ELECTRONICS: The New Age

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¶ Consolidated Electrodynamics started out in 1937 to make instruments for oil exploration, never even reached $ 1,000,000 annually until it got into West Coast electronics. Now, under President Hugh F. Colvin, it makes electronic spectrometers to analyze gases in petrochemical plants, recording oscillographs to measure strain in auto-and steelmaking processes, a complete line of "Datatape'' magnetic recording systems to preserve missile and aircraft flight-test data. Result: sales jumped from $924,000 in 1946 to $25 million in 1956, will hit $35 million this year. The company's stock, which sold for $4 a share in 1945, now sells for $43 a share.

Dangers Ahead. Despite all the profit and promise, the U.S. electronics industry of 1957 is studded with dangers. Booming military markets have made it possible for anyone with brains and ideas to start a business. Only the most starry-eyed expect it to last. The Pentagon is a notoriously fickle customer; a canceled program, a shift in weapons emphasis could wreck many small companies whose main business is making a single component or a single piece of equipment.

Like RW, every company is trying to copper its bets by developing civilian products for peacetime markets. But many of them, with no sales or marketing organizations, will find the going too hard. The biggest winners will probably be the big companies with years of production and selling experience.

RCA, which already sells $725 million worth of electronic products annually and leads in color TV, is planning to market a noiseless electronic air conditioner, has a pilot model now in operation. A.T.&T., whose entire telephone network is one gigantic computer, is working hard on a visual phone system it calls "Picture-phone," is experimenting with pushbutton dialing and voice dialing. Raytheon is already producing electronic range units for near-instant cooking, hopes to get the price to consumers down to $500 (from $1,200) soon. Westinghouse, which already has computer-controlled electronic elevators in operation, will soon market an electronic air purifier that removes 90% of all bacteria and pollen from room air. And Sylvania, one of the fastest-moving companies of all, is perfecting the electronic "light sandwiches" for the home of tomorrow. Two new advances: Bendix last week unveiled an automated machine tool with an electronic brain that "reads" coded information on punched tape, automatically guides a 50-ton milling machine turning out precision aircraft and missile parts; National Cash Register this week marketed a "Post-Tronic" banking machine that electronically posts depositors' checks, virtually eliminates the possibility of a clerical error. In another few months one Midwest state will even field-test an electronic control system to steer and otherwise operate cars in a stretch of superhighway.