August 26, 1939…Major League Baseball Comes To Television

75 years ago today, the first professional baseball game was televised over NBC’s W2XBS in New York City. The game was between the Cincinnati Red and the Brooklyn Dodgers…the announcer was Red Barber.

Here’s an interesting side note. Realizing the significance of the broadcast, Barber asked NBC to memorialize the event with some sort of memento. A week later, NBC sent Barber a beautiful silver cigarette case with the date and event inscribed on the front. They also sent him the bill for $22.19.

In the photos, we see Barber doing the first ever pre game interview with Dodgers manager Leo Durocher. There were two cameras there. the one you see here on the third base side and one in the press box on the first base side. Barber called the game from the stands sitting by the this camera so he could get instructions from the truck via the cameraman.

Earlier In 1939, RCA designed and built the first mobile television production units ever. There were two telemobile trucks…one contained standard rack-mounted equipment for two cameras and the other housed a 159 megacycle, 300W transmitter with a hinged antenna mast on top of the unit.

Each unit was about the size and shape of a 25-passenger bus and weighed 10 tons. The total power required to operate both units was approximately 20KW. The signal was sent to the transmitter in the Empire State Building.

It must have been a challenge for the sports camera operator to frame a shot. RCA had three Iconoscope camera models…one for studio use and two for the field. The field cameras didn’t have viewfinders. The camera we see here looks like it may have a small eyepiece that would have probably been a metal tube from the front to the back of the unit. The other field model (with a rounded back) had a foldout wire frame viewfinder on the left side of the camera, similar to still photography cameras of the time.

Intercom equipment was new as well. The mic was a contraption that had a small curved horn for a mouthpiece and was worn on the chest which was borrowed from the telephone company. The headsets were borrowed from radio and it really was appropriate to call them “cans” because the round metal earpieces didn’t begin to approach the quality of today’s headsets. By the way, the Reds won that day.
Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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It’s Alive! This RCA TK30 Is Making Pictures Again!

I’d heard that Ralph Sargent in Los Angeles had been working on restoring a TK30 and finally we have pictures and the story from Ralph as he told it on the Videokarma site. Thanks to our friend John Bolin for sending this along. Here’s what Ralph wrote….

“As some of you may know, I have been working on a “secret” project since February. The project is now pretty much complete and it’s time to let you in on it. Project: The resuscitation and restoration of a 1946-47 image orthicon camera.

Here are the 1st pictures of TK-30A, serial #101 making TV pictures for the first time since the end of 1966! These were taken in my office today and I haven’t retouched anything. What you see is what I saw. (The slightly greenish cast is from the florescent lamps in the workspace.)

The turret has on it 2 – 135mm lenses and 1 – 90mm. The black hole is actually black masking tape so I can cap the tube in that I don’t have a legit cap. I think I’ve gotten the alignment fairly close and the results are starting to look pretty sharp.

The camera was owned by CBS-NY and had the usual Stanton-decreed, “Get those RCA insignia and so forth off my cameras and paint ’em all grey!” Fact was that when I got the cameras they were painted a sort of bilious green which I had to strip off of everything and repaint. Same was true of the CCU and PS.

The pictures are from my office windows looking across the street at a new condominium being built there.

The reason for the 8 inch modern monitor on the top of the CCU is that the CCU CRT has pretty severe linearity problems that I have yet to figure out. I’ve got to poke into this next week.

Notice the digital meter to the extreme left of the CCU in picture #5. This gives me instant numbers for the AC voltage and current. Was handy for starting this up for the first time and knowing that it wasn’t about to blowup. Helps build confidence. (Notice this gear is pulling about 8.5 Amps @ 116 vac. Less than I thought it would be!)

As far as the number of components replaced: I replaced all of the caps with the exception of a few micas. Overall this was a rather expensive project given that the .05 mfd/ 7kv caps cost about $80 each and the oil 0.5 mfd/1500v was $148.00. I’ve replaced very few resistors except the bleeder chain in the viewfinder which had gone skyward with age. Surprisingly, practically every resistor in this chain is 5% or better and have held their values remarkably well. I’ve ditched a great number of the electrolytic cans as part of the recap to try to improve the airflow throughout the camera. Also, all of the HV wire in the camera had to be replaced because the insulation had rotted. I used the super flexible Alpha wire that John Folsom uses on his CT-100 vertical transformers, but had to buy 100 foot spool at $2.00 a foot!”

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The NBC Mini Cameras…

Earlier in the week, I posted a video that showed rare footage of ABC’s and CBS’s first self designed, black and white portable cameras.

Here are a couple of NBC’s self designed cameras. The photo in front of the Democratic Convention sign is from 1964 and shows a small camera head with the operator wearing the viewfinder and backpack. That same arrangement carried over into another configuration with a larger, triangular shaped camera.

I don’t know which of these came first as there are no dates on the use of the triangular version, but I think they may have been in use at the same time. Does anyone know?

By the way, the cameraman in two of these shots is Don Mulvaney and the picture with the Iowa placard in the background show Don with RCA’s first portable in 1952. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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An Important FIrst And Last Event…

Below is a photo of the first television drama to be done in color…it is also the last experimental colorcast.

“To Live In Peace” was the episode title of the December 16, 1953 production of ‘The Kraft Television Theater’ and starred Anne Bancroft. It was done in color from NBC’s Colonial Theater…the night before the FCC announced the approval of the RCA pioneered version of compatible color.

At 5:31 PM, December 17, NBC was the first to broadcast a compatible color signal which was a still shot of the NBC Chimes logo using NTSC standards.

The camera here is one of the original “first four” RCA TK40s. They were hand built and delivered to The Colonial in late October of 1952. Assembly line production did not start till a year later after the the cameras were tested. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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Television’s First Zoom Lens…

This is the Walker Electra Zoom lens and is believed to be one of the first Joseph Walker made by hand in the late 1940s. Walker worked as a cinematographer with Frank Capra on over twenty films and held almost as many patents on optical and film related inventions.

Over a span of some 40 years, he designed and made special lenses to be used specifically on over 50 of Hollywood’s leading ladies. He had dabbled with this zoom technology in the late 1920s but set it aside until electric motor technology began to catch up.

He sold his invention to RCA and Zeiss around 1949 and RCA kept the name Electra Zoom when they brought it to television. Due to the dominance of Frank Back’s Zoomar lens, Walker’s role in the history of the television zoom lens has been rather overlooked – but there’s little doubt that the Electra Zoom was a significant production tool during the early days of postwar television.

Thanks to Steve Raymer at The Pavek Museum in St Louis Park, MN for sharing the photos of this lens which is on display there at his museum. The lens worked electronically and had a push/pull rod as well for manual operation, much like the Zoomar. You can see that rod in the Hugh Downs photo. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

By the way, the RCA catalog listing is in the Comments section below.

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On Closer Examination…Something We All Missed Is Here!

Last month, some collector friends and I were trying to put a date on the introduction of the Houston Fearless TD 3 pedestal. We all thought 1954 was probably the year the new lead counterweight pedestal debuted, but low and behold…look at this!

Just this morning, I was looking for photos of the RCA Electra Zoom lens for the next article I’m posting today, but look what I found. At least one TD 3 is in use here on the debut of ‘Today’ on January 14, 1952!

I think this is the prototype in a field test and where better to put it through it’s paces than this new morning show. Notice a silver band just under the lock ring…that’s where the access doors join to the column cover. That was never there on the production models.

We can see the TD 3 in two of these photos and in the third one, we see what the other cameras were mounted on…the old TD 1 crank up model. While you click through these, take a close look at the zoom lens and I’ll have more on that next, and look at that teleprompter. I think that may have been an RCA prototype too. I’ve never seen that anywhere else but here on ‘Today’, have you?

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The Story Of ‘The Hallmark Hall Of Fame’…

If you want a story told right, let ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ tell it. From a few years back, here is their look back at one of television’s most watched and awarded programs ever. Did you know that over 25% of all of the Academy Award winners have appeared on Hallmark?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mCi0c68Mus

For nearly 60 years, the Hallmark Hall of Fame has entertained viewers with award-winning programming. Correspondent Cynthia Bowers takes a look at why its b…

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On Set Communications 101…

Long before the were intercoms and walkie talkies, there were DBMs…Damn Big Megaphones.

The year is 1922 and the man in the center is Douglas Fairbanks. He is the star of the film being shot here, which is ‘Robin Hood’. The man about to speak into the DBM is Allan Dwan and this is the only way directors could give last minute instructions to casts and crews on this kind of huge outside set. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee

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On The Road To The Final Four…CBS Sports, 1985

Here’s a short but sweet look at how CBS covered NCAA basketball back in 1985. This was the era of the Thomson cameras on the sports trucks and we’ll get a good look at everything. About half way in, one of the cameramen talks about his dad being a cameraman on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’…anyone know who that is? Enjoy and share!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qf1F_YLtp4c

From CBS, the sports segment of a film for affiliates showing behind the scenes of the CBS Television Network. You see the heads of the divisions, talent and…

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MUST SEE! A True Genesis Moment In Visual Comedy!

What you are about to see is the seed that grew into a forest. This single clip has been cited by Ernie Kovacs, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Rowan & Martin and Monty Python as the root of the comedic arts taking on the very medium by which it is being relayed.

Here, the “fourth wall” is not only broken, but gleefully demolished by a comedy team that few in our generation have ever heard of… Olsen And Johnson.

It’s near impossible to describe what happens here, so you’ll have to watch it, and you be glad you did because this is the first time in the history of moving images that this has been done…and it’s done quite well given the technology of the time. Among other firsts you’ll see here, this could also be the first “move within a movie” overlay of characters “off screen” talking to characters “on screen”.

This is from the film ‘Hellzapoppin’ from 1941, which was based on the long running Broadway play of the same name that starred Olson and Johnson. They wrote the play and are legendary for their volume and range of material. They were famous from the 1920s through the early 50s, but having played more on vaudeville and broadway stages, their legacy is not a lasting as their contemporaries, like Laurel And Hardy or The Marx Brothers who were mostly film stars.

The setup for the brilliant technical manipulations of the film begins with The Three Stooges own Shemp Howard playing the part of a projectionist having a fight. The premise is that this is happening in the very theater that each audience is seeing this movie. This has the effect of taking the audience out of spectator mode and making them participants in the experience.

The consequences of the disturbance in the projection room are played out on the big screen in a way no one had ever seen before and a lot of gags from the film spilled over into the Warner Brothers cartoons of the era. I have yet to see the entire film, but after seeing this, I can’t wait! Enjoy and SHARE! – Bobby Ellerbee

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLlA6IQZGI

[From “Kovacs Corner” on YouTube.com] – Returning to what I believe was a great influence on Ernie Kovacs’ comedic style is the zany 1941 film “Hellzapoppin’…

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