Earliest Use And Photo Of The RCA TK40 & HF Cradle Head

In early August of 1953, RCA shipped the first four production models of the TK40 to the Colonial Theater in New York for field testing. They also sent the first and only engineering model of the Houston Fearless cradle head which you can see in this photo…the other cameras were mounted on the old friction heads. Notice this pan head is the narrow version later used for the B/W camera lines. It also has no locking or drag knobs. With the 3 cable connections, the wider head was developed for better support and extra room to thread the three cables through the pan head. On August 30th, NBC presented the first publicly announced experimental broadcast in compatible color TV of a network program which was “St. George and the Dragon” on the ‘Kukla, Fran, and Ollie Show’. This is a photo from the rehearsal of that presentation and is the first known photo of a production model TK40 and cradle head. Around October, three TK40s were installed in NBC Studio 3K. Shipments also went to NBC O&O stations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington as testing continued at the Colonial and in 3K and the January 1, 1954 NBC colorcast of the Rose Parade was the first color remote for the TK40s. The first shipments of TK40s to independent and non NBC O&O stations were made from Camden NJ on March 4, 1954. WKY in Oklahoma City was the first to receive them and three weeks later did their first color broadcast on April 8th. The March 54 shipment of TK40s coincides with the introduction of the Houston Fearless cradle head as you will see below.

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