Spending 40 years in the consumer electronics industry, all with RCA and its later owners and affiliates, Joe Donahue started out as an engineer and then served in several executive positions including vice president and general manager of the Consumer Electronics Division and, finally, CEO. In the early 1950s, Donahue invented the so-called "slurry process," a manufacturing innovation still in use today to produce picture tubes. In 1984, he oversaw the development of the Dimensia system, one of the first lines of interconnected video products controlled via a single on-screen computerized interface that presaged packaged home theater systems. Donahue was appointed senior vice president for technology and business development for Thomson after the French giant bought RCA from GE in 1986, and then headed the Sarnoff Research Labs after it became an independent entity. Donahue was a leading figure in the Grand Alliance and the development of HDTV before retiring in 1994.