For television history fans, this section is ground zero!
Instead of being laid out by dates, the history of broadcast television that is portrayed here unfolds by the brand and model of camera used.
The RCA section is the largest and most complete because that was the dominant brand from the 1930s till the 1980s. General Electric cameras shared the same general time span, but were not widely used. The DuMont network and its cameras were pretty much out of the picture by the early 1950s, but were important elements of the early Jackie Gleason shows and others.
The Norelco period started in 1965 and this brand really gave RCA a run for the money as they were the first real color competitor. CBS snapped them up immediately and there is a lot of great CBS history in the Norelco and Marconi sections. Marconi’s famous Mark IV black and white camera came to America and The Ed Sullivan Theatre in 1958. Marconi’s color Mark VII was also used by CBS, but the great CBS color burst (mostly from Television City) was all Norelco.
In the RCA section, the chronology of the model tabs at the top of each page is left to right. Keeping in mind that most camera models were in use for 15 or so years from the time they were bought, it is impossible to give a date range on their use, but below is a list of when the RCA cameras debuted and came into use.
RCA TK10 and TK30 – 1946
RCA TK11 and TK31 – 1952
RCA TK40 and TK41 (color) – 1954
RCA TK42 and TK43 – 1965 and 1966
RCA TK60 (monochrome) – 1960
RCA TK44A, 45A, 46A – 1968, ’73 and ’76
RCA TK47 – 1978
You can reach each page through the menu above…or you can click on the icons below.
