{"id":28568,"date":"2013-10-10T05:58:58","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T09:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eyesofageneration.com\/?p=28568"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:48:14","slug":"ultra-rare-photo-emis-c-p-s-emitron-camera-1951the-emitron-tube-was-rou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/?p=28568","title":{"rendered":"EMI’s C.P.S. Emitron Camera: 1951"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you want to understand where British television engineering stood in the early 1950s, the EMI C.P.S. Emitron<\/strong> is the camera that tells the story. This wasn\u2019t just another post\u2011war studio box \u2014 it was the first generation of British cameras built around the C.P.S. (Cathode Potential Stabilised) Emitron tube<\/strong>, a major leap forward from the pre\u2011war Emitron and Super Emitron designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Science Museum Group<\/strong>, EMI began developing the CPS tube before WWII, but it wasn\u2019t finished until after the BBC restarted service in 1946. The tube made its first major public appearance at the 1948 Olympics<\/em>, where it delivered higher sensitivity and a more stable picture than earlier Emitrons. It used an orthogonal scanning geometry<\/strong> \u2014 the electron gun scanned at right angles to the target plate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1951, EMI had built complete camera systems around this tube. The Museum of the Broadcast Television Cameras<\/strong> documents a 1951 EMI 6\u2011lens CPS camera<\/strong>, shown at the Festival of Britain and later at the Television Society exhibition. It featured a 6.5-inch viewfinder<\/strong>, remote control capability from an OB van, and export\u2011ready 625\u2011line operation \u2014 a forward\u2011looking design for its time.The turret design is one of the camera\u2019s signatures: a six\u2011lens turret slung low under the front of the camera body,<\/strong> giving it a distinctive silhouette and at the link below to the TVCameraMuseum.org, we get several angles of the camera<\/strong>. Notice in the page we open to, the taking lens seems to be low on the left side<\/strong>, where the lens is off to give us a look.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The CPS tube itself continued to evolve. The TV Camera Museum<\/strong> notes that the 5907 CPS Emitron tube \u2014 a later refinement \u2014 added a mesh for stability under high light levels and was used in industrial and special\u2011purpose cameras. They also document BBC use of CPS\u2011based cameras in difficult locations, including submarine broadcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, the 1951 CPS Emitron sits at a very specific moment in broadcast history: post\u2011war British television rebuilding itself<\/strong>, adopting a new tube architecture, and trying to keep pace with the explosive American Image Orthicon era \u2014 but doing it with its own engineering philosophy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That I know of, none of these cameras survived, but the independent museum sources confirm its specs, its public exhibitions, its tube lineage, and its place in the evolution of British TV technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to understand where British television engineering stood in the early 1950s, the EMI C.P.S. Emitron is the camera that tells the story. This wasn\u2019t just another post\u2011war studio box \u2014 it was the first generation of British cameras built around the C.P.S. (Cathode Potential Stabilised) Emitron tube, a major leap forward from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28569,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_popup_image":0,"_vp_format_audio_url":"","_vp_album_images":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail":0,"_vp_custom_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"_vp_custom_thumbnail_cover":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail":0,"_vp_hover_thumbnail_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[683,724,709,743,725],"class_list":["post-28568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cameras","tag-cast","tag-engineer","tag-orthicon","tag-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28568"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81349,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28568\/revisions\/81349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.eyesofageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}