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RCA Red Book, “The History”…Holy Grail Of Early Color Television History, Part 2 of 2
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In 1953, RCA submitted 700 pages of documentation to the FCC as a “Petition For Approval of Color Standards for RCA Color Television System”. Due to the bright red cover, it is generally referred to as The Red Book, and every detail you could possibly want to know about RCA’s color system is included.…
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RCA Color Television…Best Color History Primer Ever!
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From the David Sarnoff introduction to the history highlights at the end, this is one of the best short study resources you will ever find. Every angle of the how, when and why are in this special December 1953 publication from RCA. http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-content/uploads/Sarnoff1-PDF.pdf
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December 6, 1948…CBS Studio 50’s Television Debut
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December 6, 1948…CBS Studio 50’s Television Debut On this day in 1948, what had been the CBS Radio Theater #3 since 1936, became CBS Television Studio 50. At 8:30 that Monday night, “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” became the first program to be televised from the studio we now call The Ed Sullivan Theater, at…
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November 17, 1946…TV’s 1st Magazine Style Show Debuts
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November 17, 1946…TV’s 1st Magazine Style Show Debuts “Television Screen Magazine” was the show, and it may have been the second ever NBC network series, but it was certainly among the first. NBC’s “Hour Glass” variety show came first with a debut on May 9, 1946. At the time, NBC’s television network included only…
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AT&T Book…Connecting The Continent For Radio And Television
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By far, the most informative collection of information I have ever seen on early telephony and broadcasting. Without AT&T’s help, there never could have been radio, or television networks with such immediacy and reach. Until satellite communications, Ma Bell was the only way to connect, and overall, they did a great job, as did…
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NBC “Chimes Magazine”…554 Pages Of Network History ’52-’54…
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Here is a 1953 report on color television progress at The Colonial Theater, which is just one of many dozens of interesting, historical tidbits you will find here. Thanks to Barry Mitchell, we can see the contents of 2 years of articles in NBC’s in house magazine “Chimes”. Not every page is pertinent, but…
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November 8, 1952…NBC’s First Full Color Facility Debuts
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On this day in 1952, The Colonial Theater broadcast it’s first color production to the network. Fittingly, the show was NBC’s top rated Saturday night program, “Your Show Of Shows”, but it was a one time event. At least for “YSOS”, as it was NBC’s intent to rotate all of their New York based…
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ATT Telephone TV Skyway
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A brief, but informative look at the ATT effort to span the continent with new coaxial and microwave relay systems to enable television from coast to coast.
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Total Color Camera Sales, USA, 1954-1982, RCA & All Other Brands
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Total Color Camera Count for USA 1954-1982 from RCA, and 1964-1981 including all major brands Thanks to our friend Lytle Hoover at Old Radio.com who has single-handedly collected volumes of information from the historic documents he has collected, we have for a few years now, had for a pretty good idea of how many RCA…
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Ellerbee Classic Camera Census
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This is the world’s first and only count of the remaining studio size television cameras from the Golden Age and beyond. Over 60 years of history is represented in this survey. The sad news is, there are very few that have made it. Included in the census are the RCA, Norelco, Marconi, GE and…
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Starting From Scratch…The Earliest CBS Grand Central Studios Images
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In the fall of 1939, CBS began work on the area they had chosen to become their premier television studio facilities. When it was all said and done, Studio 41 and 42 were created in this space you see below, in this one gigantic hall. Studio 41 was 44 x 60, and 42 was…
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Gray Research Telop Machine, Television’s First Optical Projection System
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Thanks to Val Ginter in NYC, here is a rare copy of the 1953 Gray catalog with a price list at the end. This machine was able to televise opaque cards, which was the forerunner of transparent slides. It also had add on features that would allow a news type horizontal ticker scroll across…
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RCA Broadcast News, January 1954
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“Color Television – What It Means To Broadcasters” is the tile of this issue, and this was the first issue ever wholly devoted to one subject. That subject is color TV, and this is a fascinating time capsule. On page 62, there is a multipage, photo-filled introduction of the RCA TK40 color camera, but…
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RCA Broadcast News, April 1961
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From April 1961, here is what EVERYBODY was doing with color. From networks to local stations and cameras to tape, this packed-with-pictures edition of RCA’s Broadcast News is all about color.
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RCA Broadcast News, October 1946
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RCA introduces television’s first workhorse…the TK30 Image Orthicon Camera…in a multi-page article. This was the first IO camera, the first camera with a rotatable lens turret, and the first to be mass produced. Many of these cameras were in use all the way up to the time that color finally took over in 1965.…
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October 18, 1952…RCA’s First Experimental Color Football Broadcast
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Below is a rare look at RCA/NBC’s first color remote unit, used for this color-cast. Although it was seen by 99.9% of the audience in black and white, it did at least prove the “compatible color” claim RCA made for its Dot Sequential color system. The year before, CBS had broadcast a football game…
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“Howdy Doody” Script, 1960
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Thanks to our good friend Gady Reinhold at the CBS Broadcast Center, here is one of the many treasures from his personal archives…a real script from The Howdy Doody Show, Notice on the first page, C-K in the top right, which denotes a Chroma Key shot, with actors dressed in all blue, for the…
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1935: “The House That Radio Built”
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Here is the 32 page book on how NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza was built. In this rare, 1935 look at the construction and operation of NBC’s new Radio City facilities, you’ll see all the fascinating technical details, photographs and diagrams your heart could desire.
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RCA History In The Making….Rare Original Design Sketchs
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I am pleased to share a page from my collection of rarities, a few rare design drawings made by our late friend, Harry Wright of RCA. Harry designed the look of the RCA TK60, TK42, TK43, TK44, TK45, TK45P and many other RCA products, including telecine and video tape machines. He was an RCA…
