If you read the book "The Rise and Fall of the American Electronics Industry" (1993) you'll pretty much think of Sarnoff as the devil, and see how he taught the Japanese to protect their domestic market from competition, use this stream of profits to subsidize dumping in the American market, and how to buy influence in American politics to keep the whole racket running. Sarnoff was awarded the highest honor that could be given to a non-native by the Japanese government. His first overtures to the Imperial Japanese government (instructing them on patent monopolies) began in the 1920s, but Sarnoff really got into high gear after Zenith broke-up their US patent extortion racket in the 50s by challenging them in court. Japanese patent royalties were worth more than their US sales revenues, and were a primary driver for the GE takeover.

True this book was written by Zenith's general legal council (who's name escapes me) but it is quite thoroughly researched and footnoted. Before you label it "Japan bashing", you should realize that it's not applied to Sony corp, which saw early success based on the quality of their products, rather than low-cost dumping.

For these reasons, I've never understood the reverence for Sarnoff or RCA's fairly disposable "printed circuit and tube" products. As far as I'm concerned, the fact that his monument is abandoned and in ruins is somewhat poetic justice.

Sarnoff was, to say the least, a "Controversial" character. One of his reputed favorite personal quotes was-"I don't GET Ulcers-I GIVE them"...He more or less personally drove Howard Armstrong to suicide, and was saved from being brought up on criminal charges only thru the influence of powerful friends in government. Yet his empire lived but a few short years longer than he did.

It bugs me too about the printed circuits with tubes. That is why the only RCA sets I have are the fully hand wired type. My color set is a Zenith for this reason. Unless someone goes to the trouble to replicate replacement circuit boards for the popular RCA CTC chassis, those sets will be harder to keep running down the road. I agree with the Zenith ads that say no printed wiring means no production shortcuts. GE used a lot of PC boards with tubes as well and some of them can get pretty crusty after thousands of hours.

Sarnoff, by the way, was not someone to be admired at least as far as his character goes. He did, however, help bring radio, TV and color TV to the mainstream public.

That matches up from what I heard when I worked at RCA Smirnoff Labs. That the royalties from the patents we invented there could easily pay for running the place. Well, of course, no business would keep the Labs if they didn't see money coming from it...

I've often wondered if Armstrong mentioned to Sarnoff, when he was demonstrating his FM radio system, that FM would make an excellent sound carrier for TV. "Pictures and hifi sound, the public will go nuts buying all you can manufacture." :scratch2:

Thing of it was, in the early days, Sarnoff & Armstrong were best of friends..Got along famously..Armstrong LOVED to climb towers, the higher the better, & as he was working for Sarnoff, Sarnoff had to berate him CONSTANTLY not to do that..I've often seen that the great inventors/Industrialists, while they were BRILLIANT, often as not had a "Peculiar" streak about them... Edison abhorred baths, only took one 2-3 times a year. Ford was semi-illiterate, Sarnoff was a megalomaniac, George Eastman killed himself at a rather early age, as he felt his work was done, why wait ?

What was salvageable form the Sarnoff museum (a lot of which was stored in the basement which had major flooding issues) was donated to the Hagley museum, including such priceless things as Zworykin's "Television notebook #1". Other bots when to the New Jersey Historical society and also the Infoage museum.

http://www.hagley.lib.de.us

http://www.jerseyhistory.org

http://www.infoage.org

I remember that basement area. When I worked there, there would be abandoned racks and odds and ends down there, some of which I grabbed for my work. Figured, why wait for an order to come in, here's a rack I can use right now. Just stuff ten to twenty years old, nothing interesting from a history angle. There also was a big power transformer labeled "contains PCBs" down there behind a chain link fence style door.

As for GE taking over RCA, that videodisc debacle (RCA dropped about $660 million on it, big money back then) probably prompted the investors to get some better managers on RCA... Turned out we ended up with evil managers from GE.

Yes, it seems as though hardly any collector wants to save some of the later RCA chassis sets... I try to save them all however. Even if they were pieces of crap or there was greed involved, etc. Remember there was a time when round crt color sets were undesirable/considered old junk.
One day the 70s and 80s color sets will be just a memory.
I have a CTC-89 somewhere which has a nice pic and build quality, for instance. It's from '77

I kinda wish I still had my old CTC101, the 1st I think RCA with a comb filter.
http://www.wa2ise.com/radios/rcactc101.jpg Made a nice sharp picture, with extended luma bandwidth from the comb filter.
Also the infamous integrated flyback, that would short out and take the HOT with it. Which is what it died from. Also the CTC111 was pretty good.

Nice! I was once given a CTC-117 which had memory for the channels and on screen display. It was from 1983, old enough that the multisection filter can was labeled as a 'condenser' on the prints. Wish I would have saved that one.

I always got a big kick out of the time they used Armstrong's FM antenna at the Palisades in Alpine, New Jersey as an emergency broadcast antenna for WNBC-TV and many others. I'd love to think what Sarnoff would have though that his TV station had to use Armstrong's antenna.

I STILL think RCA, Zenith, Motorola, GE, et al, COULD have beat back the Japs if they'd really tried..When Sony came out w/the 5-303 series sets in '62, why didn't Sarnoff order his engineers to come out with a 5" solid-state COLOR set, & send 'em back to Japan w/their tails between their legs ?!? You can't tell me RCA didn't have the technical wherewithal to do that...Imagine a 5" solid state Roundie... The mind BOGGLES..

How right you are, Sandy!
Ever see the youtube footage of vintage RCA factories? The vacuum tube production, 78rpm records, etc. The amount of research & quality control that went into products back then really was intense. A bygone era...
The fact that any of these old sets can be found still working is really a testament.

RCA had a great business model of creating what the next big thing would be, inventing it, holding the patents and reaping the rewards. Color TV is a great example of a longterm investment that paid off big for RCA in the end. Trouble was, RCA quit guessing right on what the next thing would be. They kicked VCR's to the curb. If they had invented VHS they would have been as dominate in the 80s and 90s as they had been in the 60s and 70s. CED was a massive left turn into the ditch, not only for what it cost the company in R&D money but for what it cost in lost revenue for not coming through with what America wanted. They could have also dominated with flatscreens, small sat dishes, home computers. The RCA of old didn't have to sell more than the competition, they just had to have the competition selling RCA designed products. Once they gave up that lead to the Japanese, they were just another manufacturer, subject to competing in a crowded global market. It was only a matter of time before building a color TV in Indiana would be a losing game.