"Non-manufacturers" Was: Re: OFF TOPIC Radio comments...

At 09:00 01/08/99 -0800, Dave Dameron wrote: Basically correct Dave. RCA was created in mid-October 1919 under the early-1919 ideas of President Wilson and the US Navy to head off the monopoly that American Marconi Company had in international wireless communication. American Marconi was controlled by Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of Britain. There was a desire for a US-based wireless communications company -preferably a Government monopoly --later changed to a corporate monopoly-- to handle only commercial wireless communications. (Commercial international communication by wireless back then was the equivalent to the satelite and undersea cable communications we have today.) Hence, British Marconi was pursuaded to sell its stock in Amer. Marconi and General Electric was persuaded by the US Government to be the purchaser. Radio Corp. of Amer. was borne from this action by the Board of Trustees of GE with GE being the major stockholder. Amer. Marconi employees, products, patents, good will, etc. came under control of the new RCA in Nov. 1919. Products made by GE were sold by RCA exclusively. Later in 1920, Westinghouse bought RCA stock and began making equipment for sale under RCA name. Many, many more details are involved before, during and after what I described above had transpired. A few months later, the extremely sudden popularity of broadcast radio hit hard and fast. The so-called "Radio boom" as it was described. This was reputedly as a result of the broadcast of the Presidential Election Returns in Oct. 1920 over radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh which was owned by Westinghouse. Up to until 1929 over one thousand radio companies were believed to have been started and at least four thousand different radio models were sold -just in USA and Canada. RCA got into selling broadcast radios to the public and became a huge player once GE and Westy got broadcast radio designs off the drawing board in 1921. There were a couple of dozen other big players that came along in the 20's. Quite a few of the 1000 or so companies were small garage-based outfits not too much unlike how Steve Jobs and The Woz started their little company. The computer boom paralleled the radio boom in many ways. One could buy radio components from a radio parts supplier, setup on the kitchen table and build several dozen or more radios to sell at the local hardware stores or automobile supply stores. Most of those small companies died. Sounds like many computer companies in the 70's and 80's and even PC companies in recent times. I'd like to discuss this subject even more as old radio history is one of my strongest areas of interest but we need to move on as it's quite off-topic here. To do that, and to segue the concept of Radio Corporation of America as being a mid-20's non-manufacturing radio company into classic computers, let me ask a question that I've thought of for some time now: Were there many computer companies, if any, who were not manufacturers but, like RCA from around 1921 to 1928, sales-only outfits? I'm thinking of pre-PC compatible days, '82 and earlier, because as you know, any major or fly-by-night outfit could put their name on a PC nowadays. Also, strictly non-PC computer companies are included even up to ten years ago (to keep it on classics). Keep it on-topic and change your Subject line if you reply on some other on-topic subject. Regards, Chris -- -- Christian Fandt, Electronic/Electrical Historian Jamestown, NY USA cfandt(a)netsync.net Member of Antique Wireless Association URL: http://www.ggw.org/freenet/a/awa/