RCA research labs

[hal feinstein]

The history is stranger still.   GE bought RCA in 1986.
GE has  GE Research, its in-house R&D outfit so Sarnoff was redundant  
and GE
decided to (get this) donate it to SRI  for the tax write-off.
SRI still lists Sarnoff Corp as a subsidiary.

http://www.answers.com/topic/sri-international-inc
http://www.sri.com/about/spin.html

--hf

On Dec 26, 2006, at 10:02 PM, Mike O'Dell wrote:

> when RCA was shopping it around, they couldn't find any takers at  
> anything
> like their price.  eventually it went for a pittance to SRI who  
> operated
> it for a while but got tired of it not making Big Bucks from  Big  
> Gubmint
> Contracts and went looking to get rid of it, er, "spin it off".
> I don't remember the details of the transaction but when SRI set it  
> free
> was when it became Sarnoff Corp. the last time i knew what they  
> were doing
> was during the spin-off from SRI - they were big into video  
> compression
> and i think some of the HD video codecs make patent royalties for  
> Sarnoff.
>
> There was a while in the late 80s & early 90s when one of the big
> Japanese electronics companies had a lab in Princeton, but it
> was completely distinct from Sarnoff. I think it was Panasonic
> (or their parent) but after a while and no killer products emerged,
> they decided this "research" thing was too expensive and they
> closed the lab.
>
> there are still a couple of opto-electronics companies in the
> Princeton area, started by Princeton faculty types. we've looked
> at a couple but didn't invest in them.
>
> 	-mo
>
>
> hal feinstein wrote:
>> No doubt you know about the demise of America's bestcommunications  
>> and electronics laboratories.  TheBell System had Bell Lab and RCA  
>> had RCA Laboratories.Under the rubric of "free trade" these  
>> laboratories, their staffsand patents were sold off to the highest  
>> bidder.  I wondered which/keretzu/ RCA labs disappeared into.     
>> Surprisingly,a piece remains, now called Sarnoff Corporation.This  
>> URL has a nice history RCA Labs and Sarnoff Corp:
>> http://www.sarnoff.com/about/history/index.asp
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------- 
>> ---
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