Archives

The Fearless Camera Pedestal May 23, 1949 Ray Wilcox and Bruce Dalton submitted their patent application for television’s second ever camera pedestal, but the first to use the now standard center steering ring. The patent was assigned to their employer, the Fearless Camera Company in Culver City, CA. The up and down action for…

Designed by Alda V Bedford and Knut J Magnusson, the patent assignment went to RCA which I think was their employer. It was a surprise to me that the lifting column is powered by an electric motor located in the base, and the up and down action is controlled in the left panhandle of…

The interior view in the previous post is the most revealing of the four images, but these are also interesting. On the left, we have the view from the top, with 12 showing the focus control portion of the right rear pan handle and 21 denoting the red and green tally lights on the…

On the back side, things are a little crude on the outside, but inside…state of the art. That pitiful looking viewfinder allows the operator to see an optical image on a ground glass screen. Like the image on the Iconoscope tube (right), it is also inverted and backward meaning panning left with the camera…

From the front, this camera and the RCA Iconoscope are quite different, yet have one thing in common. On the left is a close up of the dual lenses with the top lens feeding the optical viewfinder and the bottom lens feeding the Iconoscope tube…that is what they have in common. The big difference…

This amazing photo is from October 1945…12 months before the introduction of the RCA TK30. The camera at the bottom has an experimental Image Orthicon tube in it and is being compared to RCA’s Orthicon camera. WWII ended September 1945 and as a treat, a rodeo was staged Madison Square Gardens by RCA for…

As early as 1919, Ethyl Waters had been appearing in roles on Broadway and in 1926 recorded “Dinah” which was the first international hit by a black singer. In 1933, she became the first person to ever sing and record “Stormy Weather” as the star of the Broadway show by the same name. By…

Like Red Skelton and others, Sullivan was enamored with the way he looked on television. In his early days, he would try different wardrobes, make up and hair dressings to see which ones made him look best (a tall job), but he found that somehow a cameraman on his Studio 50 crew named George…

It would be extremely interesting to hear the stories Dennis Patrick McBride could tell about his 40 plus years at CBS behind their cameras. This photo was taken in February of 1955 at a rehearsal of ‘The Jackie Gleason Show’ at CBS Studio 50, better known as The Ed Sullivan Theater. Pat worked on…

January 1, 1954 marked several color television “firsts”…it was the first time the new NBC color trucks were used. It was the first west to east color broadcast to be nationally televised and of course, it was the first color broadcast of The Rose Parade. The two new color remote trucks were ready in…

The first NBC color coverage of a college football game was in Atlanta when Georgia Tech Yellowjackets played the Miami Hurricanes, September 17, 1955 at Grant Field. Not long after that, NBC went to Ann Arbor’s “Big House” for a Wolverine game. In the great video below showcasing RCA color and the first commercially…

Thanks to Maureen Carney, we have an article that introduces and dates the Sanner Studio Crane. The innovation started in 1948 when former Warner Brothers employee Sidney Sanner got behind an NBC camera for two years to learn the needs of the operator. NBC bought the first four with one going to Chicago, one…

Although this episode was the 4th to air in season 1, it was actually the first regular episode ever shot. Posted here is the first of the two page schedule with the second page below in Comments. Rehearsals stared on Thursday and the show was filmed at 8PM on September 8, 1951. The show…

This is an ad for the Houston Fearless ‘Cinimobile’ hydraulic dolly. Last week I posted a photo of one of the few that are still around…I think there’s one in Ohio and one in Germany. This is probably an item introduced in the late 60s for film and television. There’s another photo from the…

In this clip, starting at 2:00, we see what is thought to be the first ever use of the zoom lens in a cinematic presentation. The film is ‘It‘, starring “The It Girl”, Clara Bow. “It” by the way is “that special something, a unique sparkle of personality and looks that command attention”. The…

If you have ever wondered what Walter Cronkite saw from his desk, wonder no more. Thanks to Glenn Mack, here is a shot from behind that famous desk in the newsroom at the CBS Broadcast Center from around 1974. It appears that the two Norelco PC70s are in the process of having their teleprompters…

It was born in October of 1951 and here’s Charles Osgood’s story on it’s development on the 50th Anniversary in 2001. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB63odkphhg To celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the CBS eye in 2001, Charles Osgood did this report on the creation of the famous logo. Source

For those of us that remember watching (1953-57), ‘Winky Dink’ was a Saturday morning show that we all loved. Host Jack Barry would draw on a glass plate and at home, we could draw the same picture on the screen with our “Magic Window”. At about the 2 minute mark, you’ll get to see…

One of America’s favorite shows debuted live on NBC, February 25, 1950. This is the “Day Sheet” from that broadcast showing how the day would lay out. The show was 90 minutes and aired at 9PM ending at 10:30PM, but notice that their day started at 9AM with a full dress rehearsal at 5PM.…

‘All Star Review’, 1952 In the last year of so of this NBC show, Martha Raye was the host of this popular show as it morphed from a rotating host format to a single host. Soon after, it became ‘The Martha Raye Show’. In this shot, Martha is rehearsing a spot for Kellogs with…