TV History

TV Lens Week…Post 4: SD and HD Lens Comparison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MrC9Hgzdhw Larry Thorpe of Canon discusses putting standard definition lenses on high definition cameras. http://www.hdcameraguide.com Source

First Meeting: Our Gang and Little Rascals Casts…1936 Next week, I will be posting a 10 part special on the ‘Our Gang’ and ‘Little Rascals’, but to get you in the mood, here is a two minute clip of the meeting of the 1921 and 1936 casts of the show. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aHri6Vtr0 Little Rascals…

Double Header: 40 Inch Lens and The Edison Effect Last week this photo was posted by Pierre Seguin and comes from a 1947 edition of Popular Mechanics. It shows a 1945 RCA Orthicon camera with a 40 inch lens, described as the longest ever used at the time. It also mentions that television works…

TV Lens Week…Post 4: Modulated Transfer Function…MTF Canon’s Larry Thorpe explains MTF and why it is important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R73lgtHEIr0 Larry Thorpe of Canon discusses MTF. http://www.hdcameraguide.com Source

In Honor Of Baseball’s Opening Day! The classic, “Who’s On First” routine from Abbot & Costello. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=airT-m9LcoY a funny monolog between Abbot And costello abou abbots baseball team. Source

3D Rigs…A Relic Already? PLEASE HELP US FILL IN THE BLANKS! I got an email from our friend Chuck Pharis last night that said all the 3D trucks at ESPN are gone now. It seems that an engineer in India has come up with a box that converts any HD signal into 3D! I…

TV Lens Week…Post 3: Studio Box Lens vs ENG/EFP Lens Canon’s Larry Thorpe explains the differences and who better? Before joining Canon, Larry was an engineer who built cameras at the BBC, then RCA where he worked on the TK42 and 44 and later went to Sony to help in the development of their…

TV Lens Week…Post 2: The Pickle Barrel Lens In the photo below, you see a sports event from the late 1940s or early ’50s being covered by a couple of RCA TK30s with zoom lenses. The long lens is a 27 element Zoomar Field Lens. The other camera is equipped with periscope type reflector…

TV Lens Week…Post 1: The Amazingly High Cost Of Lenses! At the link under this text, you’ll see the retail price for Canon’s Digi Super lenses from B&H in New York. Prices range from a low of about $75,000 to over $153,000 for Canon’s top of the line HD box lenses. I’m pretty sure…

Pye Experimental Color Camera; Field Sequential System In the US, the color system battle ended in December of 1953 with the FCC adapting the RCA ‘Dot Sequential’ system over the CBS ‘Field Sequential’ system, but in the UK, this was not settled. This camera is basically a Pye Mark III – 84 – 2014…

April 15, 1956: The Day Color TV Came To Chicago http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/1968/fadeup2.html The link above will take you to Rich Samuel’s great site that covers Chicago broadcast history from stem to stern. The linked page is about WMAQ’s conversion to color. I wish more cities had broadcast historians like Mr. Samuels. Enjoy the site! Source

Wizard Of Oz – Behind The Scenes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKcxX6beKl0 When the ‘Wizard of Oz’ had it’s last network broadcast on CBS (May 8th, 1998), the bumpers around the commercial breaks had interesting behind the scenes tr… Source

Yet Another Disappearing TV Camera! In this 1984 video, UK magician Paul Daniels makes a Link 125 studio camera vanish! Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCXBCD6Ols On a 1984 edition of his magic show, Paul Daniels makes a Link 125 camera disappear. Source

Meet ‘I Love Lucy’s’ Summer Replacement! ‘My Little Margie’ Remember this show’s theme song? I do, and you can hear it again and see a full episode of ‘My Little Margie’ here, starring Gail Storm and Charles Farrell. This is episode six of season two and first aired on 10/25/52. ‘My Little Margie’ premiered…

You Mean There Were Art Departments? Yes! Once upon a time, local stations and networks had real artists on staff. Before electronic and computer graphics came along, art departments made flip cards for promos, made title and closing credit cards, illustrated ticker crawls like the one in this photo and more. This picture is…

Fascinating Photo! The Iconoscope Tube In Action… Here is the heart of early electronic television cameras. This photo, taken by Andreas Fininger, shows an image bring projected into the lens, and then displayed on the plate of the Iconoscope tube. You can actually see the scanning beam in process. Thanks to J P Auger…

Ever Seen A Marconi Mark IV In Color? Having just posted the story below of the Mark IVs at Television City, I thought I would add this color photo of my Mark IV. Although CBS painted many of their cameras Navy Grey, I think the one in that photo is still it’s original color.…