Word: rca
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...this one memorable broadcast, television proved that its window on history was almost as clear as the newsreel's, and far closer in time. Telecasters bragged that they would soon be opening their window on bigger & better sights; RCA President David Sarnoff announced that the 1948 presidential campaign would be televised. But unless television got a move on, few in the U.S. would see a political or any other kind of telecast...
...these latter rare specimens is John Hays Hammond Jr., 58, America's gaudiest inventor and holder of nearly 800 patents. Last week he was tuning his latest gadget: an improved "dynamic amplifier," which coaxes uncannily lifelike music out of phonograph records. It was already licensed to RCA and A.T. & T., this month would be demonstrated to the crowned heads of the phonograph industry...
...texture to music with a clarity and realism that are startling to owners of average instruments. It is, in fact, perhaps the only set on the market that would completely satisfy a golden ear."* The FORTUNE survey passed over lower-priced, lower frequency sets like Crosley, Philco and RCA-Victor, discussed chiefly such visually satisfying high-priced machines ($495 and up) as Scott (with its "impressive assortment of tubes, wires and gadgets on a chromium-plated base"), Capehart (which "holds 20 discs and turns them over automatically") and the Meissner ("offers high fidelity. . . . Except for its cabinets, which are elegant...
Despite such sale-killing conversations, television sets were selling like white shirts in New York and Chicago department stores last week. RCA-Victor put its first sets on sale (table models selling for $350 plus a $50 maintenance fee), sold over $1 million worth. Allen B. DuMont Laboratories also put its sets, running from $750 to $2,495, on demonstration recently, has already taken orders for $3 million worth...
...RCA hoped that last week's public reception of its sets might influence the Federal Communications Commission to decide in favor of its black & white television, rather than Columbia Broadcasting System's color televising. The more sets RCA sells, the harder FCC will find it to decide in favor of CBS's color, which RCA sets cannot receive. If RCA can force black & white television now, it hopes to capture a big chunk of the market, hold it till it is ready with its own electronic color, some five years hence...