Commercial TV’s 80th Anniverary…Setting The Stage For July 1, 1941
Tomorrow, television marks the 80th anniversary of its move from the “experimental” phase to the “commercial” phase. Today, we’ll look at the creation of a new piece of production equipment that was necessary to make it all flow on screen…the Shadow Box.
Pictured here is the CBS shadow box prototype being tested in one of the backrooms at their Grand Central studios. This basic design would later become the Gray Telop machine, which CBS allowed Gray to manufacture. NBC had a version too, which I will include in the Comments section.
This three function machine allowed a live camera to shoot into the box and see, with the aid of moving mirrors, photo images, title cards and “rolling credits” on a drum. With no fader controls on the switching console in the control room, live dissolves could be done here manually with mirror movements, and fading light sources in each of the three sections.
With commercials now in the program mix, the shadow box was a great way to add elements to spots, but was also used at the opens and closes, and transitions. There is more detail in the text description under the photo from Richard Hubbell’s classic book. “Television Programing And Production” from 1945.
I was always so prowd to have the first name of Philo, for the in enventer of television Mr.Philo T. Farnsworth,who died penniless due his invention, which totally changed the twentieth century, was stollen by RCA , and Farnsworth went bankrupt suing RCA to get back his pattens!!!
Yey!!!
Thanks again Bobby. I can never learn enough about our industry.
There was a similar machine that I’ve never found much about. It came a little later and, I think, involved the manipulation of cells (twisting, bending, floating etc.) Often used to “visualize” music. I think it was a proprietary device that was closely held by it’s inventors. Can’t remember what it was called.
My first job in television at KFDA-TV 10, Amarillo, Texas, was as a projectionist. The main item I had to work was a Grey Telop Machine. We used Telops for most of the things you would use slides to do. A Polaroid picture glued to a 4X5 card with Hot press lettering on it was perfect for the Telop mahine. There were two racks for loading Telops, each rack held 5, so you could have 10 at a time loaded and ready to switch from one rack to the other with light control faders, then rack the one just used to the next in the rack. It was a very useful tool in that our salesmen could shoot Polaroid pictures in the morning at a business, and have them on the air with Hot Press Lettering that same afternoon.
Also known as the steam-powered analog Vidifont.
This is the middle element of the NBC prototype version, which was called “the title frame optical mechanical dissolve machine”.