RCA’s First Experimental Color Television Cameras
RCA’s First Experimental Color Television Cameras
By request, here is more on RCA’s first color efforts. Shown here are the first two RCA color cameras made. The photo was taken at NBC/RCA’s Wardman Park Studio in Washington DC around 1949.
The camera on the left has the lens cowl removed and notice that the color splitting mirrors are mounted in front of the fixed lens. Although the b/w RCA TK10 and TK30 had come to market in 1946 with turret lenses, this camera was not quite ready for that yet and, as with the old Iconoscope cameras, had to dolly in and out to get close ups or long shots.
In late 1950, these cameras were basically abandoned when RCA moved color testing to NBC Studio 3H in New York. The Washington color veterans were sent there, but these cameras went back to Princeton. The new experimental color cameras in 3H were the black “coffin cameras” which had the first hint of the now famous rounded viewfinder. Color tests began in 3H in early 1951 and stayed there till early ’53 when the Colonial Theater came into service with the prototype RCA TK40s. Please remember to visti the main page…just click on the blue text at the top of this post! -Bobby Ellerbee
The experiments were in Washington so staff at the FCC and the standards committee could easily attend critical demos of the proposed color system. This was mentioned in one of Bobby’s earlier posts.
The vacuum tube must have created a lot of heat because each camera has an exhaust fan on top of the viewfinder.
Whay did they use Washington for the early color experiments?