Last Of The Monochrome Cameras: The RCA TK60
The great TK60 actually began as the TK12 and was introduced at the 1960 NAB. the TK12 was RCA’s first new camera design in 8 years and had what would become the “RCA New Look”, blue color for all their TV equipment. Electronically it used the new 4.5″ IO tube. It was restyled at the 1961 NAB with a tally light on top, updated again in 1963 to become the TK60 which had the additional exhaust fan and ‘chimney’ on top just behind the tally.
Sunday Night Show Fall 1964, ABC CBS NBC Wagon Train, My Favorite Martian, 20th Century, My Living Doll, Joey Bishop Show, Candid Camera, Profiles In Courage, Walt Disney Wonderful Of Color, Bill Dana Show, Bonanza, The Rouges, and more are remembered here is promo clips. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuIeQA1d0D0 What you would’ve watched on a typical Sunday night […]
Behind ‘The Admiral Broadway Revue’ Debacle… Yesterday, in discussing the history of NBC’s International Theater, we discovered that despite high ratings, Admiral had pulled the plug on it’s own ‘Admiral Broadway Revue’ starring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca which debuted on January 29, 1949. Out of curiosity, I dug a little deeper into Admiral and […]
ABC Hollywood & Vine Studio History Update…Firm Date Located At the link below is my original story from November 19th in which I speculated on the date ABC took it over, but thanks to Steve Dichter, we now have a firm date. This clipping is from the July 4, 1949 issue of Broadcasting – Telecasting […]
Meet The Voices Of Rocky And Bullwinkle…June Foray and Bill Scott All you have to do is watch and the magic will unfold so I don’t need to say more, except this….tomorrow, I’ll have more from them and the whole cast! It’s a rare recording that fans will love! Enjoy and share! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieOGZtGUjRQ This is […]
Looks strangely familiar…
Beautiful cameras. Who knows about the electronics? Was the TK60 also the last of RCA’s tube cameras (not counting the IO, of course)?
The TK-60s were mostly tubes (nuvistors–a highly reliable small metal tube design RCA introduced in 1959), RCA was kind of slow introducing transistors as the early ones tended to be unstable and die suddenly while in use–this changed when RCA got involved in FET development around 1965. The first place where transistors appeared were in the power supplies (I’ve seen TK-41s that were upgraded to solid state power supplies), and the last place tubes were used were in the high voltage rectifiers. (Marconi MK VIIs had a few). IIRC–the TK-42/43 was all-transistor. (Folks, please correct me if you know better.)
Thanks, Tom!