TV History

Good News, Bad News…RCA TK 76 The good news was, that now, any news could be covered more easily with the new TK 76 Electronic News Gathering (ENG) camera introduced in 1976. This was the fully self contained portable color camera RCA made for news crews. It weighed 19 pounds. The bad news was…

Jack Paar: The Joke, Walk Out & Return…The Whole Story On February 11, 1960, Jack Parr walked off The Tonight Show for a month after NBC censors edited out a segment, taped the night before. As he left his desk, he said, “I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way…

Tonight Show: The Pre and Early History This short clip is from the opening of the very first episode of ‘Tonight’ with Steve Allen. It explains a lot so take a look. ‘Tonight’ began on the NBC network in September 27, 1954, and originated from the Hudson Theater at 141 West 44th Street in…

The RCA TK42, Au Natural… This photo is in regard to two post just below and show the TK42 in it’s factory configuration. Notice there is nothing sticking out of the front…that’s because the lens is internal, much like the RCA Iconoscope cameras. The TK42 had an internal zoom lens, but the Iconoscope internal…

TK42 – Iconoscope Cameras, What Do They Have In Common? They both have internal lenses. What you see on the front of this TK42 is NOT the lens…it is a wide angle adapter. In the next post down, about the first mobile unit, you’ll see that they had a lot in common. It seems…

A Learning Moment; The First Mobile Units and Field Cameras In 1939, RCA designed and built the first mobile television production units ever. They were a pair but between them, supported only two cameras as one unit was a control room truck and one was a generator/transmitter truck. This is one of those two…

Dinah Shore Show: NBC, 1952 Yesterday in the KTLA Anniversary video, Dinah mentioned her NBC show and here’s a shot from it at NBC. Originally, ‘The Dinah Shore Show’ was broadcast on Tuesday and Thursday nights from Los Angeles from November 1951 to January 1956. For most of the program’s run, it aired from…

Dumont Electronicam TV-Film System The more things change, the more they seem to stay the same. For instance, all the late night shows, be it Leno, Letterman, Conan or Fallon all have something in common with the way ‘The Honeymooners’ was done…individual recordings from each camera that allows for post editing to get the…

Dumont Electronicam/Captain Video Although the show, ‘Captain Video And His Video Rangers’ was done live five and sometimes six days a week from 1949 till 1955, at least one Electronicam was used on the show daily after 1952. It seems that in ’52, real sci-fi writers like Arthur C. Clark began writing scripts and,…

Ampex 300 ENG Camera This was a small monochrome camera which was used in “ENG” mode with a very large 2 inch quadruplex video recorder VR3000. This debuted around 1967 and was just in time for use at the US political conventions for floor coverage. Source

The Angenieux Electronic Zoom For Turret Cameras: 1962 As you can see, this is quite a beast. Usually, lenses this heavy would be mounted on a sled that also went under the camera to support the weight and help balance it. There is what looks like a shot box on the right pan handle,…

GE Theater This shot is from the set of a 1956 GE Theater presentation at CBS Television City. Ronald Reagan was the host of the long running series and working for GE as their national spokesman got him interested in politics as he not only represented them on television, but in person around the…

The GE PC 15 Color Camera #1 Here’s a close up of GE’s first color camera, the PC 15. When this camera was redone in 1965, it became the PC 25 and the top handles moved to the bottom of the camera as side handles. More on this camera below. Source

The GE PC 15 Color Camera #2 This is the very rare GE PC 15 color camera on a demonstration set at WRGB in Schenectady, New York. The PC 15 came out in 1958 and was updated around 1965 and renamed the PC 25. This 3 Image Orthicon creation resembles the RCA TK41 in…

Made In Germany From around 1956, this is the Fernseh KKO 110, a five lens Image Orthicon monochrome camera. Sleek, handsome and practical in design. That I know of, only Fernseh had the quick change camera numbering system which was quite handy. Source

It’s True: You Can’t Tell The Players Without A Program Thanks to David Daughtry for this shot of his Grass Valley LDK camera ready to shoot a San Diego Chargers – Baltimore Ravens game. Shooting from the Chargers side of the field, David’s face card shows the Baltimore coaches that he’ll be looking for…

RCA’s Famous ‘Umber Grey’ Before the ‘new look’ in the 60s, all of RCA’s equipment was painted ‘umber grey’. When I found out the official name for the color, I was confused because there is nothing grey about it…it’s brown. When I came across this great true color photo this morning showing the camera’s…

One Of The First ‘Private Eye’ Shows This is ‘Man Against Crime’ which starred Ralph Bellamy as Mike Barnett, a New York freelance private eye. This production was broadcast live from 1949 till 1952 on CBS and this studio would have been at the old CBS Grand Central location. In ’53, the show moved…

Dumont: The Start Of WABD, New York This photo was taken April 15, 1946 and shows the inaugural broadcast from the new Dumont studio at Wanamaker’s department store in Manhattan. The telecast was fed to Dumont’s W3XWT (WTTG) in Washington for broadcast there, and in Washington, some FCC officials making congratulatory comments were fed…

What A Beast… This 1946 photo shows a Philco built Iconoscope camera at their company owned station in Philadephia, WPTZ. Although Philo Taylor Farnsworth did work for Philco in Philadelphia from 1931 till 1933, it is not known if he had a hand in the building or design of these cameras. The Philco cameras…