Radio: RCA to Princeton

In 1919 RCA began to investigate radio reception in a tent at Riverhead, L. I. Its facilities then were as clumsy as the rickety Ford the technicians used to get from home to work.

Fat, flush and 21 with NBC tucked in its corporate back pocket, RCA is still inquisitive. Spotted along the eastern seaboard are eight of its laboratories, where 600 engineers try to improve radio’s present, dope out its future. Equipped to examine everything from a $9 receiver to the most complicated electronic devices, the research units are the best in existence. But the best isn’t good enough for RCA. Last week RCA President David Sarnoff announced that the company was preparing to build at Princeton, N. J. “the world’s largest radio research laboratories,” complete with lecture auditorium and RCA’s combined technical and patent libraries.

According to plans, RCA’s Princeton outfit will occupy 300 acres of land, cost over $1,000,000. Expected to be completed by 1942, the property will be adjacent to Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, not far from Princeton University. RCA’s research headquarters will profit by being in a nonindustrial area, free of mechanical noises that might interfere with its work.

At Princeton, RCA hopes to continue television’s advance technically, to make facsimile broadcasting commercially practical. But whatever else it may do at Princeton, RCA is certain to examine radio from the standpoint of national defense.

The company is anxious further to explore shorter waves than have ever been used before. These shortest of waves (technically microwaves) would be of vast assistance in handling mechanized armies. With the almost limitless frequencies afforded by microwaves, an enemy would have a fierce time jamming instructions to army and navy units.