I like a good return story of technological innovation, struggle, failure and redemption. He is all in the invention of the scanning capacitance microscope.
In 1981, RCA filed A patent for scm Researcher of the company James R. From Matty. The microscope was an inadvertent product of video -edged technology, which the company was struggling to bring it to the market since the mid -1960s. The RCA had expected that the Vidyadisk home video would capture half of the market, but instead it lost extensively to VHS.
RCA’s James. R. Matty invented the scanning capacitance microscope, using a cannibal sensor from the company’s Videkisk players. Hagley Museum & Library
Despite the struggles of the video, the underlying technology organized a gem: the excellent sensitive capacitance sensors used in Videkisk players were able to measure capacitance difference on the scale of atofarads (1 × 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (1 × 10 10 (-18 Farad).
But before the engineers and scientists could rely on the idea of Matty, they wanted an independent assessment to confirm the accuracy of the new microscope. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology were forced. In the early 1990s, they were also portrayed at the top of cannibal capacitance sensors and a series of custom-made SCMs from the older video players. After the NIST recognition, microscope manufacturers commercialized the SCM, the chipmakers adopted them to study the integrated circuit, thus opening the door to the next generation of semiconductors.
Why RCA Videkisk failed
But no story about the victory of the scanning capacitance microscope will not be complete without any discussion of the failure of the video. In theory, it should be prosperous: it was a fully researched product that estimated an important consumer market. Its playback fidelity was better than over-the-air programming and magnetic tape. And yet it bombed. Why?
Vidyodisk’s attempt started in the early 1960s, when RCA asked themselves, “What comes after color TV? What will be the next major consumer electronics system?” The company decided that North had some types of system to play prerecard films and TV shows through your television. RCA was away from alone in advancing this idea. All of the home video systems under development include a storage medium, film, magnetic tape, nonamagnetic tape, and vinyl disc of various sizes and composition – and a tool for playing audio and video back in high resolution. In addition to magnetic methods, information can be stored using electromachanical, photographic, electron-beam or optical technologies.
The RCA Vidyodisk was easily damaged by dust and fingers, so they were loaded into the selectvis player inside plastic sleeves.Hagley Museum & Library
By 1964, RCA settled on the video. Like a record album (which led by the company by the company), a vidyodisk was a grud vinyl plaater that uses a stylus for playback. Unlike a record, the videoodiscis took both the audio and the video to a very high density, and the stylus had electricity rather than mechanical. (Videcodis is sometimes confused Laser diskA home video technique of that era that used an optical laser.)
RCA called its disk capacitance electronic disc. The Videgisk Player ran a 30-gram disc for 450 rpm consecutive rpm. A metal stylus detected depression and bumps in the disc groove by entering the difference in capacitance, the way a touchscreen causes an detectable change in the screen at that time to bring its finger into contact with a touchscreen. Solid-State Circuitry encoded the covered video signal in capacitance differences. These differences were on the orders of Famtofarads, and the video signal lasted around 910 MHz. To get a clear picture, the videoodeiscre system requires a very sensitive capacitance sensor to detect these small differences at high frequency.
Unfortunately, commercialization took longer than expected. In 1972, RCA announced that its vidyis would begin next year, but it did not become physical. An article in popular Science In February 1977, regional sales estimated by the end of that year. But it was not till March 1981 that the RCA Selectavision System finally killed the market. Despite the heavy promotion, it was poorly sold and pulled from the shelves in 1984. Finally, RCA drowned about 500 million US dollars in 20 years to develop the videoodeiscis, and it was a total flop.
How Videotep conquers videoodeiscis
what went wrong? In one word: Videotep. Magnetic tape, which was rejected by RCA, left for more consumer appeal. In 1976, VHS tapes were cheap, more titles for purchase or rent were available, and, significantly, allowed owners to record their own programs.
Perhaps if the video was launched in 1973, it could have been a chance. But technology had other problems. Fingerprints, dust, and torpedo scratches the early designs that imagine users to remove the disc from the sleeve, as a record album accidentally; Instead, the last version entered the disc open which was then inserted into the player.
RCA spent two decades to develop their home video system, but finally lost to selectavision VHS and VCRS. Hagley Museum & Library
Another problem was going on. In 1977, the vodisk can hold only 30 minutes of content per side. By the time of the product launch, it rose to an hour per hour, but this meant that any film of more than 120 minutes would have to be spread in many discs. The first VHS tape can double 120 minute video (its main tape contestant, betamax). And VHS expanded the lead: until the 1980s, VHS had long sports (four hours) and extended play (six hours) versions, with attention in determination quality.
The RCA forecasts also denied the economics of Vidyadisk players badly wrong. His 1977 was estimated to estimate $ 500 (about $ 2,800 in today’s dollar) for a video -edged player. Earlier VHS players were very expensive, from $ 1,000 to $ 1,400, but by the mid -1980s, their price fell from $ 200 to $ 400. The VHS tape of the major Hollywood films costs around $ 80 – which is more than the $ 10 to $ 18 value tag of the video – but only dihard fans paid a modern equivalent of about $ 440 to buy a film on the video. For all the rest, Hollywood Studios gave the title to third -party rental companies. Throughout the night, national series such as independent video shops, supermarkets, and blockbusters were renting films for a small fee. For a brief period, RCA Videkisk shared shelves with videotpes, but usually only at independent shops and never many titles are available.
Meanwhile, RCA struggled to sell its video players. The company had an annual sale of five to six million players; Its first year target was a more modest 200,000, and yet it sold that number only half. By 1984, RCA realized that the Videkisk would never enter 50 percent of the market, give up profitability alone, and drag the plug.
Scanning capacitance microscope born
This will usually end the story, another unsuccessful enterprise in consumer electronics. But when RCA scientists first began to research on the Vidyodisk, there were no microscope capable of identifying small changes in the disc, which encountered the audio/video signal. The bumps and depression were less than the size of the drain less than the tenth; Even the most advanced microscope of the day cannot detect the characteristics that are small.
A factory worker inspects an RCA Vidyodisk, which encoded the audio and video signal in the drain of the disc. Hagley Museum & Library
And so RCA James Matty Developed and scanning capacitance microscope (which they abbreviated the scam, but others were wisely shortened to the SCM) as a quality-control tool for the construction of the Vidyodisk. Four years after the first patent, RCA filed Re -patent With some reforms and reforms. In a very readable paper in March 1985 issue Applied Physics Journal, Joseph Blanc, researcher from Matey and fellow RCA, told about the new technology. SCM can detect variation in surface topography at a order of 0.3 nanometers in areas at an order of 0.5 square micrometers. The RCA delayed the publication of this paper, until it stopped the Vidyodisk’s operation, and so Matty and Blanc concluded their paper, “We are currently in the process of customizing (SCMs) for similar uses (SCMs) on other samples.” The new use came out in the construction of the next generation of semiconductors.
The semiconductor performance depends on the distribution of intentional launch impurities, which are called dopents, which change the capacity of the material to operate electricity. In the early days of semiconductor production, manufacturers used ion mass spectroscopy and a technique, which is called resistance resistance to measure dopnt distribution in one dimension.
By the late 1980s, integrated circuits had become so small that the industry required a way to measure dopents in two dimensions. The SCM, used in combination with an atomic force microscope, fit the bill. When the conductive tip of the nuclear force microscope created contact with a semiconductor surface, it created a small timber on the orders of the order of femotophards of Atofarads, depending on the dopnt concentration. The SCM measured the changes of local delicts and mapped the dopenth distribution. But technology was still a novel and is not yet commercially available, so the researchers of the Nist worked to test it.
In the early 1990s, Joseph Kopanski, J Rorigano, and David Bering began building a series of Custom SCMs at NIST Semiconductor Electronics Division. He re -introduced the results of Matty and Black only. He also provided industries with models and software to extract two -dimensional dop at distribution from the measurement.
SCM’s verification of NIST led the commercial production of equipment, leading to the development of more-fourth semi-circulars in turn-an industry that is an order of more important magnitude for the global economy, such as consumer products such as vidis. This is a classic story of redemption in the history of technology: at the beginning of any new technology project, no one really knows what the result will be. Sometimes, you just have to walk through failure, and believe that something good will emerge on the other side.
Part of Verification series Given historical artifacts that embrace the immense capacity of technology.
A brief version of this article in October 2025 print issue “RCA’s Videkisk Gamble paid in chips.”
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