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June 3, 2002
Ed, before I review the book, The Boy
Genius and The Mogul, and add some
anecdotal information, I want to tell you how I became a part of the RCA story.
Neither side of our families had any college graduates
before Polly and I were married. The
GI Bill from World War II was available to me.
We were working for a radio station in El Paso as engineer and disk
jockeys. The station was nice
enough to arrange our working hours so that we could attend classes at
University of Texas at El Paso (then known as Texas College of Mines and
Metallurgy, later Texas Western College). The
day I took my last senior final exam was also the day I had the physical exam
for return to military service in the Korean War.
The Army did need radio officers. My
service this time was at the Pentagon, the Army Signal Corps, later known as the
Army Electronics command under General George Back.
My organization was The Plant Engineering Agency.
That group provided design and installation of the Army’s
strategic communications. I worked
on some interesting projects. For
example, President Truman almost refused to fly.
We built him a presidential railroad car with a complete secure
communications capability. The most
interesting challenge was to transmit and receive high frequency stuff.
That’s not normally a very big challenge until you think about the
clearance a railroad car has in tunnels. And
the car is metal! We did have some
trouble getting the transmitter to load the antenna.
That car stripped of all things mentioned above is now at McCormick
Railroad Park in Scottsdale.
Other fun installations included two major point to point
multiple transmitter stations at Sabana Seca in Puerto Rico and south of
Washington, D.C. at a place named Woodbridge, Va. Both of those installations
were later replaced when the Army changed over to satellite communications.
Trips accompanying ATT consultants to the Far East were also interesting.
At Okinawa I saw for the first time a communications listening post
operated by the National Security Agency.
While that tour of duty was worthwhile, it was delaying my
post-college entry into more responsible electronic work.
I had a standing job offer in El Paso to help start up a television
station. One of the guys who was
also recalled to active duty was Ed Stern.
He and his family owned a radio/ TV station in New Orleans.
He suggested that I should look in to RCA.
They had built his facilities. I
did interview in New York City, Harrison and Camden, New Jersey.
RCA looked right for me, and so after a short period, I was a Washington,
D.C. representative for the Defense Electronics Products Division.
In the book you will see the name of Ted Smith.
He was very useful to Sarnoff as a lawyer and so was promoted to the
executive ranks. Ted Smith headed
DEP, and was a very good guy.
Promotions led to better positions in Camden, NJ in the old
Victor Phonograph factory. At that
time some older folks used to talk about how they would celebrate when Caruso
came to town to make records.
By about the mid-‘50s RCA had decided this semiconductor
stuff wouldn’t go away and started a research effort at the RCA tube plant in
Harrison, NJ under Dr. Alan Glover. Among
the efforts were those to make germanium point contact, alloy and mesa
transistors. When the efforts
seemed to be ready for commercial production, a pilot line was started in
Somerville, N. J. The original
products and yields left much to be desired.
Little was known about cleanliness requirements, and the fragility of the
germanium surface. Germanium,
unlike silicon, does not develop a stable, robust oxide.
My move to Somerville was for the purpose of attracting
government funding for development of new products and processes.
I bumped up against a ceiling with my then boss.
Having an offer of a VP job with a Santa Monica ceramic hybrid
manufacturer, my tour with RCA was over in 1952.
REVIEW
THE BOY GENIUS AND THE MOGUL
By Daniel
Stashower
My interest in electronics has existed from the time I
first built a crystal receiver using, yes, a Mothers Oats box as a coil form.
By selling Liberty Magazines in downtown Dallas, Texas, I was able to buy
a variocoupler to improve reception. Later,
in high school, in about 1934, with lots of help from my high school chemistry
teacher, a short wave receiver which we built became a proud possession.
It had one tube, a 22A. That
was probably the first vacuum tube with a screen grid.
One of the most intriguing receptions I found was a periodic broadcast
from a shortwave service of WGN in Chicago.
They were broadcasting black and white sequential television signals
using the Nipkow disk type of spinning wheel.
They would announce “now this is Felix the Cat” then I could hear a
series of buzzes. The thought of pictures by radio was really intriguing.
That early experience probably set some patterns in my life and did make
the reading of this book exciting to me.
The author has done a very good job interrelating all of
the diverse efforts to bring about electronic transmission and reception of
pictures. Many scientists,
organizations and laboratories were at work on this challenge.
Stashower seems to have uncovered whatever history remains of their
efforts. And to his credit, he
brings in the life stories of those participating in the race.
Just a recitation of the accomplishments and failures would be not so
nearly intriguing.
This book is recommended reading for any who want to know
that inventors are not just icons, but are also humans and their emotions
intertwine with logic.
NOTES
Ed, this section of my thoughts will show where I have any
recollection of material beyond that in the book. Recall my view is from my perspective being an RCA employee.
The index and bibliography are the places to start:
Eddy, Bill, 209, 224, 230. I’m not certain, but I believe
this is the same Bill Eddy who wrote the Navy training manuals for electronics.
By the time I knew about him, he was deaf and used a smoking pipe shaped
hearing aid which he had built for bone conduction.
You knew when a meeting with him was over.
He simply took the pipe out and laid it on the table.
Goldsmith, Alfred, When I knew Dr. Goldsmith, he had become
an elder statesman for RCA. You
will recall from previous information I have sent you that he was very
instrumental in the development of compatible color television. He was the inventor of the shadow mask type of color tube
which is dominant in industry now,
Inglis, Andrew, Behind
the Tube: A History of Broadcasting
Technology and Business. Andy was very influential in the television
broadcasting equipment sales and planning at RCA in Camden.
Lewis, Tom, Empire of
the Air. The first head of
Armed Forces Radio Service was a Colonel Thomas H. A. Lewis.
He was Loretta Young’s husband. Before
the war he had been a radio broadcasting advertising executive.
This may be the same Tom Lewis.
Smith, Ted, 193. In
an above paragraph I’ve mentioned my acquaintance with Ted.
I didn’t know of his legal background.
He did really well at heading the Defense Electronic Products Department
of RCA while I was there.
LAST THOUGHTS
It’s somewhat disappointing that Stashower didn’t
continue his tale to bring us to date by including the development of color
television. It is an equally
intriguing story which in many ways duplicates the skirmishes of the black and
white wars. As you may recall,
Sarnoff in his usual way, told Dr. Goldsmith by telephone, “Al I want you to
invent color television.” As
Goldsmith told it to me he slept on it and in the morning came up with 17 ways
it could be done. With more
reflection, he narrowed the choices to four.
Patent applications were filed on them.
The one chosen to be developed was the three-gun shadow mask version.
RCA hurried the work, but the FCC was being urged to decide
on a system. Sarnoff again called
on the National Television Standards Committee for correlation with the
industry. One of their major
contributions was the development of the color information and the placement of
it during the blanking between fields of the picture.
The FCC decided on a date for decision and when the
hearings were over, the CBS spinning wheel color system had won.
RCA couldn’t yet show a color tube.
They did show a receiver with three separate picture tubes, one for each
color. Not good.
Soon the shadow mask type of tube became a reality in a 15
inch version. The NTSC and RCA
asked the FCC for a review. At the
end of that set of hearings RCA had clearly won.
For their first commercial set they chose the old reliable, well
engineered, 630 TS chassis. We
owned one of the early production ones even when we moved here 37 years ago.
There is of course much more detail to the story.
Maybe that’s another book for someone, perhaps for Stashower.
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