Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin Kuehn
Hi Bob,
Do you remember this place?
Check out the list price of a new 21AXP22A in 1960 
Kevin |
No Kevin I am not familiar with S&M. I have always lived in the Milwaukee area, and the RCA distributor for this area was Taylor Electric. I believe every RCA authorized parts distributor was assigned a specific geographic territory to cover. I think Tayor Electric had the southeast portion of Wisconsin which covered north up to Green bay and possibly as far north as Marinette. It was the biggest territory in the state population wise and very lucrative for the company. They also were the distributors for RCA Whirlpool appliances. The building they occupied was huge. There were about a dozen semi truck docks on the shipping and receiving side of the building. The photo below is from Google Earth and shows how big the building was and they occupied all of it.
A lot of people were employeed by Taylor Electric. When RCA started going down the tubes, Taylor Electric started shrinking it's opperation. Eventually all those Taylor employees lost their jobs due to the demise of RCA. And then multiply this by all the other RCA distributors across the entire country and you begin to realize how bad a thing it was that RCA went under. This is a prime example of why we, as Americans, need to get back into manufacturing. It's not just the people who work in the factories who have jobs, it's all the ancilary jobs that are attached to those manufacturing companies. Service, sales, and parts distribution companies all who depend on the manufacturing of American products.
Hopefully the future will see the pendulum swing back in our direction. With jobs as difficult to get as they are today, there is bound to be pressure for our cost of labor to become more competitive in the world ecconomy. When that happens, we will once again be able to compete in manufacturing, and our ecconomy will thrive again. But not until manufacturing recovers, will we see a substantial reduction in unemployment. Sorry for the rant, but the demise of RCA was, in my opinion, a failure equal in proportion to if the US auto industry had gone under. We must stop the exportation of our manufacturing base to foreign countries. We have the technology, the skil and the know-how, all we need is a competitive labor pool.
$160 for a 21AXP22 in 1960 was big money. Even a 15GP22 was $160. In todays dollars it would be $1175. So I guess I better revalue my color sets with good 21AXP22 crt's in them. Lets see, I think I have 9 of them currently. Woops forgot the 21AXP22 test jig, so that makes and even 10.