The Tvs of Tomorrow: How RCA's Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First Lcds
Michael R. Fein · Journal of American History · 2019
“Today, we live in a world of screens,” Benjamin Gross reminds us in The Tvs of the Tomorrow (p. 3). But look beneath the gleaming surfaces of our smart phones, laptops, and televisions, and you will find a complex history of science, technology, industry, and entrepreneurship that Gross traces to the Lcd (liquid crystal diode) research program housed in the RCA David Sarnoff Research Center. In this corporate laboratory, based in Princeton, New Jersey, scientists and engineers first heeded RCA chairman Sarnoff's 1951 call to create a “mural television”: a flat-panel display that could hang on the wall in place of television's bulky cathode-ray tube (Crt) technology (p. 35). Gross's account reveals how experimenting with liquid crystals—peculiar organic compounds that, while pourable, retained a crystalline molecular structure—severely tested RCA managers' faith in the idea that fundamental scientific research would inevitably lead to commercially viable technologies. This had been RCA's experience with radio and with black-and-white and color television. But Lcd research, which threatened to disrupt the Crt-dominated television industry and presented formidable technical challenges, called into question this linear model. After twenty-five years closely investigating liquid crystals, RCA failed to capitalize on their electro-optical properties, relegating Lcd technology to basic numerical displays featured on control panels and digital watches. Optel, a small start-up company launched by former RCA scientists, fared no better than the massive research conglomerate. In 1976 RCA abandoned Lcd research operations, and Optel filed for bankruptcy, ceding “first-mover advantage” to East Asian corporations that currently dominate the multibillion-dollar flat-screen consumer electronics market (p. 196).