Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2003/09/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]RCA was another of those old time companies who made a lot of the wrong decisions and ended up fading away. One of those mistakes was investing in the wrong technology, videodiscs, just when the VCR was taking off. They were already in trouble by that time I think, but they bet the company on that one, and lost. As a parallel, they were in a very good position when another technological paradigm shift took place. This was the move from film as a TV news recording medium to electronic recording, albeit analog, video. In 1976 they had the best electronic news gathering camera on the market, by 1980, they were history. They were unable to compete with the Japanese competition. Mike D Jim Shulman wrote: > ... > In the early 1920s the Victor Talking Machine Company, which was the > most successful phonograph manufacturer in the country, could easily > have purchased any number of radio manufacturers. They ran some tests > in house on experimental sets, but concluded that radio was a fad. By > 1924 the company nearly went bankrupt, a result of their stubbornness. > The public wanted radios, not phonographs, for home entertainment. > Radio provided free music every night, while new songs for the > phonograph required the purchase of new records. The introduction of an > improved new technology--electrical recording--saved the company for a > while, but the future was clear: RCA purchased Victor in 1929 mainly for > its factories--RCA wanted to produce radio sets in the Victor plants. > The record business was merely an afterthought. > - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html