CBS Laboratories

One year later, a group of 60 engineers and scientists, led by Dr. Peter Goldmark, left New York City and moved into the new 30,000 square-foot facility.

Six major departments were engaged in a wide range of research and development programs for government, industry, education, medicine and the broadcasting field.

Many of these professionals were internationally renowned in their respective fields and helped establish CBS Laboratories as a leader in electronics and communications research and development.

[1] It utilized a mechanical color wheel on both the camera and on the television home receiver, but was not compatible with the existing post-war NTSC, 525-line, 60-field/second black and white TV sets as it was a 405-line, 144-field scanning system.

It was the first of its kind in the broadcasting industry, and updated versions (Audimax 4440) continued to be manufactured by Thompson-CSF, which acquired the technology after the Labs were closed.

[5] At the same time, CBS Laboratories developed a solid-state character generator, a crucial component of the VIDIAC (Visual Information Display and Control) system built for the Air Force by a collaboration of several companies.

In 1971, a backwards-compatible 4-channel encoding technique was developed for vinyl records, called SQ Quadraphonic, based on work by musician Peter Scheiber and Labs engineer Benjamin B. Bauer.

That same year, CBS Labs Staff Scientist Dennis Gabor received the Nobel Prize in Physics for earlier work on holography.

CBS Laboratories was selected by NASA Manned Spacecraft Center to provide the voice recorder for the Gemini space program (1964 - 1966).

The sensor was further modified for the 1969 Mariner mission to Mars to survive the more severe launch environment and to provide greater capability for automatic search, identification, and tracking.

ThE ERTS satellites generated an immense amount of data, which was transmitted to dedicated ground stations to be recorded and processed for analysis.

[16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] In 1974, CBS Corp., under then-President Arthur R. Taylor, made the decision to focus on its primary media and broadcasting operations, away from the Government R&D and commercial product development, and divest these non-core assets.

CBS Laboratories' staff registered approximately 100 patents in the fields of television, quadraphonic sound, scanning devices, laser scanning and recording, film handling systems, image and character generation, noise monitoring, hydrophones, forming electrophoretic and photoemissive surfaces, diffraction optics, photo-electronic imaging, electron guns, and more.