🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 7IH@news.cso.uiuc.edu, irvine@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Brent Irvine) writes:
>> Americans probably buy most Japanese products because there no longer
>>is any choice. TV? VCR? CD? STEREO? Are there any of these made in the
>>US?
>>  No.
>
>RCA TVs 19" and larger are designed and made in the US.

Ah! The RCA saga.  Here's where American business knowhow really shines.  RCA
suffered some really hard times in the 70's ending with the Capacitive Disk Video
efforts.  At that time CEO Bradshaw decided to get RCA back to its electronics roots.
Part of this meant buying a CMOS process from Japan.  Note that RCA pioneered CMOS
and SOS and is sometimes called the father of CMOS. As the 80's progressed, the
semiconductor industry, especially ASICS, were in a downhill slide.  The RCA
Semicustom Division bucked this trend by developing Design Automation tools years
ahead of the industry.  In '85 GE took over RCA in order to get NBC.  GE hacked RCA
into pieces and sold it off to any one who was interested.  RCA consumer products
went to SGS Thompson of France, etc...  The RCA Design Automation group scattered
with the close of the Semiconductor Division by Harris.  GE kept NBC and the
Aerospace/Military divisions.  They have recently sold off everything but NBC,
which they are looking for a buyer.  The bottom line is that a growing multi-billion
world-competitive organization was snuffed out, not by the Japanese, but pure
American greed.  Talk to any employee of RCA at the time, I believe the majority
would be still happy to be working at RCA.  I certainly would be.

Yes, France's SGS Thompson (RCA) manufactures TVs in the US... very good ones from
the tradition of excellence spawned from the RCA heritage.

Gary Gendel