Abstract

The Radio Corporation in the News

William Winterbottom, who occupies the comparatively humble but highly practical position of traffic manager of the Radio Corp. of America (R.C.A.) communications system, admitted that competition between American communication lines and those of that ogre, "the British merger," actually exists nowhere in the world. He did speak of competition in the Pacific with a cable "whose ownership is largely British," but further questioning quickly revealed that the cable in question is a part of the International Telephone and Telegraph system, with which the R.C.A. wishes to unite in competition against the British. There is the fact that the R.C.A. refuses to sell communicating apparatus, of which it has a manufacturing monopoly, to anyone who might set up a competing communications system. There is the fact that it refuses to sell transmitting tubes to owners of broadcasting stations who build the rest of their apparatus instead of buying it from R.C.A. There is the fact that in licensing the use of its patents to other manufacturers of receiving sets.