaps a little more objectivity and I believe that not only was RCA caught out by its spectacular growth throughout the 1960s through to the mid '80s but so too were many other American companies such as Ampex. The rise of Sony, Ikegami and many other Japanese manufacturers had huge negative impact on both the manufacture of domestic televisions sets and professional television equipment, cameras etc. both here and in the US, and elsewhere, Philips for instance (I have a cousin who once worked for Philips in Eindhoven and he recounted the considerable financial difficulties Philips had with Asian competition including the piracy of some of its television designs).

That's the short version, there's more. For instance, Western manufacturers suffered from complacency and didn't easily adapt to Asian competition. There was arrogance too, I recall an incident around 1982 when a group of us was touring Silicon Valley companies, at one point we were sitting at boardroom table of computer manufacturer Sirius Systems and quizzing its CEO with questions about the company. When asked if he was concerned about competition from Japanese computer manufacturers such as NEC he absolutely pooh-poohed the very notion that there was any threat from Asian manufacturers, his reaction was such that he seemed almost insulted by the very question. I was immediately shocked at his naivety, and about two years later Sirius went belly-up. Perhaps a bad example, but you'll get the gist.

It's been a while but if I recall correctly it was 1968 when I met David Sarnoff, he came to Australia to lay the 'foundation stone' for a new record plant that was to being built in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde which is about a dozen or so miles to the west of the RCA Australia factory at Artarmon. Most of us traveled over to the site for the afternoon, we were fed lunch and Sarnoff gave us pep-talk about RCA after which he met us individually to say a few words and to shake our hands (I can clearly remember my short conversation with him). Incidentally, RCA's new record factory was just down the road from Australia's once top electronics company AWA (Amalgamated Wireless (Australasia) Ltd) [1], which made world-class telecommunications equipment, military electronics, broadcast equipment and measuring instrumentation. Unfortunately, AWA also suffered an ignominious end but no so much from competition but rather by its own hand.

At the time I met David Sarnoff I was young and not overly familiar with his background. My dislike of him grew only slowly—after I read about his ruthless business practices, unfair fights over patents—how he hounded Armstrong (in the book Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong) [2] (a copy of which I still own), and Philo Farnsworth, and his looseness with the truth such as the 'Titanic incident', also his exaggeration of RCA's early involvement in the development of television. Listening to the 'Dynamic Duo'—Zworykin and Sarnoff—praising their involvement in the development of television in the 1956 documentary The Story Of Television [3] is rather sickening, as one would never learn of the many other important people involved in the development of television and of their pioneering inventions. Zworykin and Sarnoff are on a self-aggrandisement kick and history, as always, has caught them out.

Sure, Zworykin played an early role but likely not all of his ideas about the iconoscope were original but likely those of Rosing, his teacher. Watching both the 1956 doco and the earlier 1939 Word's Fair one [4], one would never learn of the importance of people like Willoughby Smith (of photoelectric fame), Tihanyi, Rosing, Nipkow, Farnsworth, J. J. Thompson (of CRT fame), and Isaac Shoenberg and his famous Marconi-EMI team including Alan Blumlein—those who developed most of the essential electronic circuits for modern television systems (they essentially developed the electronic 405-line television system from scratch, all RCA had to do was to adopt it to the 525-line US system). Moreover, the BBC went live with television in 1936 which was three years before RCA even demonstrated its television. Even the Nazis broadcast the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games on television!

And that's just the short list: many contributed, even now-obscure people like William Eccles and Wilfred Jordan who invented the flip-flop (multivibrator) circuit around 1918 are an essential part of the development of television, their Eccles-Jordan circuit as it's known today was an essential part of mid-to-late 20th Century television electronics, it was used in the critical scanning and sync lock circuits essential for modern TV systems, and in many other electronic circuits (oscilloscope triggers for instance).

What's so annoying about Sarnoff is both his arrogance and his attempt to rewrite history. Sure, RCA did develop great technologies such as the image orthicon (a truly remarkable device but nevertheless an evolution of earlier tech) and the shadow mask color tube, and much, much more, but much of it was after much of the early pioneering work had already been done. Essentially, at no time did Sarnoff give credit to any of these earlier television pioneers but also he effectively went out of his way to write them out of history.

Whilst I am very glad to have worked for RCA and I am forever thankful for the valuable experience I gained whilst working there, I nevertheless consider Sarnoff dishonest and his behavior impertinent, insulting and offensive.

This post is close to its text limit, if I've time and I can beat the timeout then I'll post some info about the products that we produced at RCA Australia and why they are an important, albeit small, part of RCA's history.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWA_Technology_Services

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Man-High-Fidelity-Howard-Armstrong/dp...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ombUhZHddho

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y32ZxGfiXs