[MrFixr55]

Hi Peter,

If you read about David Sarnoff, he was an interesting character to say the least (search Wikipedia for him). A showman and promotor (and sometimes self-promoter) in the mold of Circus impresario P.T. Barnum, he was a ruthless businessman. After 9 years of RCA selling radio receivers and vacuum tubes built by General Electric (GE) and Westinghouse (and a few from Wireless Specialty), RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine company (who started making radios after purchasing radios from RCA for Radio-Victrola combinations). After an antitrust suit in 1929 or 1930, in a complete turnaround, RCA built all radios at the Victor factory, for themselves, as well as GE and Westinghouse. RCA claimed many inventions. (Per one of our friends, possibly Morzh, they may have claimed to invent the electron itself!)

My guess is that it would be just like Mr. Sarnoff (Oops, General Sarnoff, he earned that rank in the US Army Signal Corps) to make the radios for GE and Westinghouse but to make the RCA radios to be more stylish. The position of the knobs is the same on both the CGE A-87 and the RCA C-8-15 version, but the RCA had a round dial with a world map that glowed red when the radio was on. One possible exception to styling the RCA to be supeior was the Westinghouse Columnaire WR8 version of the RCA Radiola 80. The cabinet was designed by the famous industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who designed for Huppmobile, Studebaker, the Pensylvania Railroad and the paint scheme for the US "Air Force One" Boeing 747 aircraft. I think that my GE S-22A version of the RCA R-7As prettier than the RCA R-7A.