WHY WESTINGHOUSE?

Westinghouse is more than lightbulbs and washing machines. Founded in 1886 by industrialist George Westinghouse to make transformers, the company grew during the next hundred years to lead the field in everything from nuclear power to radio broadcasting. Westinghouse himself obtained more than 400 patents in his lifetime.

During World War II, the government spurred much of Westinghouse’s research. The company’s Aerospace Division built visual, ultraviolet and infrared image sensors, and this electrical-optical expertise led to 1950s advances in molecular and integrated circuitry.

In 1962, Westinghouse started a TV camera development program. In 1963, NASA sees a 4-watt, 27-ounce vidicon camera tube. The Night Warfare Branch of the U.S. Army Engineering Research Lab at Fort Belvoir, Va., had wanted such a low-power, easy-to-use camera. And at the same time, a Navy missile tracking system had been designed to follow targets using a TV-imaging-type sensor.

Westinghouse also had equipment contracts for satellite and radar systems. The company learned solid-state circuitry and spacecraft design. The actual Secondary Electron Conduction target, the heart of the camera tube that became the lunar camera, was invented by Dr. G..W. Goetze of the Westinghouse Research Laboratories. It worked like a vidicon tube -- light created of a positive charge on an insulator layer -- but the tubes were quite different. The SEC’s innovations made it much quicker, and 100 times more sensitive. It could reproduce images of moving objects, operate with slow scan or delayed readout and handle the tight transmission bandwidth of the moon-to-earth video link.

In 1964, NASA told Westinghouse to build the first lunar camera. The SEC was perfected during the next five years into the technological marvel that provided the pictures the world saw when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in 1969.

Today, Westinghouse has changed. It the early 1990s, it sold most of its electronics and industrial units. In 1995, Westinghouse bought CBS for 5.4 billion dollars, and in 1996, it announced plans to concentrate on broadcasting.