[ohohyodafarted]

I don't know the facts of why Europe was so behind the times in adopting color tv, but if adopting color tv is anything like the highly protectionist attitudes that govern socialist dominated Europe today, with respect to many other technologies that were invented elsewhere, Then I suspect that the..... "if we didn't invent it and perfect it, then we won't use it" attitude may have been at the root cause of why it took so long to get color in Europe. NTSC could have been adopted right from the start, but that would have given an opening to American tv manufacturers to sell sets into the European market.

A good old American powerhouse corporation RCA invented color tv and the European governments figured if they used a non-ntsc system, then they could shut out US tv manufacturers and foster a tv industry based in Euroland. It was all based on the ecconomics of creating barriers to the importation of goods from other countrys, and creating an environment for products to be made in Europe.

The delay of color tv to Europe was totally political, based on a protectionist mentality to try and foster an industry for the manufacturer of color tv within Europe and the jobs that a European based color tv industry would create. Unfortunately while the Europeans argued, and nit picked about how to achieve the end goal, the rest of the world leap froged Europe and left it's citizens with yesterdays black and white technology. As always in these situations, the brunt of these bad political decissions, were born by the average citizens who went without color tv long after the rest of the world had passed them by.

A prime example of a similar situation today, is the adoption of 3G wireless, Code Division Mutliple Access (CDMA) in Europe.

Qualcomm, a US technological giant, invented CDMA, and it has been available in the USA and other advanced countries like Korea and India since before 2000. But Because it wasn't invented by Europeans, the EU stonewalled CDMA2000, and REFUSED to use it, and continued to use inferior GSM, a boogered up version of TDMA, until the Europeans could booger up CDMA2000 into a wideband version called WCDMA, and rename it UMTS, just so the Europeans could save face and say they invented it. In fact, if it haden't been for the fact that Qualcomm engineers, solved the WCDMA handoff problem for the European engineers, it is probable that the European engineers would still be scratching their heads, trying to figure out how to get WCDMA to work today, and Europe would probably still be without 3G cellular if Qualcomm haden't fixed it for them.

Well guess what? The Europeans are paying a royalty on every WCDMA phone sold, everywhere in the world to guess who?? that's right, Qualcomm, a US corporation who invented the core technology that WCDMA is based on. Draging their feet on 3G didn't save the Europeans a dime. All it did was delay the adoption of a more advanced technology by about 5 years, after the rest of the world already had it in the form of CDMA2000.

Even the Chineese are playing stupid games like this with a version they call TDSCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access)

I Hope I didn't step on anyones toes, but that is how I see the the wireless wars, which are just a repeat of the old color tv wars. I have been watching the progress of wireless since the beginning of 2G TDMA (the core of GSM), which BTW was also invented in the USA by Motorola, the company that invented the concept of "cellular wireless phone technology"

Unfortunately RCA, the company that invented color tv, became a victum of America's free trade policies, in a world where artificial barriers to the importation of foreign goods, as practiced by other nations, was, and still is, the rule. The importation of cheap goods into the U.S. from the orient with no protection from the U.S. government for RCA, is what killed this once powerful icon of U.S. industry.

America is a world leader in the developement of advanced technologies in many fields of reasearch. Placing barriers to the adoption of superior American technologies, for political reasons is both ludicrous and arrogant.

I was formerly a free market proponent, but if the rest of the world isn't going to play by the same rules, then you need to fight fire with fire.

Our US auto industry is in a difficult situation right now. It's due to grossly unaffordable union contracts that Ford, Gm and Chrystler made with the labor union thugs many years ago, and also due to an attitude of our government that refuses to protect our vital US industries, from foreign competition. America needs to place huge tarifs on the importation of autos and other foreign goods, just like other countries do to U.S. goods. Maybe when we turn the tables around and close our boarders to the importation of foreign goods, other countries will see that they need to trade fairly with the U.S. and buy as much form the U.S. as we buy from them.

I think we may be about to see just such a protectionist trend start when the new president takes office. The Democrats are very protective of American Labor Unions, and now that they have a Democrat for president, they will have the power to place import tarrifs against goods that threaten vital American industries, and the jobs that are created by them. Americans are mad as hell and we're not going to take the ecconomic abuses we have suffered, at the hands of other countries, any longer.

The rest of the world has had a protectionist attitude for decades, it's time the U.S. started treating the rest of the world the way it has been treating us.

Sorry if I got off on a tangent, but the issue of late adoption of color tv in Europe was not a technological issue, it was a protectionist ecconomic and governmental issue, and as such, is directly related to current, worldwide, ecconmic and trade policys.