In 1968 a team of scientists and engineers from RCA announced the creation of a new form of electronic display that relied upon an obscure set of materials known as liquid crystals. At a time when televisions utilized bulky cathode ray tubes to produce an image, these researchers demonstrated how liquid crystals could electronically control the passage of light. One day, they predicted, liquid crystal displays would find a home in clocks, calculators—and maybe even a television that could hang on the wall. Half a century later, RCA’s dreams have become a reality, and liquid crystals are the basis of a multibillion-dollar global industry. Yet the company responsible for producing the first LCDs was unable to capitalize upon its invention. In The TVs of Tomorrow, Benjamin Gross explains this contradiction by examining the history of flat-panel display research at RCA from the perspective of the chemists, physicists, electrical engineers, and technicians at the company’s central laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey. Drawing upon laboratory notebooks, internal reports, and interviews with key participants, Gross reconstructs the development of the LCD and situates it alongside other efforts to create a thin, lightweight replacement for the television picture tube. He shows how RCA researchers mobilized their technical expertise to secure support for their projects. He also highlights the challenges associated with the commercialization of liquid crystals at RCA and Optel—the RCA spin-off that ultimately manufactured the first LCD wristwatch. The TVs of Tomorrow is a detailed portrait of American innovation during the Cold War, which confirms that success in the electronics industry hinges upon input from both the laboratory and the boardroom.

Find a pool of cheap, pliable workers and give them jobs—and soon they cease to be as cheap or as pliable. What is an employer to do then? Why, find another poor community desperate for work. This route—one taken time and again by major American manufacturers—is vividly chronicled in this fascinating account of RCA's half century-long search for desirable sources of labor. Capital Moves introduces us to the people most affected by the migration of industry and, most importantly, recounts how they came to fight against the idea that they were simply "cheap labor." Jefferson Cowie tells the dramatic story of four communities, each irrevocably transformed by the opening of an industrial plant. From the manufacturer's first factory in Camden, New Jersey, where it employed large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants, RCA moved to rural Indiana in 1940, hiring Americans of Scotch-Irish descent for its plant in Bloomington. Then, in the volatile 1960s, the company relocated to Memphis where African Americans made up the core of the labor pool. Finally, the company landed in northern Mexico in the 1970s—a region rapidly becoming one of the most industrialized on the continent.

Color television, transistors, lasers, digital memory, computers, liquid-crystal displays, medical electronics, and digital video-these technologies define modern civilization. David Sarnoff Research Center: RCA Labs to Sarnoff Corporation tells the story of their invention or innovation at this Princeton, New Jersey research facility. The center's engineers, physicists, chemists, technicians, and shop workers developed radar, sonar, and TV-guided missiles during World War II. In 1951, RCA renamed the labs for its visionary leader, David Sarnoff, and the center continued its groundbreaking work for RCA's product divisions and patent-licensing department. General Electric bought RCA in 1986 and donated the David Sarnoff Research Center to SRI International, a nonprofit research institute. Ten years later, the center became Sarnoff Corporation, a company that provides innovative client solutions, licenses patents, starts companies, and sells products. David Sarnoff Research Center: RCA Labs to Sarnoff Corporation celebrates the fascinating process of research and development with stunning photographs selected from thirty thousand stills in RCA's collections now held at the David Sarnoff Library. Masterfully framed and lighted, these rare images reflect American confidence in the promise of technology at its twentieth-century peak and illustrate a sometimes unusual world within a social life of awards, gardens, picnics, and sports teams.

The story of the RCA VideoDisc is a rare inside look at a company and the way it conducts the complex process of science-based innovation. The author examines how RCA shaped a sophisticated consumer electronics technology in a research and development effort that spanned fifteen years. We see how the company's history, its structure, its technical capability, and its competition all influenced the choices that were made in moving VideoDisc from laboratory to development group to market, and ultimately to withdrawal from the marketplace. Published in hardcover as RCA and the VideoDisc.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

LIFE Magazine is the treasured photographic magazine that chronicled the 20th Century. It now lives on at LIFE.com, the largest, most amazing collection of professional photography on the internet. Users can browse, search and view photos of today’s people and events. They have free access to share, print and post images for personal use.

The book follows a proven training outline, including real-life examples and exercises, to teach healthcare professionals and students how to lead effective and successful Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to eliminate patient harm. This book discusses the need for RCA in the healthcare sector, providing practical advice for its facilitation. It addresses when to use RCA, how to create effective RCA action plans, and how to prevent common RCA failures. An RCA training curriculum is also included. This book is intended for those leading RCAs of patient harm events, leaders, students, and patient safety advocates who are interested in gaining more knowledge about RCA in healthcare.

A history of the RCA television manufacturing plant in Bloomington, IN, 1940-1998. Historic photographs from Monroe County History Center illustrate this book. The RCA Bloomington Plant was once named "The Color Television Capital of the World."