sjr@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) (02/22/91)
H> john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) B> Richard Budd <KLUB@maristb.bitnet> (18 Feb 91 20:15 CDT) H> No color television? Speak for yourself, Pat. [...] H> I distinctly remember watching (of all things) the Perry Como show on H> NBC on Saturday nights because it was very much in color on the H> neighbor's RCA color TV. (The first color TV I ever saw was in 1956.) B> Actually, color television has been around longer than either Pat or B> John (if I deduce correctly from their high school graduation dates B> that they were born in the early 1940's). It's been available since B> the early 1930's, though before World War II it was strictly B> experimental. Hmmm ... that's very interesting. It seems like if color television was around _that_ early, that it must be of the mechanical, spinning disk variety. Having said that, how long has the NTSC-compatible color TV system been around? B> Color television wasn't rare, but color television programming B> certainly was before 1965. What I find amazing was that there was technology to _record_ color TV through videotape in the early 50's. I believe that was done with the late Mary Martin's "Peter Pan" TV special in 1954, and that has got to be the earliest videotape on record. Sander J. Rabinowitz | sjr@mcimail.com -or- | +1 313 478 6358 Farmington Hills, Mich. | sander@attmail.com | 8-)
syd@dsi.com (Syd Weinstein) (02/22/91)
sjr@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) writes: > What I find amazing was that there was technology to _record_ color TV > through videotape in the early 50's. I believe that was done with the > late Mary Martin's "Peter Pan" TV special in 1954, and that has got to > be the earliest videotape on record. Ok, I know this is off the track, but perhaps Pat will let one more in before he closes the door ... Color TV (NTSC) was stanardized in the 1950's. The reason color did not get popular until 1966 was the patent RCA had on the color picture tube. All color picture tubes prior to the patent running out had to be licensed from RCA. Now, to push the sales of RCA sets, and color tubes in general, RCA's network NBC did a large amount of its schedule in color (Thus the peacock and all the hoopla around color by NBC). Once the patent expired, all the networks that next year were suddenly in Color. I am sure the reason was more political than economic. Mary Martin's special in 1954 was not video taped at all. It was in black and white. As was the second one (I think 57, but I am unsure). The third one was in color, and that is the tape that was restored. It was done in 1960 (I may be off a year or two) and was recorded in 'low band color', the first color recording technique. The RCA VTR's that did this were really upgraded black and white ones that had been extended for low band color. This lead to a lot of restoration necessary to recover a good picture from the tapes. Modern 2" Quad (circa 1970) was high band color (a shift in the carrier) and had more bandwidth and time base stability. Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP Elm Coordinator Datacomp Systems, Inc. Voice: (215) 947-9900 syd@DSI.COM or dsinc!syd FAX: (215) 938-0235
sjr@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) (02/23/91)
SJR> sjr@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) SW> syd@dsi.com (Syd Weinstein) (Feb 21, '91) SJR> What I find amazing was that there was technology to _record_ color TV SJR> through videotape in the early 50's. I believe that was done with the SJR> late Mary Martin's "Peter Pan" TV special in 1954, and that has got to SJR> be the earliest videotape on record. SW> Ok, I know this is off the track, but perhaps Pat will let one more SW> in before he closes the door ... Pat, if you must close this topic, what Usenet newsgroup would be more appropriate? I'd like to continue this, if I can. SW> Mary Martin's special in 1954 was not video taped at all. It was in SW> black and white. As was the second one (I think 57, but I am unsure). SW> The third one was in color, and that is the tape that was restored. (SJR looks embarassed) I have to admit I got taken in. Being born in the 60's has its advantages, but this is not one of them. I had been watching an obituary report on Mary Martin when she died last year, and it showed the color version of Peter Pan with the announcer stating it was sometime in the 50's. Further research does indicate that Mary Martin did Peter Pan at least twice ... once in 1955 (not in '54, my mistake), and once again in 1956; both times were for NBC's Producers Showcase. I'm surprised either of these weren't in color, given RCA's push for color broadcasting then. SW> It [the Mary Martin Special] was done in 1960 (I may be off a year SW> or two) and was recorded in 'low band color', the first color recording SW> technique. Is it possible the 1956 version _could have_ used this technique, or is even this too early? Sorry for misleading anyone on the net. Sander J. Rabinowitz | sjr@mcimail.com -or- | +1 313 478 6358 Farmington Hills, Mich. | sander@attmail.com | 8-) [Moderator's Note: rec.video is a good place to continue. Thanks. PAT]
jeh@dcs.simpact.com (Jamie Hanrahan) (02/23/91)
In article <telecom11.144.5@eecs.nwu.edu>, sjr@m-net.ann-arbor.mi.us (Sander J. Rabinowitz) writes: > B> Richard Budd <KLUB@maristb.bitnet> (18 Feb 91 20:15 CDT) > B> Color television wasn't rare, but color television programming > B> certainly was before 1965. CBS being the last holdout. At least part of the first season of _Mission: Impossible_ (Fall of '66, the ones with Stephen Hill playing Dan Briggs as head of the IMF) was filmed in glorious black and white. And THAT, my friends, was one of the highest-budget shows in tv at the time (yes, Paramount was pait more $ per episode for M:I than for Star Trek) > What I find amazing was that there was technology to _record_ color TV > through videotape in the early 50's. I believe that was done with the > late Mary Martin's "Peter Pan" TV special in 1954, and that has got to > be the earliest videotape on record. I spent some time hanging around Loyola Marymount (LA area) College's TV Arts department in '72 or so. Those were the days when color was just about everywhere and the big Ampex 2" quad VTRs were king. Loyola had TWO of them along with the editing console, the HS100 slow-motion disk machine and the HS200 programmer to go with it, two Norelco color cameras, a Grass Valley switcher, the works ... everything but a transmitter. The point of this rambling is that it is absolutely incredible to me that one can buy, for just $200, a machine that will put two hours of video on a spool of tape that can fit in a pocket (if you take it out of the cassette). Or less than a thousand for an S-VHS machine that has better horizontal resolution than those Ampex's had. Sure, it's not genlocked, and the chroma bandwidth and noise aren't very good, but the fact that such inexpensive boxes can do this job AT ALL is pretty damn amazing. Yes, yes, Pat, I know, this should go in rec.video. Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Internet: jeh@dcs.simpact.com, or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com Uucp: ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!jeh [Moderator's Note: And to rec.video it must go -- or go *somewhere* anyway! A final message from SJR follows immediatly, to close the thread where telecom is concerned. PAT]
jj1028@homxc.att.com (Maurice R Baker) (02/25/91)
In article <telecom11.156.2@eecs.nwu.edu>, bilver!bill@uunet.uu.net (Bill Vermillion) writes: > This was during the first year of color in that area. We had > technical discussion on the medium, and one interesting project at > that time was the "Chromatron" tube being developed by Dr. Lawrence at > CBS. Trying to find a way to get rid of the mask and the dot-triad, > this tube used striped phosphors, horizontally. Never made it. An early, somewhat distant relation of the Sony Trinitron. > There were NO commercial video tape machines available before about > 1961. I remember when I was working at KXLY radio in Spokane that our > TV station got their first B&W VCR. It was about $80,000 in 1961 > dollars (That should easily be about $300,000 in todays dollars), had > three six-foot tall racks of tube electronics and 1 rack for the > transport. Model was RCA VR-1. (Video Recorder One). From what I Ahem ... it was TR-1 (for Television Recorder). I used to work for a TV station which owned one; it was long since retired by the time I started there, but still an impressive sight [what was left of it ... some of its innards had been cannabalized for repair parts used in other pieces of equipment]. RCA liked to name its television equipment "T_" followed by some sort of a number. To wit: television 2" quad VTRs were TR-1, TR-2, TR-22, TR-70, TR-600 (there were also variations on the theme -- TR-70B vs TR-70C -- latter having digital servos, etc.). Film/slide projectors were TP-16 (for 16 mm. movies) and TP-66 (for slides) into a film chain. Television transmitters were TT-something, television video-cart machines (now there's a Rube Goldberg invention if there ever was one, and sounded like it when running, too) were TCR-100s, and television frame synchronizers (only made one to my knowledge) were TFS-121s. Curiously, television cameras were not TC-xxxx but TK-44, TK-45, TK-76, etc. TK-4x series was color TV studio cameras ... TK-47 being the last version made. Believe that they still use 'em on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. TK-76 was a very popular (and rugged ... built like a tank) portable ENG camera. Not to forget the infamous TK-27 film chain camera ... if you watched any movies on TV during the mid-late 60s or early-mid 70s, it's a good bet that they were seen via a TK-27. It used four tubes: three for Red, Green, and Blue and a fourth for luminance ... not to mention an involved scheme which controlled sensitivity by varying target voltage, making it a real bear to set up and align. The TK-28 was an improvement ... only three vidicons, and a fast acting neutral density filter wheel to effectively control sensitivity. By then, electronics technology had really come a long way in a fairly short time. In the early to mid 80's you could see RCA Broadcast going downhill, and they finally left the business shortly before RCA was acquired by GE. One can marvel at some of the real engineering accomplishments which could only happen in such a unique environment, and shudder at the way the MBAs are effectively ensuring that it'll never happen again. M. Baker
streeter@athena.cs.uga.edu (Tom Streeter) (02/27/91)
In article <telecom11.156.2@eecs.nwu.edu> bilver!bill@uunet.uu.net (Bill Vermillion) writes: > The NTSC compatible finally came out after the end of the Korean war. > There was a government restriction on any new TV stations during that > time. > The war hiatus gave RCA time enough to perfect their system. The CBS > "color wheel" (field sequential color) was approved before the war, > but was not widespread because of the government mandate. > There were NO commercial video tape machines available before about > 1961. I remember when I was working at KXLY radio in Spokane that our > TV station got their first B&W VCR. It was about $80,000 in 1961 > dollars (That should easily be about $300,000 in todays dollars), had > three six-foot tall racks of tube electronics and 1 rack for the > transport. Model was RCA VR-1. (Video Recorder One). From what I > remember of it's quality it wasn't much better than any $500 VHS unit > today, if that. Color VCR's were still a couple of years away. Two corrections: The FCC actually approved the CBS system prior to the Korean War, but the rest of the industry (under the banner of the Radio Manufacturers Association) made the decision not to produce the sets. This left CBS in a defacto monopoly situation it was not in a position to exploit. Wheras NBC and DuMont had manufacturing arms to back them up, CBS did not have the means to roll out its TVs. As Barnouw writes the history, the FCC reversed its decision and blamed it on the war later. The adoption of a color standard was only one part of the television freeze; it was primarily imposed to work out channel allotments (though color became one of the biggest delays to lifting it. There were six issues on the table, and it was decided that all six had to be resolved before the freeze could be lifted.) As for VTRs, Ampex rolled out its first machine at the NAB convention in 1953. CBS bought the first for something in the neighborhood of $100,000. Bing Crosby was a major force behind the invention because he hated doing his show live on the West Coast and having it sent on kine to the East. I was recently digging through old copies of "Broadcasting" and came across an article describing how the first machines would work. At the time this article was written, Ampex had not yet been chosen as the manufacturer. Tom Streeter streeter@athena.cs.uga.edu
bill@uunet.uu.net (Bill Vermillion) (03/01/91)
In article <telecom11.161.8@eecs.nwu.edu> streeter@athena.cs.uga.edu (Tom Streeter) writes: > In article <telecom11.156.2@eecs.nwu.edu> bilver!bill@uunet.uu.net > (Bill Vermillion) writes: >> There were NO commercial video tape machines available before about >> 1961. > Two corrections: > As for VTRs, Ampex rolled out its first machine at the NAB convention > in 1953. CBS bought the first for something in the neighborhood of > $100,000. They may have shown that early, but none were availaale until about 1960 on a commerical basis. > Bing Crosby was a major force behind the invention because > he hated doing his show live on the West Coast and having it sent on > kine to the East. I was recently digging through old copies of > "Broadcasting" and came across an article describing how the first > machines would work. At the time this article was written, Ampex had > not yet been chosen as the manufacturer. Right man, Crosby, but the wrong machine. Crosby was instrumental in the development of the first AUDIO tape recorder. He would broadcast a RADIO program for the east coast, and then re-do it live for the west coast three hours later. The 16" transcription format was not up to his standards. He funded a lot of research into that market. Memory is just a bit hazy here, but I seem to remember the company was called "Crosby Associates". There was an old Russian Inventor/Researcher named Alexander M. Poiniatoff (sp?) who was working on the same thing. He founded a company that used the initials of his name A.M.P and added EX for "Execellance" and called the company AMPEX. I believe Crosby merged with them. In those days the disk recorder manufacturers were also moving into audio tape machines. I have seen reel to reel machines from Presto and RCA. Scully came along much later. I don't have to dig through old magazines for that stuff. As a kid I was fascinated by audio, having first heard my voice recorded on an home disk recorder with paper based acetate discs in the mid-40s. I watched the equipment development and wanted a recorder of my own more than anything. I almost built a disk recorder using the GI home mechanism and the schmatics in (what WAS it called) Radio-Television Electronics (?)? First tape recorder I got to use was an old Brush Sound-Mirror about 1950-51 in school. Bought a wire rerorder with hard saved money in 1953. Ampex's first commercially successful machine was the 200, and it was almost the size of their first 2" vcr. HUGE floor mounted console. Bill Vermillion - UUCP: uunet!tarpit!bilver!bill : bill@bilver.UUCP
kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov (Scott Dorsey) (03/03/91)
In article <telecom11.169.3@eecs.nwu.edu> bilver!bill@uunet.uu.net (Bill Vermillion) writes: >>> There were NO commercial video tape machines available before about >>> 1961. >> Two corrections: >> As for VTRs, Ampex rolled out its first machine at the NAB convention >> in 1953. CBS bought the first for something in the neighborhood of >> $100,000. > They may have shown that early, but none were availaale until about > 1960 on a commerical basis. This was the early Quad format VTR. It was B&W only, and used 2" instrumentation tape. For more details on Ampex's development of the format, take a look at the article on the history of magnetic recording in {Broadcast Engineering} magazine (sometime late in '89). While Ampex did make a Quad machine in '53, and while it was very popular among the networks for cross-country time delay, it was extremely expensive. The heads had to be replaced on a regular basis and it ate up 2" instrumentation tape at an amazing rate. If the tape jammed (as it did quite frequently), a vapor cloud of oxide would quickly appear around the head drum as the tape coating disintegrated. Because of the price, it didn't appear in local stations that quickly. The quality wasn't all that much better than the kinescopes that it replaced, though it didn't require several hours of processing. While Ernie Kovacs showed that the tape could be edited, it was very difficult to do, required frequent resplices, and made the format almost impossible to use for program production. Basically, there were two types of programs. Some were done live, and others were produced on film for later broadcast through flying spot scanners. (Anybody else ever used a Rank Telecine out there?) The programs produced on film didn't move over to video production until the late sixties when good electronic editing became available (if there can be such a thing). The programs done live for cross-country broadcast began using tape for delay in the later time zones as soon as it became available. Very few programs are done live anymore. This is more a change due to creative evolution than technical developments. Slickness is very much valued in modern production. Actually, producing programs on film and then scanning them for broadcast stayed on for a long time, because of the difficulty of editing, and the fact that the film resolution was (and still is) much better than videotape. 16mm Kodachrome has 12,500 lines of resolution (equivalent to a TV image with 25,000 scanlines). A lot of programs are still created on film, though they are distributed on tape or over network feed. >> Bing Crosby was a major force behind the invention because >> he hated doing his show live on the West Coast and having it sent on >> kine to the East. I was recently digging through old copies of >> "Broadcasting" and came across an article describing how the first >> machines would work. At the time this article was written, Ampex had >> not yet been chosen as the manufacturer. > Right man, Crosby, but the wrong machine. > Crosby was instrumental in the development of the first AUDIO tape > recorder. > In those days the disk recorder manufacturers were also moving into > audio tape machines. I have seen reel to reel machines from Presto > and RCA. Scully came along much later. The Ampex 200 recorder became available in 1949. A lot of folks bought them. Basically, once the idea of AC bias became known, it became easy for anyone to build a pretty good recorder. The Ampex 300 was introduced a year or two later; I still use an Ampex 350 (the "portable" version of the 300) for recording. The 300 really became popular; there wasn't a radio station in the country that didn't buy one, and many of them are still using them. Scully, RCA, Presto (ugh), etc. came out with their own machines, usually licensing the Ampex and Rangertone patents. They were all great improvements over the awful transcription discs. > First tape recorder I got to use was an old Brush Sound-Mirror about > 1950-51 in school. Bought a wire rerorder with hard saved money in > 1953. I have great pity upon you. Did you ever get it to keep a constant speed? scott