ABSTRACT
The war gave a tremendous boost to the electronics industry on both sides of the Atlantic and indeed precipitated key technological advances which were essential to colour television. In postwar America incomes were high enough to appear to offer a big and early market for colour television. Colour television, at first sight an apparently obvious case of European failure and American success, is as difficult to assess as any of the innovations discussed in these studies. The contrast between the position of the companies was matched by a difference in postwar national environment. In Britain, as a result of changes in structure during the 1930s and 1950s, there are a number of companies which deal primarily with the consumer market and another group which handles capital equipment. Fiscal policy in the USA, to the extent that it did affect sales of consumer durables, was not a direct threat to RCA in that it affected only part of RCA's sales.
