Rca

If you're already juggling three remotes to watch TV (one for the cable box, another for the VCR and one for the set itself), you can appreciate the idea behind universal remote controls. Life's a little simpler when one device can do the work of three or four. And the coffee table is neater, too. Whether you're looking for neatness or for a replacement for a lost or broken remote control, RCA has an elegant solution: the System Link pre- programmed universal remote. The product is a new one for RCA but it's not a new idea.

General Signal Corp. will buy RCA Corp.'s broadcast-antenna subsidiary in Gibbsboro and keep the operation and work force intact, General Signal has announced. Under the companies' agreement in principle, General Signal's Dielectric Communications unit will pay less than $5 million for the RCA unit, said Nino J. Fernandez, General Signal's communications director. He would not be more specific. RCA's antenna unit is part of the company's troubled broadcast systems division, a pioneer in radio and television broadcasting for more than 60 years.

Howard M. Scott, 73, of Moorestown, a retired electrical engineer at RCA, died Friday at Memorial Hospital of Burlington County in Mount Holly. He was the husband of the late Beulah M. Scott. Mr. Scott worked for RCA for 40 years before retiring from its Princeton division in 1980. RCA patented 38 of Mr. Scott's engineering ideas. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Scott received his elementary and high school education in Toledo. After moving to Philadelphia, he earned a bachelor's degree in physics at La Salle College in 1959 and a master's degree in electrical engineering at Drexel University in 1965.

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday approved General Electric Co.'s purchase of the National Broadcasting Co. as part of its $6.28 billion offer to buy RCA Corp. However, GE will be required to sell three NBC radio stations in major markets. The commission said there was no need for an inquiry into GE's admitted violation of laws in its operations as a defense contractor. "No GE officers participated in the misconduct involving two former employees, and GE's corrective measures met the full approval of the secretary of the Air Force.

Poor little Nipper. The modern facsimile of the black-and-white fox terrier famous all this century for standing patiently by the trumpet of a Victrola-brand phonograph has been shattered. Three stained-glass murals of the loyal dog atop Building No. 17 of the old Radio Corp. of America (RCA) plant in Camden were smashed yesterday by tornado-force winds blowing through town just after noon. A fourth Nipper portrait, 14 1/2 feet in diameter, that crowns the factory tower on the banks of the Delaware River was unharmed.

Harry Krieger Jr., 78, a retired RCA manager and former member of the Haddonfield Board of Education, died Wednesday at West Jersey Hospital-Marlton. A Haddonfield resident since 1952, he also had a residence in Avalon. He was born in New York City and was raised in Larchmont, N.Y. Mr. Krieger was a manager of industrial relations at RCA beginning in the mid-1940s until retiring in 1985. He had worked at RCA facilities in Indianapolis, Camden, New York City, and finally in Princeton.

Kenneth Vincent Geortler, 88, of Mount Laurel, a World War II veteran who worked for RCA for many years and ran a South Jersey pet-grooming and boarding business, died of pneumonia Monday, Nov. 29, at the Lutheran Home of Moorestown. Mr. Geortler joined the Army about a year after graduating from Audubon High School. As a member of Company E of the 397th Infantry Regiment, he trekked through France and Germany and rose to the rank of sergeant. Several months before the end of the war, Mr. Geortler was shot in an ambush.

Irving K. Kessler, 74, of Cherry Hill, the hard-driving CEO of RCA's billion-dollar aerospace, government and commercial systems business for more than 10 years, died Thursday at Hahnemann University Hospital. As an executive, Mr. Kessler went out of his way to surround himself with men who were ambitious and aggressive, as he was. In an interview in 1970, he said he was proud of hiring "guys who have a burr under the saddle all the time. " He wore solid gold tiger cuff links and told New York Times reporter Albin Krebs that he sought "guys who are tigers, who approach their jobs like tigers on the prowl.

For the eighth year in a row, the RCA color television is the most popular brand in the country. Its market share of 16.25 percent puts it more than 4 percentage points above perennial runner-up Zenith, according to the annual industry survey conducted by Television Digest, the authoritative TV and electronics newsletter. Zenith last beat RCA in 1981. These two giants account for roughly 30 percent of the market every year, and the rest of the top 10 take about 40 percent. Thirty-three brands were ranked.

For Edwin R. Walthall, witnessing a 1951 atomic bomb test as a physicist at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific was not the first encounter with danger. Mr. Walthall was a nose gunner on B-17s for 21 missions deep into Nazi Germany during the last days of World War II. "We were lucky that no one in our crew got a scratch," he wrote in biographical notes for his family, "but some shrapnel penetrated our plane on several missions. " Only on his flight back to the United States did he face imminent peril, he wrote, when his plane landed in Gander, Newfoundland, with only three of its four engines working and low on fuel.

For Edwin R. Walthall, witnessing a 1951 atomic bomb test as a physicist at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific was not the first encounter with danger. Mr. Walthall was a nose gunner on B-17s for 21 missions deep into Nazi Germany during the last days of World War II. "We were lucky that no one in our crew got a scratch," he wrote in biographical notes for his family, "but some shrapnel penetrated our plane on several missions. " Only on his flight back to the United States did he face imminent peril, he wrote, when his plane landed in Gander, Newfoundland, with only three of its four engines working and low on fuel.

If RCA was the Apple of its day, one could say Camden was the Cupertino. But unlike the firm and the California suburb Steve Jobs made famous, the company that made records, radios and TVs in Camden long ago ceased to be a player in the consumer electronics revolution it helped start. For people like author Frederick O. Barnum III and his audience at the Camden County Historical Society, however, RCA-Camden's star will never dim. "It's part of who we are as South Jerseyans," society board president Sandy Levins told about 20 people Sunday at the museum on Park Boulevard.

THOMAS M. Hageman's formal education ended after Roman Catholic High School, but he went on to become a leader in the world of computers and oversaw installation of the Aegis Combat System in Japanese ships in the 1990s. Tom was also an electronics wizard who once built his own television set. But his biggest achievement, as far as he was concerned, was his family, to which he devoted his energies, hard work and dedication in a lifetime of love and concern. Tom Hageman, who retired in 1997 as a supervisory computer technician for the Lockheed Martin Corp., was a dedicated traveler, an Air Force veteran of the Korean War and a runner who competed in a number of races.

Fred Cohen, 83, of Cherry Hill, an adventurous entrepreneur who developed innovative systems for telecommunication companies, died of sepsis Thursday, Oct. 6, at Cooper University Medical Center in Camden. In 1967, Mr. Cohen was an electrical engineer at Radio Corp. of America in Camden. He noticed how long it took workers to find problems in a phone switching network and decided he could simplify the task, he later told The Inquirer. Working in his basement with an investment of $1,500 from two partners, he developed apparatus that pinpointed the electronic bugs quickly.

  Ignatius W. Scarpulla, 85, a manager at RCA in Moorestown and in the South Pacific who helped with the historical restoration of four houses in Society Hill, died of leukemia on Saturday, Sept. 24, at his home in Oro Valley, Ariz., near Tucson. Known as George, Mr. Scarpulla was born in the Bronx, was a teenage civilian air raid warden during World War II, and served as a weather observer in the Army Air Force from January 1946 to January 1947. He earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1949 at Manhattan College, where, as a son of Sicilian immigrants, he was president of Il Circolo Dante Alighieri, the Italian cultural club.

GEORGE SCARPULLA was one of the pioneers who braved the crumbling and shuttered neighborhood called Society Hill in the early '70s and transformed it into an urban miracle. But that was only one of George's accomplishments. He was an engineer whose work took him from the South Pacific to the Arctic Circle and many places in between. He worked as site manager on the "cruiser in a cornfield," a replica of a Navy ship that attracts considerable curiosity in a field in Moorestown, N.J., used to test radar equipment for the Navy's Aegis program.

Daniel Haines Swinderman, 87, of Medford, a retired mechanical designer and decorated World War II veteran, died of complications from an infection Sunday, May 1, at Virtua Marlton. Mr. Swinderman graduated from Northeast Philadelphia High School. During World War II, he served in the Army in Europe, landing in Normandy on Day 4. Later, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge and was awarded a Bronze Medal for valor. After his discharge, he studied mechanical drawing at Pennsauken Vocational Technical School.

I'M RELIEVED that the cowards who attacked 13-year-old Nadin Khoury were brought to justice. But someone should've stopped it before it got that far. If we want something like this to stop, we have to do so as a community. If someone's being bullied, please report it! I don't care what it takes, but someone must bring bullying to a screeching halt before someone else gets hurt or kills himself. Terrence Chambers, Philadelphia Camdenization of Philly? We have to worry about our city, not Camden.

Valdemar R. Monshaw, 84, of Haddonfield, a former director of product assurance at Radio Corp. of America's astro-electronics division in Hightstown, N.J., who won awards for his involvement with space electronics systems, died following complications from a hemorrhagic stroke on Saturday, Jan. 1, at his home. As part of the division from the 1960s through the 1980s, Mr. Monshaw worked on many of the satellites that advanced everyday technology, from getting a weather forecast to watching television.

Gerald J. Cedrone, 89, of Bryn Mawr, longtime financial analyst at Radio Corp. of America in Camden and co-owner of a family paving company in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer Saturday, Dec. 18, at Park Lane at Bellingham in West Chester. Mr. Cedrone was born and raised in Philadelphia. He graduated from St. Thomas More High School in 1939 and went on to study finance at La Salle College. His studies were interrupted when he was drafted to serve in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After being honorably discharged in 1946, Mr. Cedrone finished his bachelor's degree at La Salle.