TV History

In this 1976 photo, Ray Dolby and other Ampex engineers are shown with a VRX 1000 borrowed from CBS for this event at Ampex headquarters. The machine came from Television City and was the first one used in the west coast. It’s first task was to record and playback on delay the Evening News…

The RCA Kinescope Machine September 13, 1947 — Kodak and NBC develop ‘kinescopes’, which use special film cameras to shoot directly off a TV screen. This permits the recording and later distribution of live shows for sale, or archiving. The Kinescope dominated TV recording for time delay in the early 1950’s. A Kinescope recorder…

The Original GE Color Prototype Camera This looks a lot like the early RCA color prototypes, but it came later and was crafted from photos and demonstration broadcasts the GE engineers had seen. Although RCA was leading the way in Dot Sequential color, GE began to edge into the color field after the FCC…

GE, Second Prototype Color Test The camera closest to us, with the operator standing, is a GE color camera prototype, using the CBS developed field sequential – color wheel system that could be added to image orthicon monochrome cameras. The far camera is a regular B/W GE camera. This photo is from around 1956…

On September 24, 1968, Television’s longest running news magazine program debuted. The show was created and produced by Don Hewitt who started as the director of ‘Douglas Edwards With The News’ and ‘See It Now’ with Edward R. Murrow. Hewitt also produced the Kennedy – Nixon Debates and was Executive Producer of The CBS…

Always Handy Flip cards and camera alignment chats were always close at hand in the early days like in this 1949 shot from NBC. Do you know why? Source

May 1951: Ed Sullivan’s ‘Toast Of The Town’ When the show debuted in 1948, six of June Taylor’s dancers were chosen to dance at the top of the show. They were called ‘The Toastettes’ and were on almost every show open, till it became ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1955. Source

1951: Colgate Comedy Hour Great shot! Notice turntable in the stage and how big the set is. In the early days, before the studios were consolidated, all the networks had theaters they shot in all over NYC and LA. This was in The Center Theater, across from NBC. Finally, a cameraman gets to actually…

RCA Orthicon Camera, WTOP Washington A couple of days ago, Val Ginter in NYC asked about the Orthicon cameras. I suspect they came out around 1942-43 and there were not very many as RCA knew the Image Orthicon development was coming along nicely, and would replace these once the war ended. Notice the ‘elaborate’…

How Hot Is It? Pretty Hot! It’s not often that you see a TK11 opened up like this, but this one on the set of Art Linkletter’s House Party at Television City needs to breathe. Unlike cameras at the local stations, network cameras work for hours on end in rehearsals and in production and…

Soupy Sales: 1964 WNEW Even though WNEW was the old Dumont owned WABD, it’s still odd to see these old Dumont cameras in use on the ‘new’ Soupy show. The show started in Detroit at WXYZ in ’53 and began to air on ABC in 59. In ’60 Sales moved to KABC and after…

“Ovary Soap” Believe it or not, that’s the line that helped Mel Allan become the Voice Of The Yankees. Mel’s big break came in 1939 when Garnett Marks, Arch McDonald’s partner on Yankee broadcasts, twice referred to Ivory soap, the Yankees’ sponsor at the time, as “Ovary Soap.” He was fired, and Allen was…

Can You Guess Who: ANSWER…Mae Questel The voice of Betty Boop AND Olive Oyl! Thanks Mae for the great work! Enjoy! Source

AT LAST! The Lone Ranger, Unmasked… If you were like me, you always wondered what Clayton Moore looked like without the famous Lone Ranger mask. Now we know. Source

Braves Baseball On TBS… Gone but not forgotten. In 2007, after a 32 year run on Superstation WTBS, the Atlanta Braves lost their national cable audience leaving WGN as the only super station to televise their home teams to a national audience on a regular basis. For more, and a memorable list of Braves…

WGN: Chicago In 1960, between the Cubs and White Sox, WGN televised 120 baseball games with 8 RCA TK41s. For attendance reasons, I’m sure both teams tried not to be home at the same time, but when it happened, 4 cameras went to Cominskey Park and 4 went to Wrigley Field. WGN Television, whose…

World’s Easiest Trivia Question In this November 1954 photo we see the fist boy owner, Tommy Rettig who played Jeff Miller, and his dog _________. In ’57 Rettig left and was replaced by Jon Provist as Timmy Martin. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was…

A Distant Memory Remember the Hudson’s Thanksgiving Parade from Detroit? Did you know this started in 1924, two years before rival Macy’s parade? The parade was first broadcast in 1931 on radio station WWJ, but came to television in 1959 and that’s the year this photo was made. It was also telecast by Detroit’s…

I’m pretty sure this is a photo from “The Art Linkletter Show” or his “House Party” show at Television City. I can’t imagine being the person who had to write these cards daily, but reading them live from 8 feet away is a pretty good trick too! Source

Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention The Colonial Theater in NYC was literally ground zero for RCA color testing and innovation. Note the steering ring under one of the first TK40s. The TD 1 pedestal was all there was at the time, but with the size of the TK40, the small steering ring was…