On Closer Examination…Something We All Missed Is Here!
Last month, some collector friends and I were trying to put a date on the introduction of the Houston Fearless TD 3 pedestal. We all thought 1954 was probably the year the new lead counterweight pedestal debuted, but low and behold…look at this!
Just this morning, I was looking for photos of the RCA Electra Zoom lens for the next article I’m posting today, but look what I found. At least one TD 3 is in use here on the debut of ‘Today’ on January 14, 1952!
I think this is the prototype in a field test and where better to put it through it’s paces than this new morning show. Notice a silver band just under the lock ring…that’s where the access doors join to the column cover. That was never there on the production models.
We can see the TD 3 in two of these photos and in the third one, we see what the other cameras were mounted on…the old TD 1 crank up model. While you click through these, take a close look at the zoom lens and I’ll have more on that next, and look at that teleprompter. I think that may have been an RCA prototype too. I’ve never seen that anywhere else but here on ‘Today’, have you?
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