RCA - Radio Corporation of America - History
Posted by dapj20 on Aug 18, 2015 in History-Vintage
The Professor, Talking Machine, Wireless Becomes Radio, Color Television, Nipper and Chipper and More RCA History at.... RCA - Radio Corporation of America - Wayback Machine snapshot of RCA History.
Two years after inventing the phonograph, Edison brought the world the incandescent light bulb. Thirteen years later, his start-up electric company would merge with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company and be renamed General Electric.
In 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs (including the famous "Victrola") and phonograph records. This included a majority ownership of the Victor Company of Japan, or JVC. The new subsidiary then became RCA-Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the Nipper trademark. This Trademark is also the trademark for the British music & entertainment company HMV who now display nipper in silhouette.
In the early 1920s, David Sarnoff publicly speculated on the possibility of "every farmhouse equipped not only with a sound-receiving device but with a screen that would mirror the sights of life." The idea of television was not new, and mechanical systems had demonstrated crude pictures. But it was Sarnoff's historic meeting with engineer Vladimir Zworykin that set the stage for RCA's success at electronic television transmission and reception.