-
Welcome To The Heart Of Eyes Of A Generation!
•
This 100+ pages of television history is unique in all the world! This is a living history of broadcasting that spans the decades, as far back as the first radio transmissions, to the latest in the network studios and everything in between. These are stories that I have written and posted on the Eyes…
-
“Battle Over Television” – Mechanix Illustrated, 1945
•
Thanks to Barry Mitchell, here’s some glimpses into how the future of television looked in January 1945. These excerpts from Mechanix Illustrated are interesting in several ways, not only for their photographic coverage of early television equipment and production techniques, and not only for their descriptions of early television equipment, but they are also…
-
THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JACK PAAR Camera Cards
•
That I know of, these are the only two remaining camera cards from the wonderful era of THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JACK PAAR. These were mounted on an easle in the studio and during the show, one of the RCA TK41 color cameras in NBC Studio 6B would shoot this full screen when the…
-
HOW TELEVISION GRAPHICS CAME TO BE
•
Not long ago, I came across some excelent historical images of television’s first experiments into shadow box technology and precursor elements to telecine and telop technology. I knew that the experts at The Museum of Broadcast Technology in Woonsocket, Rhode Island would be the key to explaining what we were seeing, so I asked…
-
OH YES, THEY DID!!!
•
As your Editor In Chief of Eyes of A Generation, I pride myself on trying to display the best, most interesting images of our industry in action, but AT FIRST GLANCE, this series of pictures BLEW MY MIND! No one in their right mind would try to cover a football game with a Chapman…
-
HOW NFL FOOTBALL CAME TO TELEVISION IN 1956
•
Sig Mickelson was the first president of CBS News, and it is from that insider’s view that we get this amazing story. In only 8 pages, he explains how CBS public affairs management’s best laid plans to make Sunday afternoons their bull’s eye for public service programming got shot out of a cannon, and…
-
NBC COLOR PERFECT PROMOS FROM THE ’60S
•
Here, back to back, are two :60 second promo’s from NBC, touting their color abilities in the mid 1960s. You have to give them and RCA credit as the leaders in color. No one was better, but unfortunately, when these transfers were made from film to video a few years ago, the master prints…
-
THE HOUSE THAT ROONE BUILT
•
Modern sports television began in Athens, Georgia on September 18, 1965 when the University of Georgia Bulldogs took on Alabama’s Crimson Tide at Sanford Stadium. The game, broadcast on ABC, was the first nationally televised game for Georgia, AND the start of Roone Arledge’s “Big Idea”. His famous 1960 memo to Ed Scherick, which…
-
The Surprising History of ABC’s First Handheld Cameras…LA vs. NYC
•
About six months ago, I met a character named Joe Maltz somehow. Turns out that in 1961, Joe was the Supervisor of Engineering Maintenance for ABC in New York and had a GREAT STORY to tell! In a nutshell, Joe was put in charge of developing a handheld camera that was better than the…
-
Ultra Rare…Inside NBC’s New York Studios 1950
•
As TV was taking off in 1950, NBC and others struggled to find studio space in New York. This rare film shows us, in more detail than we have ever seen, the course those efforts with a look inside not only the “Radio City” 30 Rock building, but also the International, Center and Hudson…
-
MEET TELEVISION’S FIRST FEMALE DIRECTOR! FRANCIS BUSS BUCH
•
She was born, Frances Buss and in marriage, became Francis Buch, but before she married, Francis Buss was a pioneer of network TV, that passed away in 2010 at the age of 92. She was presented with an opportunity, especially as a woman, at a time when broadcasting was definitely a man’s…
-
RCA’S FIRST ICONOSCOPE CAMERAS & THE PROTOTYPE
•
We will see three different Iconoscope cameras here…the first three all electronic cameras made by RCA at their Camden N.J. labs. These images are from the David Sarnoff Library Collection and are quite rare these days. The first we’ll see will be the prototype camera developed by Dr. Zworykin around 1932. The second is…
-
A PRIMER ON RCA’S EARLIEST COMPATABLE COLOR CAMERAS
•
I’ve just recently been able see these stunning in-house marketing photos that reveal some news about the first three sets of RCA’s compatible color prototype cameras. We now know the “name” of the first set of color compatible prototype cameras. These are the Princeton Cameras. There were two of these and after being built…
-
INSIDE NBC’S COLONIAL THEATER & RCA’S COLOR EFFORT
•
In all these 15 years of research, I have never found this whole black and white promotional film from RCA until just yesterday! This amazing film titled “Color Television; an NBC Documentary” shows some of the most advanced science of the day as we are taken behind the scenes not only at The Colonial…
-
December 12, 1937…America’s First Mobile Units Delivered
•
On December 12, 1937, the world’s first electronic television remote units were delivered by RCA to NBC in New York City. The dual vehicle system, consisting two, 26 foot buses included one for production and one for transmission. The production bus provided two portable single-lens Iconoscope cameras and the support equipment. The transmission bus…
-
NBC Tour Book: 1939 World’s Fair…America’s View of Television
•
The first big push to bring television to the public’s attention was mounted by RCA at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. This is a rare survivor…the 32 page tour book handed out at the RCA Pavilion, that attempts to cover many aspects of the new media. It is packed with rare photos…
-
Studio 8H and the Chapman crane
•
Among the very few things that have not changed since Saturday Night Live debuted in 1975 are the studio it originates from, and the constant use of this Chapman Electra stage crane on the show. We’ve all seen it a thousand times, but never like this before. Above is the driver’s seat, and you…
-
The Birth Of The Camera Mounted Electronic Viewfinder
•
With all of RCA’s incredible advances and discoveries in television, you would have thought that they would be the ones to put an electronic viewfinder into a television camera, but no…they weren’t. The first production cameras made by RCA and DuMont used Iconoscope pickup tubes but RCA did not add an electronic viewfinder until…
-
AMAZING CBS COLOR STUDIO 72 NYC…COLOR FILM TOUR
•
Here is a newly discovered piece of color television history about one of the least known network color facilities…CBS Studio 72 in New York. This is a never aired feature that shows color productions of “The Ed Sullivan Show” and the mystery show “Danger” in 1954. There are tons of great shots of the…
-
A Production Primer By Television’s First Cameraman
•
In a photo taken in NBC’s historic Studio 3H, we see Albert Protzman, the first camera person hired to operate RCA’s new all-electronic television apparatus. Studio 3H was the first all-electronic television studio ever built and efforts began by RCA in May of 1935 converted this former NBC radio studio into the epicenter of…
-
The Rarely Seen GE PE 25 Color Camera
•
Thanks to our friend Martin Perry, this catalog is the only piece of GE information we have ever seen on this rare color camera. It was preceded by the GE PE 15 model, of which there were less than a dozen made. There may have been as many as 20 to 25 of these…
