[Konvas] Panavision???

[Peter Haas]

On Sep 11, 2009, at 11:31 AM, Speedbirdmgh at aol.com wrote:

> How do you think RCA and Westrex dominated the worlds cinema's  
> sound systems.

They had a powerful patent portfolios, which ensured their dominance,  
and excluded competition, until the portfolios expired in about 1955,  
or just one year before Litton, my employer in an earlier  
professional lifetime, bought Western Electric's Westrex subsidiary  
for $6 million, and its entire family of production- and post- 
production equipment, including the then-under-development, but not  
yet completed, 45-45 StereoDisk® system, which was finally completed  
under Litton's ownership.

What I know about Westrex and its products would fill volumes.

I suspect what you know about Westrex, and about RCA by strong  
inference, might fill a page or two.

But, no matter, no matter at all ... the comparison of transport  
category aircraft acquisition, and its widely acknowledged bribery  
and international corruption, is completely irrelevant to a  
discussion of cinema, whether it be Panavision vs. Arri (and, FWIW,  
the single largest owner of Arris is ... ta da ... Panavision) or RCA  
vs. Westrex.

Incidentally, GE axed RCA and all of its divisions except for NBC.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, as the RCA optical sound system was  
completely incapable of time-aligned stereo, which the Western  
Electric system had demonstrated as early as 1937.

But you probably knew that, or you would have if you bothered to read  
Frayne & Wolfe (1949).