Editing RCA (section)

==Computers==
{{See also|Computing}}
[[File:spectra7046.jpg|thumb|RCA Spectra 70 Model 46]]
RCA was one of a number of companies in the 1960s that entered the mainframe computer field to challenge the market leader [[International Business Machines]] (IBM). Although at this time computers were almost universally used for routine data  processing and scientific research, in 1964 Sarnoff, who prided himself as a visionary, predicted that "The computer will become the hub of a vast network of remote data stations and information banks feeding into the machine at a transmission rate of a billion or more bits of information a second&nbsp;... Eventually, a global communications network handling voice, data and facsimile will instantly link man to machine—or machine to machine—by land, air, underwater, and space circuits. [The computer] will affect man's ways of thinking, his means of education, his relationship to his physical and social environment, and it will alter his ways of living. ...&nbsp;[Before the end of this century, these forces] will coalesce into what unquestionably will become the greatest adventure of the human mind."<ref>Lyons (1966), page 339, from a speech delivered in October 1964 to the Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.</ref>

RCA marketed a [[Spectra 70]] computer line that was hardware, but not software, compatible with IBM's [[System/360]] series. It also produced the RCA Series, which competed against the [[IBM System/370]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/RCA/RCA.SPECTRA70.1965.102646099.pdf |title=RCA Spectra 70|date=March 1965|access-date=June 1, 2017| publisher=computerhistory.org}}</ref> This technology was leased to the [[English Electric]] company, which used it for their System 4 series, which were essentially RCA Spectra 70 clones. RCA's TSOS operating system was the first mainframe, demand paging, virtual memory operating system on the market. By 1971, despite a significant investment, RCA had only a 4% market share, and it was estimated that it would cost around $500&nbsp;million over the next five years to remain competitive with the IBM/370 series. On September 17, 1971, the RCA board of directors announced its decision to close its computer systems division (RCA-CSD), which would be written off as a $490&nbsp;million company loss. [[Sperry Corporation|Sperry Rand]]'s UNIVAC division took over the RCA computer division in January 1972. Univac did not want the Spectra computers because they were similar to its own 9000 series; instead, they wanted RCA's computer customer base.