TV, Tickets & Trains

RCA, which licenses its 10,000 patents to most of the radio and TV industry, had an odd experience last week. It signed a five-year agreement with Ross Siragusa's Admiral Corp. permitting RCA to use an automated production system developed by Admiral at a cost of $500,000.

Under Admiral's system, the first of its kind and already in use for several months, more than half of a radio or TV chassis is assembled before being touched by human hands. To start with, electric circuits are printed on plastic boards with a light coating of metal. As they are carried automatically down an assembly line, machines stamp out holes for tubes and condensers, attach wire jumpers and resistors to the boards, and trim wire leads to size. Time: less than a minute. Whenever a part fails to feed into the line, the whole operation stops automatically, and a red light indicates the point of trouble. Tubes are still installed by hand, but by year's end Admiral expects to be producing entire TV sets by automation.

Since Admiral started up its first automated production line, it has been able to cut the price of its 24-in. TV set from $349.50 to $229.50. Instead of cutting employment, as some union opponents of automation fear, automation has increased production so much that overall employment has actually risen.

Other automation developments:

P:The New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads installed automatic control centers (see cut) for dispensing tickets in seven stations, including Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, plan other installations along their lines. A "ready sale"board, resembling a stock broker's quotation board, tells both customer and ticket agent what space is available for a one-week period on as many as 23 different trains. Then a special card, representing the passenger's choice of space, is passed through an electronic scanner that prints the Pullman ticket automatically. Elapsed time: two minutes. To accommodate customers ordering reservations from other locations, Pennsy has a photoelectric wire system connecting 30th Street with other ticket offices in Philadelphia and Wilmington. When the scanner prints the ticket, Western Union's "Ticketfax" sends out a facsimile to the point of purchase.

P:The U.S. Weather Bureau announced plans to start test runs on International Business Machines Corp.'s new 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, a giant brain that eventually will be used by the bureau to turn out weather forecasts for 24 and 48 hours, draw its own weather maps for the entire U.S. By feeding the brain complicated formulas and information on temperature, wind velocity, humidity, etc. from hundreds of points around the U.S., the computer will be able to make a forecast in a few hours that would take an army of mathematicians days to figure out.

P:At Gary, Ind., General Railway Signal Co. installed the nation's first fully automated freight-car yard for the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway. By using radar and electronic brain circuits, the system sorts out and assembles freight cars by destination, automatically weighs them and controls their speed as they roll down an incline to assembly points, where they are coupled into trains. General Railway Signal is now installing similar systems in six other yards.

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