RCA

Yeah.

In 1919 this week, the Radio Corporation of America, better known as RCA, was formed.

RCA would go on to become a giant in electronics, especially radios and TVs.

In other words, they weren't just making gadgets.

They were helping build the infrastructure for how America would consume entertainment and information.

Renegade Radio.

And RCA didn't stop at just making the hardware.

The company would later own its own TV network, NBC, along with other broadcast interests.

For example, a King Kong balloon was attached to the spire in 1983 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the character's introduction, and an inflatable dragon was placed on the spire in 2024 to promote the TV series House of Dragon.

Broadcasting began at the Empire State Building on December 22nd, 1931, when NBC and RCA began transmitting experimental television broadcasts from a small antenna erected atop the mast, with two separate transmitters for the visual and audio data.

They leased the eighty-fifth floor and built a laboratory there.

In 1934, RCA was joined by Edwin Howard Armstrong in a cooperative venture to test his FM system from the building's antenna.

The setup, which entailed the installation of the world's first FM transmitter, continued only until October of the next year due to disputes between RCA and Armstrong.

Specifically, NBC wanted to install more TV equipment in the room where Armstrong's transmitter was located.

After some time, the eighty-fifth floor became home to RCA's New York television operations, initially as experimental station W2XBS, Channel 1 then, from 1941, as a commercial station, WNBT Channel 1, now WNBC Channel 4.

NBC's FM station, W2XDG, began transmitting from the antenna in 1940.

He found a fellow traveler in Herbert Deutsch, a Dutch composer who loved the idea of electronic music but hated the clunky and expensive gear that was around in the early 1960s.

The best synthesizers of the day, like the RCA Mark II sound synthesizer at Columbia Princeton, filled an entire room.

Moog invented some voltage controllers that allowed for a fantastic amount of miniaturization and made programming sounds infinitely simpler.

He first demonstrated the technology in 1964.

RKO was still a new studio.

It had been formed only three years earlier, in 1928, when the Radio Corporation of America brought together a small production company and one of the country's largest theater chains.

It was meant to be Hollywood's studio of the sound era, radio money, its own sound system, and well over a hundred theaters in which to play its pictures.

In short, it had ambitions.

Three of these early warning systems were built at Clear Air Force Base in Alaska, RAF Flyingdales in the UK, and Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, as far north as possible to give maximum warning of an attack.

Each site was equipped with three large fixed General Electric AN/FPS-50 radars for initial missile detection, and a number of smaller RCA AN/FPS-49 and 92 sets for finer tracking.

The system also included a number of computer facilities, both on and off-site, to process incoming data, which was routed to command and control displays at the Pentagon and NORAD's underground headquarters at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado.

As designed, this system gave NORAD commanders and the US president up to 20 minutes from the detection of a Soviet missile launch in which to evaluate the threat and order a retaliatory strike.

The system was detecting nearly 1,000 missiles fired from a site deep inside Siberia, arcing their way over the North Pole towards the United States.

Following protocol, Gould tried to contact NORAD commander General Lawrence Cutter, but the general was aboard an aircraft and could not be reached.

Gould then phoned the next in command, NORAD Deputy Air Marshal Roy Sleman of the Royal Canadian Air Force base at RCAF North Bay.

By the time Sleman was connected with Gould, the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System alert designation had reached level five, indicating near certainty of a missile contact.

There's definitely—this is an idea of the middle-class American household, which is certainly a fantasy in many cases.

But the theremin— was marketed by RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, who, I mean, they were just so powerful at that point.

They had just bought the Victor Company over in Camden.

So they had the market on radios and phonographs.