How RCA Victor sold Sound Service to classrooms in 1939
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How RCA Victor sold Sound Service to classrooms in 1939
First Published: 05/07/26
Dr. Eve: ..... Every Main Street is an aurora.
Woman: Wait, you don't mean neon signs?
Dr. Eve: Exactly.
Woman: Oh, you're joking!
Dr. Eve: No, I was never more serious. Do you know how a neon sign<br>works?
Woman: No, I haven't the slightest idea. How do they work?
Dr. Eve: Neon signs are glass tubes filled with neon gas, a very rare<br>element at low pressure. An electrical charge shot through the tube<br>causes the glass to glow.
Woman: Oh, but Dr. Eve, what has an eye-blinding red sign on Main<br>Street got to do with the beautiful soft Northern Lights? Now really.
Dr. Eve: Just this. The Northern Lights are caused by practically the<br>same action.
- “The World Is Yours”<br>radio episode from 1937<br>explaining Northern Lights.
Welcome again to the fourth blog in my retro poster collection series.<br>In the past, we have explored quite a few diverse posters - from<br>Navitrainers, which were among the<br>earliest flight simulators, to<br>Addressographs and<br>the shortage of typewriters during World War II. This is quite possibly one of the last times I'll be covering posters<br>bought from what used to be my local bookstore, Reader's Corner, as in<br>2025 I moved from Raleigh, NC, to the Puget Sound region. There are not<br>many local bookstores near where I live. While we have Half Price Books<br>nearby, I've yet to find any interesting retro posters there.
The Poster
Today, we will explore the following poster:
Figure 1: My poster of the RCA Victor Sound Service for Schools<br>advertisement from LIFE magazine, March 6, 1939.
Just like our past ones, this one too is cut out from a copy of LIFE<br>magazine. Particularly, it belongs to
the March 6, 1939 edition of LIFE magazine. As the bold embellishment at the bottom indicates, this advertisement<br>is sponsored by RCA (Radio Corporation of America) Victor.
Encyclopædia Britannica
describes RCA's history as follows:
RCA was founded as Radio Corporation of America by the General Electric<br>Company in 1919 to acquire Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America<br>(incorporated in 1899). A subsidiary of a British-owned company, Marconi<br>Wireless at that time was the only company capable of handling<br>commercial transatlantic radio communications, and General Electric took<br>it over with the assistance of the U.S. Navy Department, which was eager<br>to keep the technology in American hands. For the following 50 years the<br>company was led by David Sarnoff, who built the company into a modern<br>communications conglomerate.
RCA, Victor Talking Machine Company, and the Great Depression
RCA Victor became its consumer-oriented brand, which originated from a<br>merger with the<br>Victor Talking Machine Company<br>in 1929. While the merger<br>seemed to have taken place on March 15, 1929, speculation about the merger was flying in 1928 too. Here is a stub<br>written by the Associated Press and published in the "Rochester Evening Journal and the Post Express" on December 15th, 1928:
Radio Merger Seen Near ..... Merger of Radio Corporation of<br>America and Victor Talking Machine Company was believed near completion<br>today. It would join companies valued at the close of 1927 at<br>$116,000,000. The general plan of the merger was said to have been<br>worked out, but pending the settlement of minor details announcement was<br>withheld.
The merger of Victor Talking Machine with Radio would be the most<br>important of several steps the R.C.A has taken in its entry into the<br>general “amusement” field. Radio controls the National Broadcasting<br>Company, R.C.A. Photophone, Inc., and is allied with the<br>Radio-Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation. It has contracts with Victor and<br>Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company for years.
Victor's contracts with many musical artists would make them available<br>for sound pictures and broadcasting under R.C.A. management.
RCA gained control of the Victor Talking Machine Company through an "exchange of shares" for $54 million (likely a stock swap; the actual cash value of the<br>deal is a bit murky and so I am citing Hagley's findings). Post-merger,<br>an article from the
December 1929 edition of Radio Broadcast
succinctly describes the landscape and RCA's focus points:
New Company Formed to Manufacture and Sell All RCA Home-Entertainment<br>Apparatus
Effective January 1, 1930, all radio material in the home-entertainment<br>field previously sold under RCA's name will be manufactured as well as<br>sold by the RCA-Victor Corporation. Included in the new arrangements<br>between Radio Corporation, General Electric, and Westinghouse, are radio<br>sets, talking machines, records, and other devices in the home<br>entertainment field. This represents a new step in the activities of the<br>enlarged program of the RCA subsidiaries. The 20 per cent. manufacturing<br>profit retained by General Electric and Westinghouse in the making of<br>radio units exclusively sold by...