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RCA Press Release for February 6, 1981

INDIANAPOLIS, Feb. 6 --- David D. Tompkins has been named vice president for industrial design for RCA's television, VCR and VideoDisc products, David E. Daly, vice president of the RCA Sales Corporation, announced today.

Mr. Tompkins succeeds Tucker P. Madawick who has retired after 21 years of directing the Division's industrial design activities.

A native of New York City, Mr. Tompkins has designed consumer and industrial products since 1959. He is a graduate of Pratt Institute in New York with a degree in industrial design.

He received the Outstanding Design Award for 1980 from the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the "Design in Steel" award from the America Iron and Steel Institute in 1965, 1973 and 1975.

In succeeding Mr. Madawick, he will be responsible for the design of the entire range of RCA's consumer electronic products, directing a staff of 14 industrial designers located at the RCA Design Center in Indianapolis.

Mr. Tompkins joined Mack Trucks in 1959. The following year he attended the General Motors Technical Center as a designer. He was with the New York firm of Walter Dorwin Teague Inc. from 1961 to 1963 and the Richardson-Smith firm in Worthington, Ohio, from 1963 to 1977.

He established his own design firm in Boulder, Colo., in 1979. He organized the Columbus, Ohio, chapter of IDSA last year.

In his 21 years of design experience, Mr. Tompkins has been involved with such consumer product firms as Black & Decker, Shopsmith, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, Litton, Channel Master, Nimrod, AMC/Federated, Rubbermaid and OM Scott.

He has also been active in education, having taught environmental space design from 1965 to 1970 at Ohio State University and conducted other courses in design and business for the past seven years. Mr. Tompkins has also been a guest lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design, Ohio University, Pratt Institute, and the University of Michigan and the University of Cincinnatti.

Active in both national and international industrial design activities, Mr. Madawick served as president of the IDSA and a fellow of the organization. Before joining RCA in 1959, he spent 13 years with Raymond Loewy Associates, the New York industrial design firm.

During his tenure at RCA, Mr. Madawick introduced numerous design innovations to the consumer electronics industry including the armoire cabinet and specialty radio designs. He also pioneered the "family series" of console TV cabinets which offered one basic model in four different furniture styles.

This broadened appeal of console models was followed by Mr. Madawick's involvement in the greater use of non-wood materials in cabinets to reduce costs and further expand the number of designs offered in the RCA television lines. At the same time he helped RCA develop the concept of lower cost cabinets that could be shipped flat to the final TV assembly point.

Mr. Madawick, now residing in Ft. Myers, Fla., plans to be involved as a design consultant in the consumer furnishings field.