Radio Broadcast (May 1929-Apr 1930)

this service. All new vacuum tubes as they are introduced from time to time are available to licensees for experimental work for several months before they are generally released to the trade. About twice a year the R.C.A. has technical meetings with its set licensees at which time subjects cf mutual interest are discussed. It is a very interesting fact that the retail prices of radio sets have not gone up in the past two years, notwithstanding the fact that during that time the industry has completely changed over from battery-operated sets to the now popular set operated directly from the lighting circuit in the home. This means that the consumer's dollar is purchasing considerably more than it did two years ago. In addition to the mechanical features involved, the consumer's dollar is also purchasing greater value in the way of loud speakers and cabinets. T x i THE R.F.L. PROGRAM ihe letters "R.F.L." seen so often in the advertisements of well-known radio manufacturers, stand for Radio Frequency Laboratories. This company began business in a small laboratory at Boonton, New Jersey, about seven years ago, shortly after popular radio broadcasting was begun. For several years, laboratory research on a variety of electrical communication problems was carried on, including the development of certain amplifier circuits for use in broadcast receivers. Licenses to build sets were then issued to five manufacturers who believed that group-research would produce more and more inventions, and could be made to pay. The aim of R.F.L. has been to gather together a group of qualified scientists and specially trained radio engineers, and to direct them on problems connected with the design and development of broadcast receivers. Inventions which come from these research workers are turned over to the group of licensees who make practical use of them. The work comprises two major divisions — research and Engineering Service. The Research Division endeavors to keep a little in advance of the known science of radio, and to commercialize its research to the extent of furnishing something new and practical for the licensees to manufacture. The Engineering Division keeps up with the advance in the art, helps the licensees with their production problems, and furnishes all the technical facts necessary to keep them fully informed about their own product and its relation to the contemporary art. In addition to this, it often renders special technical assistance on matters outside the scope of set design. Engineering concerns itsolf with the present, Research with the future, yet the two are i n t e r d e p endent. The relation is not unlike the building-up process in a regenerative amplifier. The most difficult step is to get research started, and then it must be fed financially for several years, with the help of administration and engineering, before it pays dividends. The idea of group-financed research is based upon the prin R. W, Seabury, president, R. F. L. ciple that two people with limited research budgets can do more than twice as much operating together as they can operating separately. R.F.L. represents a unique reduction to practice of this idea, and the success and growing reputation of these laboratories is evidence of its economic soundness. R.F.L. ;s not a manufacturing corporation, but primarily a research and patent holding company, and, as it goes on doing its share of development work in the radio industry, it would seem that the vision of the founder is likely to be fully realized. — Richard W. Seabury, President TECHNIDYNE'S OFFERINGS Ti Lester L. Jones, president, Technidyne Corporation ihe Technidyne Corporation, in 1929, will continue its research into circuit and apparatus design in the way it has followed since its inception. That is, by employing inventive, analytical, and design skill. The word Technidyne itself signifies our place in the radio picture; it comes from the two Greek words, terhnikos and dynamas, signifying "technical power." Looked at from the inside, the organization is a place where imagination, invention, and creative ability can flower Looked at from the outside, it is an institution on which the relatively small producer may lean for those services otherwise beyond his reach. In addition to this important service, it has already developed resources capable of supplementing those of the largest producers. Our management is free from the direct burden of production and sales problems, and can centralize attention on the well rounded growth of this "technical power." This means simply that our personnel is more actively interested in producing ideas and circuits than in apparatus using these ideas and circuits. While we are not interested primarily in construction or production, believing that our problem is to provide our licensees with something to build, yet we go much further than the usual laboratory in that we engineer our inventions to the practical point and are able to assist the manufacturer in the design of practical production models. Also, we have produced a number of inventions which tend to reduce production problems and in developing our circuitswe alwayskeep in mind the requirements of practical production. The advantages, as we see it, of being free from production difficulties are manifold. We can look into the future more calmly, and into the past achievements of other inventors with more certainty of completely covering the literature if we are not harassed by problems that must be solved within the next day or so. The engineers of Technidyne have always aimed at ideas leading to patents that were free from difficulty in litigation. Our engineers must know what has already been accomplished. An invention that is really only a copy of another person's idea, is never litigation-free; it is always in hot water. Our personnel and our policies are guided by the desire to aid our licensees in their present problems, and to provide them with the output of our imagination in the future. — Lester L. Jones, President. JUNE • 1929 • 79