science

WEA Manufacturing

WEA Manufacturing is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand WEA Manufacturing rather than just read about it. In short: WEA Manufacturing was the record, tape, and compact disc manufacturing arm of WEA International Inc. from 1978 to 2003, when it was sold and merged into Cinram International, a previous competitor. The last owner when the plant closed was Technicolor.

Key takeaways

WEA Manufacturing belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect WEA Manufacturing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of WEA Manufacturing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

WEA Manufacturing was the record, tape, and compact disc manufacturing arm of WEA International Inc. from 1978 to 2003, when it was sold and merged into Cinram International, a previous competitor. The last owner when the plant closed was Technicolor.

History WEA Manufacturing Inc. was created in 1978–1979 when Warner Communications Inc. purchased two of its longtime suppliers: the record pressing plants Specialty Records Corporation (Olyphant, Pennsylvania) and Allied Record Company (Los Angeles). The company was headquartered in Olyphant, where the original plant was replaced in late 1981 by a new facility which retained the name Specialty Records Corporation. The Specialty Records Corporation name was dropped in 1996 in favor of WEA Manufacturing. The company invested in CD manufacturing in 1986, matching a $247,000 contribution by economic development corporation Ben Franklin Technology Partners to develop and implement new processes of manufacturing audio CDs and CD-ROMs. BFTP assembled a team of experts in physics, electrical engineering, and thin film technology from the University of Scranton and Lehigh University to carry out the research and development. The Olyphant plant and another plant in Alsdorf, Germany, were expanded to support CD pressing that year, with the Olyphant facility's production commencing first in September 1986. WEA Manufacturing grew to become one of the largest manufacturers of recorded media in the world. The company began manufacturing Laserdiscs in July 1991. The company's DVD division, Warner Advanced Media Operations (WAMO), helped design the high-density format used in DVDs, and manufactured some of the first DVDs in the late 1990s. The company was sold to Cinram International in October 2003 and no longer exists under the name WEA Manufacturing, but the Olyphant plant continued to operate under its new ownership. In 2005, the company was Lackawanna County's largest employer, with over 2,300 people working at the Olyphant plant. Cinram closed the former Allied plant in 2006, while Technicolor (which purchased Cinram's assets in 2015) closed the Olyphant plant in 2018.

Patents WEA Manufacturing held U.S. patents related to compact disc manufacture:

Print scanner, (1993). Interference of converging spherical waves with application to the design of light-readable information-recording media and systems for reading such media, (2004). Method of manufacturing a composite disc structure and apparatus for performing the method, (2005). Methods and apparatus for reducing the shrinkage of an optical disc's clamp area and the resulting optical disc, (2005).

Litigation In 1990, WEA Manufacturing was sued by a Canadian firm, Optical Recording Co. (ORC), for alleged infringement of two 1971 patents related to glass mastering equipment which was used by Time Warner and WEA Manufacturing in the manufacture of approximately 450 million CDs. ORC contended that unlike five other major CD manufacturers in the U.S., Time Warner had refused to license the technology from ORC. In 1992, a jury assessed damages of 6 cents per disc, plus $4–5 million in interest.

See also Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation, another early U.S. manufacturer of CDs

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with WEA Manufacturing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what WEA Manufacturing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to WEA Manufacturing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about WEA Manufacturing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of WEA Manufacturing

In research: WEA Manufacturing appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses WEA Manufacturing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: WEA Manufacturing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1978 establishments in Pennsylvania, 2003 disestablishments in Pennsylvania, Compact disc, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for WEA Manufacturing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study WEA Manufacturing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what WEA Manufacturing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain WEA Manufacturing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is WEA Manufacturing in simple terms?

Why does WEA Manufacturing matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study WEA Manufacturing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on WEA Manufacturing.