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Originally Posted by Electronic M
IIRC at the dawn of radio RCA was formed as a patent pool/consumer radio products division between GE and Westinghouse...There was probably still some corporate friendship between them at the time.
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I don't believe the relationship between RCA and Westinghouse really had much to do with it. In fact, I recall reading that David Sarnoff was annoyed that Westinghouse had beat RCA to the punch with the H840CK15. Not that it really mattered; nobody was buying color sets anyway.
I think this is more an issue of the ONLY tube being available for Westinghouse to start constructing color sets with was the RCA 15GP22, and thus some hardware would have to be the same among all of the 15 inch color sets.
Before someone mentions the CBS 15HP22 as an option that Westinghouse could have explored for the H840CK15, those tubes appear to have been engineering samples only, though there is evidence that one of the 15HP22s at the museum was installed in a stock Westinghouse set. I have to wonder, if CBS had placed the 15HP22 into production in the same manner that RCA did the 15GP22, would manufacturers have adopted it right away and abandon the RCA tube? I think it's safe to hazard a guess of "absolutely" given how eager they were to adopt the 19VP22 and 21AXP22, albeit probably more for reasons of size.
I think it's also rather telling that Westinghouse rolled out a 19 inch model rather quickly, as did Motorola, abandoning the RCA tube for the CBS tube. Then, Westinghouse utilized the 22EP22 in 1957, which I assume has some relationship to the CBS rectangular tube, before finally moving back to the RCA color tubes with a short-lived model in '57 or '58 using the 21CYP22.