Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

Twenty-Five Years of Radio ("HANDLES on the 25th biith- y day cake of RCA typify more than the passing of the years. Like wireless towers the candles stand as sentinels of the past, their lambent flames remi- niscent of the radiant sparks kindled by the wireless pioneers. As man in his electronic con- (Iiiest of the ether approaches the frontiers of light, he becomes more and more aware that radio and light are akin. Now he knows that he can see by radio as well as hear. A Symbol of Achievement '•The Story of RCA" is a story <if twenty-five years of pioneer- ing and progress. Radio has passed through almost fifty years .since Marconi's first signal yet (hi'i'e is no radio device in its ■original form now in practical ii.se that dates back to 1895. Time jilso has replaced the instruments <>( 1919. The past twenty-five y<'ars have been crowded with great activity in radio; the pace of progress has been swift. Always there are new inven- tions and new opjiortunities. The men of RCA, alert to the chal- lenges and opportunities of sci- ence have brought into use many of the outstanding developments in the field of radio. As a result, RCA is a symbol of achievement in the science of radio and elec- tronics, in the art of broadcast- ing and in the sei-vice of world- wide communications. RCA has carved out its deslinv with the electron tube as a mighty tool. In 1919 the chal- lenges of radio were as bound- less as the ether and twenty-five years have not diminished, but make it clear that the future of radio is always greater than its |iast. The electron tube lights I lie way into the wilderness of .space—into the ultra liigh-fre- (|uency spectrum of the ether in uhich new trails of communica- tion are being blazed. The First World War revolutionized radio; so has the Second. An Unforgettable Story News of the Armistice in 1918 was flashed around the world by the dots and dashes carried on the long waves of wireless. The curtain went down on the first (luarter century of radio. In a brief interlude between 1919 and 1920, the communication props on the world-wide stage were shifted. When the curtain went up in 1920 the radio setting was transformed as if a miracle had happened. The crystal detector was supplemented by the elec- tron tube. So was the spark transmitter and many instru- ments that made the romance of wireless an unforgettable story. Alongside the wireless key there was the microiihone through which man might talk and sing. Short waves had been harnessed to encircle the earth. As a science, an art and an industry, radio was on the threshold of a new era. The sil- ver-coated bulb of the electron lube was a new crystal ball of science in which the men of radio saw the old order of electrical things disappear and the elec- tronic future spread before them. They saw tlie dreams of Marconi, Tesia, Lodge, Crookes and others coming true. Within twenty-five years more than 21,777,000 KCa" radio and phonograph instruments have been put into use throughout the w(.rld: since 1930 RCA Victor has produced 294,000,000 phono- graph disks performed by the world's great artists. There are 1,000 broadcasting stations in the United States; 325 use RCA transmitters. The hemispheres are criss-crossed by invisible waves carrying millions and mil- lions of words to the far corners of the earth; RCA operates more than 50 direct radiotelegraph circuits between the United States and foreign countries. No ship on the Seven Seas need be out of touch with land, or with its home port: approximately 80 percent of the American Mer- chant Marine is equipped with RCA apparatus. More than 60,- 000,000 broadcast receivers put the homes of America in tune with all the world. America's No. 1 Network—operated by the NBC — comprises 146 stations from coast-to-coast. Since 1930, RCA alone has sold more than 452,000,000 electron tubes, and today millions of them are in service in countless homes and on every fighting front. The Promise of Television Television, today, is testing its electronic eyesight just as the I'adiophone was testing its voice in 1919. As soon as this war is over the curtain of Time again will drop, and again all the props of communications will be shift- ed for a new act. The scene will be television—-a camera along- side the microphone just as the microphone took its place along- side the wireless key in 1920. And the new camera will have an electronic eye as sensitive as the human optic, for it will see all that the eye can see in a room lighted by the candles on a birtli- (Inv cake. ^/^hzcAAj^eu^ President, Radio Corporation of America