The first big push to bring television to the public’s attention was mounted by RCA at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. This is a rare survivor…the 32 page tour book handed out at the RCA Pavilion, that attempts to cover many aspects of the new media. It is packed with rare photos and maps, that even show the Alexanderson Mechanical Disc Camera from the early 1920s, and the later version of that technology, complete with the famous Felix The Cat scanning camera on display. Enjoy!

Thanks to our friend Martin Perry, this catalog is the only piece of GE information we have ever seen on this rare color camera. It was preceded by the GE PE 15 model, of which there were less than a dozen made. There may have been as many as 20 to 25 of these PE 25 cameras manufactured and the successor was the GE PE 250.  That we know of, there are no PE 25 survivors. Take a look at this rare piece of color history. – Bobby Ellerbee

This show was network television’s first rehearsed, non-reality program. It was a one hour variety/sketch comedy show hosted by Helen Parrish. Parrish had been a child film star and she became the first popular TV star. With the lessons learned and a new host and sponsor, NBC would bring this show back in 1948 in a tighter and more structured form as, ‘The Texaco Star Theater’ with Milton Berle. ‘Hour Glass’ debuted on NBC in television’s first ever “fall season” and ran from 8 till 9 PM on Thursday nights from May 8, 1946 till March 6, 1947. In 1946, NBC only had 10 shows on the network which covered NYC, Schenectady and Philadelphia but that was twice as many as the only other network offering television and that was Dumont. On Thursday nights, ‘Hour Glass’ was preceded on the network by the 10 minute ‘Esso News Reel’ at 7:50 and followed by local programs. ‘Hour Glass’ pioneered sketch/variety TV, and was the most ambitious and expensive production yet with big production numbers, chorus girls, a band, famous guest stars, and more with the show’s sponsor pouring in over $200,000 for the show’s nine month run.

The program was produced by the J. Walter Thompson agency on behalf of Standard Brands for their Chase and Sanborn and Tenderleaf Tea lines. ‘Hour Glass’ featured different performers every week, including Peggy Lee and, in one of the first examples of a top radio star appearing on network television…Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in November 1946. The show also showcased filmed segments produced by Thompson’s Motion Picture Department; these ranged from short travelogues to advertisements. Every episode also included a ten minute drama, which proved one of the more popular portions of the show.

“Although Thompson and Standard Brands representatives occasionally disagreed over the quality of individual episodes, their association was placid compared to the constant sniping that was the hallmark of the agency’s relationship with NBC. It started with unhappiness over studio space, which Thompson regarded as woefully inadequate”*!

The tension escalated when the network insisted that an NBC director manage the show from live rehearsals through actual broadcast. The network was similarly displeased that Thompson refused to clear their commercials with NBC before air time. Parrish left the show in November to return to Hollywood and was succeeded by a much less popular host, Eddie Mayehoff. In February 1947 Standard Brands canceled ‘Hour Glass’. They were pleased with the show’s performance in terms of beverage sales and its overall quality, yet were leery about continuing to pour money into a program that did not reach a large number of households. The strain between NBC and Thompson played a role as well. Still, Hour Glass did provide Thompson with a valuable blueprint for the agency’s celebrated and long-running production, Kraft Television Theater.

* quoted from The Museum Of Broadcast Communications, “Encyclopedia of Television”.

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Dr. Joe Flaherty was the Senior Vice President of Technology at CBS and at the bottom of my story is an article with industry colleagues sharing their memories of the icon of television innovation.

There are few that have seen more television history than Joe Flaherty. There are fewer still that have made as much television history! I will not try and cover all that here, but will instead bring to light some interesting background surrounding several major events in CBS and broadcast history. As I try and boil down over an hour of conversation, I may do some skipping around from topic to topic, and our fist topic is the backstory on Norelco.

According to Joe, “If CBS is the Tiffany network, the BBC is the Gold network”. Although CBS had a couple of hundred engineers in research and development, the BBC had three times that many. In the early 60s, Dr. Flaherty, with a degree in physics was already moving up the ladder and was sent to England to see what he could learn form the BBC about some new black and white cameras they were using.

They were Phillips cameras and had this new Plumbicon tube in them that made great pictures. While there, he called Phillips and they sent a plane for him. He went to the plant in Holland and while there, asked if the Plumbicon would work for color. They had not given it much thought, but after that visit, they did. The result was the PC 60. In early 1964, Joe went back to Holland to take a look. There were problems with the red channel registration on those early PC 60s, but Joe was impressed and bought all 25 of them. Unfortunately, the plant in Eindhoven could only make 25 a year, so he bought a years worth of production. Soon after, Phillips set up shop in New York and began making the PC 70 there and at a much faster clip. CBS had ordered the first 75 and delivery began in 1965.

This was a busy period for Joe and CBS. In 1952, CBS bought a dairy depot from Sheffield Farms and had used it mostly for scenery storage, but with the studios at Grand Central Terminal getting cramped, and wanting to consolidated some of the many broadcast theaters throughout Manhattan, a change was needed. William Paley put Joe in charge of converting the building to the CBS Broadcast Center. By 63, some of the TV studios were up and running and master control moved from Grand Central in late 64 completing the move. With his intimate understanding of the Norelco color regime which was to come, he was the perfect man for the job.

Although the RCA TK10s and TK30 came long before Joe got to CBS in 1956, I did ask him about the unique striped band around the top of most of the cameras. For a long time, no one knew or could say why they were there. A few years back, Pete Fasciano, who developed the Avid editing system, was helping me with the art work for my TK11, which I dressed as a CBS network camera. When laying our the black horizontal stripes at the top and bottom and the alternating grey and white vertical bars, Pete realized this was actually a grey scale test pattern. I told Joe the story, he laughed and confirmed our theory. The amplitude was adjusted using the black and white bars and the frequency adjusted using the grey bars.

Speaking of grey…now we know why all the CBS equipment was painted ‘navy grey’. Joe could not remember the name, but one of the early chief engineers for the television network was an former admiral in the Navy. You can see where this is headed can’t you? Yes, it was his idea to paint all the equipment ‘navy grey’ so it would all match. This started in the mid 50s. Many theories have abounded, like ‘eye acuity’ and more, but…

By the way, one of the financial considerations involved in management signing off on the 100 camera Norelco purchase involved man power. For many years, CBS upper management referred to the RCA color systems as ‘NSCT’ systems, which stood for ‘Never The Same Color Twice’. For network quality, the RCA TK41s and color telecine chains needed one video man to shade each camera and chain. It was thought that with the Norelco cameras, one man could shade 6 cameras at a time. I’m not sure how that worked out.

William Paley would ask Joe to lunch about 4 or 5 times a year. Each meeting, Paley would ask “What are we not doing that we should be doing?” That’s a great question for a CEO to ask and Joe always had to do his homework before each meeting. One of those big ideas was digital and HDTV, which we’ll get to soon, but first, let’s go back to the early 60s and another of Joe’s big ideas…ENG cameras.

Joe said one of the great things about CBS news was, “They were always willing to try something that almost worked.” This is where the ENG cameras come in. Even before CBS became involved with Ikegami in 1962, they had built a couple of ENG cameras in house. Last month, we had trouble identifying a CBS ENG camera at a Gemini space launch…I’m betting that was one of the CBS/Ikegami custom built cameras.

CBS News wanted to go with ENG cameras but there were still a lot of kinks to be worked out with the cameras and with a mobile video tape recorder. In the early 60s, Joe began spending time in Japan where CBS had an engineering office. He worked with Ikegami on the cameras, and soon after with Sony on the VTR. To test this all out, the CBS owned station in St. Louis, KMOX became ground zero for ENG production. The confidential agreements between CBS and Ikegami and Sony paid off and long before the RCA TK76 came out in 1976, CBS was using custom made, Ikegami ENG cameras. As is noted in his bios, Joe was the real pioneering power in the field of ENG.

He is also called ‘The Father of HDTV’ and it’s true. NHK in Japan had come up with the idea and Joe was there collaborating with them in 1971. There are many online articles about his many contributions and I’ll let you Google those, but here is an interesting backstory of one of the fist demonstrations.

Francis Ford Coppola was there and told Joe that, in his opinion, HDTV was better than 35mm film prints. The 35mm negatives were better than early HD, but when prints are made for distribution, the resolution and colors break down. Among the early problems was the difficulty in seeing the HD broadcast signal as the early HD receivers were not up to par yet. This is reminds me of the problems at RCA in the early days of color. They had to build a monitor as good as the camera to see what they had.

Jumping to one more quick item, I had long wondered which CBS studio had the Dumont cameras. As it turns out, 4 studios had them…Studios 53, 54, 55 and 56 at Liederkrantz Hall were all Dumont equipped. Oh yes, and Joe is the only man to have ever redone The Ed Sullivan Theater twice! Once in 1965 for color, and once again when David Letterman came to CBS.

Dr. Joe passed in 2018, but he is well remembered! https://www.twice.com/industry/remembering-dr-joe-flaherty

TV Technology, a TWICE sister publication, reached out to some of his industry colleagues for their remembrances of Joe.

Peter Fannon was president of the Advanced Television Test Center and recently retired after a long career with Panasonic.

“It is very hard to imagine a television world without Joe Flaherty. He was—over six decades—a persistent force for global technological progress and industry advancement. Whether responsible for conceiving, building, or integrating new technologies and systems, Joe was a master at inspiring—and yes, sometimes terrifying—others in order to accomplish with him the progressive changes he could foresee would improve television for both content creator and broadcast company, for both TV viewer and online consumer alike.

His personal drive was, to be sure, formidable. He was relentless in pursuit of the new and better, the smarter and more efficient ways in broadcast and satellite spectrum use, studio and newsgathering design, camera and recording technologies, computer-generated imaging, facilities and network interconnection, and display technologies of all sorts. Throughout his career he supported or led research and development in-house, and he worked tirelessly with manufacturers around the world to bring to life new concepts in all of these arenas. He spent uncountable time traveling and working with broadcasters in all parts of the globe, and in international standards bodies, seeking to align ever-improving television technologies in order to effect easy global program exchange, and to spur competition for the best solutions whatever the issue.

Most famously, it was Joe Flaherty who first propelled the notion of high-definition TV in the United States, calling up all his persuasiveness to rally engineering, business and then political forces to bring “advanced television” to American broadcasting. Under the aegis of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS)—which he had lobbied to have created—he chaired the all-important Planning Committee, which set out the technical and operational criteria for what became, barely a decade later, the world’s first all-digital HDTV terrestrial broadcast system.

And during that time he gave time and attention to every advanced TV system proponent in order to solicit the best ideas; participated in every Advisory Committee meeting and activity; served on the Board and technical committee of the Advanced Television Test Center; spoke frequently to domestic and international gatherings about the television of the future; and lobbied Members of Congress, Commissioners of the FCC, and both White House and Federal agencies’ leaders on the need and means for a smooth, nationwide transition to the new system.

It will be impossible indeed to see and enjoy television at all without thinking often of the passion, commitment and contributions of Joe Flaherty to making it all happen.”

Richard Wiley is former chairman of the FCC, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television and is partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein.

“I worked closely with Joe during the eight-plus years of ACATS (FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service). He always kept his eye on the end game—high definition television. We had people suggesting systems that were lesser than HDTV but that was never going to be satisfactory from his standpoint. He helped develop the rapid deployment of HDTV on a worldwide basis and I learned a lot by reading a number of his papers.

He was a true visionary and could find pragmatic solutions to the innumerable technical problems that we confronted during those eight years. For example, when we had to test these different systems, he went to the NAB to lobby for developing the Advanced Television Test Center—he was instrumental in getting it built.

I went with Joe on many international trips and everybody knew him, he was the ambassador for television at large. He was known worldwide and I don’t think anyone else had that status—he was a unique figure. He was soft spoken but determined. He might have ruffled some feathers from time to time but he had a dream. He and Mark Richer were the two engineers I relied on the most because they would always give me the unvarnished truth as they saw it.”

Larry Thorpe is Senior Fellow at Canon U.S.A. and spent more than 20 years at Sony Electronics pioneering the development of HDTV and digital production technologies in the U.S. broadcast and motion picture industries.

“My positive response at an initial meeting with Joseph Flaherty in the mid-1970s was probably the fact that we were both of modest physical stature. But I was soon to learn that his industry stature soared far above my own. Maybe it was my being Irish that formed the early bond between us (he regularly vacationed in Ireland). While that manifested itself largely in cordiality over the next decade whenever we sporadically met, it was to blossom into a working bond in the early eighties when then Dr. Flaherty learned that I was Masahiko Morizono’s point man on driving Sony’s HDTV agenda in the U.S. The very close relationship between those two giants was forged more than a decade earlier when Joe Flaherty’s drive behind electronic newsgathering was flanked by Morizono-san’s drive behind ENG cameras and recorders—first the Umatic and later the Betacam.

At a time when HDTV was looked askance at by most broadcasters, Joe Flaherty had instantly seen the future of video imaging and indeed the future of broadcasting. If he was relentless in his drive on ENG, he was positively titanic in his unwavering leadership on HDTV. His vision of 1080/60.00 as a potential worldwide HDTV production standard never faltered over the next decade and a half. I spent countless hours with Joe at endless formal meetings of the various HDTV standardization groups, the multiple strategy sessions within CBS, and supporting the never-ending demonstrations that he organized at every conceivable venue around the globe. While the latter could at times create tensions between us, Joe would always make things right with a fine-dining lunch or dinner.

Leadership emerges under various guises but Joe Flaherty based his on a sharply focused determination that was at times disguised by his remarkably quiet voice. Entanglements with the separate and competing HDTV agendas of European broadcasters, the computer industry, and Hollywood never daunted Joe. His international diplomacy was unwavering as he sought to persuade all to his mission of a unified HDTV standard. And indeed, Joe could be uncannily persuasive. The emergence of the worldwide 1080-line HDTV standard (albeit at international frame rates) is testament to his persistence.

I was sad to see Joe fade quietly from the world scene over the past decade—but impressed and heartened by the fact that he was in his eighties when he did start to withdraw. Everything he dreamed about over the past 50 years—from ENG to HDTV—are today colossal global realities. Joe Flaherty can surely rest in peace having left a legacy of jobs superbly done. Goodbye, my mentor.”

Mark Richer is president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

“Dr. Flaherty’s lifetime commitment to the advancement of television technology was extraordinary. Among his many contributions to the industry was the pivotal role he played in the formation of ATSC in 1982. He served on the ATSC Executive Committee and Board of Directors until 2010 when he was named to the honorary “Member Emeritus.”

Dr. Flaherty’s unwavering commitment to the standardization of HDTV was contagious, motivating the industry to develop the highest quality system possible. He had the vision to understand that the specifications for HDTV should not be limited by the capabilities of the cameras and displays available at the time.

Joe pushed industry groups to establish long term strategies often quoting one his favorite proverbs, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”

Gary Shapiro is president/CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). The group issued the following statement shortly after Flaherty’s passing.

“Joe Flaherty was a visionary who believed the American HDTV standard should be the highest-possible quality. Throughout his decades as a CBS executive, he advocated for better national and global standards for all broadcasters. Joe often called me and urged me to take a strong position in favor of broadcast quality, and I never failed to heed his advice. Today, people around the world enjoy a richer TV viewing experience than ever, in no small part because of Joe’s focus on excellence. We have lost a true industry legend.”

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FIRST, Don’t miss this!  The Television Legends Interview Series taped six half hour segments with Mr. Ripp and the first of the series is linked below.

https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/heino-ripp?clip=102062#interview-clips

In the photo above, we see Heino starting his career in Studio 3H behind an RCA A500 Iconoscope camera. Below, he is literally the “right hand man” to another legend, Dwight Hemion (no headset), who is directing ‘The Perry Como Show’ at The Ziegfeld Theater.

Mr. Ripp was born with a mild deformity in the fingers of his left hand which kept him from serving in WWII. This allowed him to keep his new job at NBC, which he began in the early ’40s. All through the war years, he was there…learning and innovating.

Heino moved from the studio to the control room and soon became one of the network’s top technical directors….a role that he would continue in until his last years with NBC, in which he served as the TD on ‘Saturday Night Live’.

You name it, he saw it! When television took off after the war, Ripp was right in the middle of the biggest entertainment and technology explosion ever seen. Every big, live NBC show you can think of, Heino was there for.

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February 25, 1950…”Your Show Of Shows” Debuts On NBC!

To really appreciate the historical importance of “Your Show Of Shows” in television history, just remember…this is the format that “Saturday Night Live” is built on, it was the first “participating sponsor” show, and a program that lead launched several of the industry’s top comedy creators, like Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Woody Allan and more.

To get the whole story, there is no one more qualified than the show’s star, Sid Caesar to tell it, and here he is. By the way, in the eight minutes just before my starting point on the Emmy TV Legends video, he talks about the “Admiral Broadway Revue”, Pat Weaver, and having to wait for the cameras to arrive from a baseball game. Really. https://youtu.be/JtSpZ8iD80I?t=8m57s

“YSOS” debuted as part of a two and a half hour live block that was called “Saturday Night Review.” The first hour, was “The Jack Carter Show,” done at NBC’s WMAQ studios in Chicago and was a comedy and variety affair airing at 8 Eastern. Included here is a photo from Carter’s show with a very young Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin on each side of Carter.

At 9, ninety minutes of fun on YSOS hit the air live and was followed at 10:30 by “Your Hit Parade”. Jack Carter’s show was replaced the next year by “The All Star Review.” This two and a half hour block was the first time Pat Weaver’s “participating sponsor” plan was used, which gave us the now famous phrase; “Brought to you in part by _____,”

The show debuted from NBC’s first television converted theater, The International at 5 Columbus Circle. When NBC first began to use the theater with the “Admiral Broadway Revue” show, it was a three camera show done with a mobile unit feeding the show back to 30 Rock on an AT&T line. By the time YSOS debuted, NBC had installed a control room and four permanent RCA TK30 camera chains.

Speaking of the 1949 Admiral show, did you know it was so popular, it was canceled!?!? What? It’s true!

“The Admiral Broadway Revue” was the start of one of television’s greatest early comedy teams…Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, with the great Max Liebman producing. The show had great ratings but unbelievably, Admiral (who “owned” the show) ended it in June of ’49 after only five months on the air. It seems that the show generated sales of Admiral TV sets that were so far beyond their capacity to manufacture them, Admiral had to either end the show or build a new plant.

Since they owned the show, it could not continue with another sponsor and they would not sell it. Such were the sponsorship problems of the early days of television. Soon after this, NBC Vice President Pat Weaver would solve this problem by having the network own the shows and sell spots to sponsors. He is the man that brought magazine style ad sales to radio and television, which spread the cost of production among several advertisers, and gave the networks ownership.

On February 25, 1950, four of The International’s brightest years started with the debut of “Your Show Of Shows,” Caesar and Coca were back with a cast of writers that have become the “who’s who” of comedy including Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin, Lucille Kallen, Selma Diamond, Joseph Stein, Michael Stewart, Tony Webster, Woody Allan and Carl Reiner.

Below is a classic clips from “Your Show Of Shows” with Carl Reiner and Howard Morris in with Sid and Imogene, as “The Haircuts” in a song parody sketch.

Also induced here are exclusive photos inside The International Theater showing the YSOS stage, layout and equipment in 1951. There were four cameras in use with one on a Houston Fearless Panoram dolly and one on the newly developed Saner crane that you see here. Add two two sound booms and two pedestal cameras and you have a stage full of equipment to set scenes around.

With commercial sets only :70 seconds long, full set changes had to be made quickly and at times, there was no commercial break between sketches, which is why on the left side of the stage you see a “limbo set”, which is a back drop on the wings that can be used for live commercials or short sketches that give the crew time to make a scene change on the main stage. The 25 piece orchastra was on the other side, stage left, as was the customary location of bands in television. NOTE: The Sanner Studio Crane on this stage was the first crane ever used in television! 

Finally, we have the New York Times ad for the show’s debut and an ultra rare copy of the debut shows Saturday schedule, that shows the final rehearsals for each sketch on that nights show.

Enjoy, and please share this! -Bobby Ellerbee

Above and below is the Sanner Studio Crane…the first ever TV crane

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Finally! The RCA New York Lab Address Was 7 Van Cortlandt Park South….

Since the first pictures of Felix The Cat on the mechanical television turntable set began to be seen on this page over 5 years ago, people have asked me where that Van Cortlandt Park testing facility was.

Finally, today I found out in a book written about Dr. Zworykin. Now that I had that, I did more digging and found this two page article in a 1956 Radio Age Magazine. This was the first RCA lab and testing facility. It was built by RCA in 1924 and was their technical HQ, until the move to Camden in 1930.

This is where among many other things, magnetic loudspeakers were invented, and it was the first home of W2XBS television. -Bobby Ellerbee

On page 10 of this 1956 Radio Age, there is a short but sweet description of a “unicorn”…the rarely mentioned but very important Van Cortlandt Park lab and research center, which was RCA’s first. There, W2XBS (now WNBC) came to life, as did the first ever magnetic coil loudspeakers and much more!

SURPRISE #1. If you always thought those were spotlights mounted in the black frame, you (and I) are wrong. They are actually quite the opposite of lights.

SURPRISE #2. If you always thought the contraption shooting through the opening was a camera, you (and I) were wrong. It actually quite the opposite of a camera.

SURPRISE #3. The things we thought were lights, are actually what make the images…those are photo electric cells.

SURPRISE #4. The thing we thought was the camera is actually projecting light, through a spinning disc, on the subject.

Such are the days of early television, but more precisely mechanical television.

By the way, the Felix photo was taken at RCA’s 411 5th Avenue transmitter testing location, a few blocks south of the RCA HQ at 711 5th Ave., and later, Felix and W2XBS testing moved to the Roof Garden Theater at the New Amsterdam Theater and finally to the 85th floor of the Empire State Building. The manikin (not a man) with the camera is most likely at 411 5th Ave.

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Surprise #1…THIS IS A PREVIOUSLY UNKNOWN PHOTO OF THE WORLD’S FIRST TELEVISION REMOTE BROADCAST, three years before John Logie Baird’s 1931 Epson Derby remote in England.

Surprise #2….This was also the first live television news event. Or, was supposed to be. It seems that all went well in rehearsal, but when Gov. Smith came to the podium, all the film cameras there turned on their bright lights, which washed out the ability of the photo cells to see the image.

Surprise #3…The photo was taken on August 22, 1928, as WGY transmitted Gov. Al Smith’s speech accepting his nomination for the U. S. Presidency. The event took place in Albany, New York, and 24-line pictures were sent back to Schenectady, OVER A TELEPHONE WIRE.

Using a telephone line for TV transmission was a relatively new event. Jenkins did a 5 mile “Shadow Graph” transmission in 1923, but it was late 1927 before Baird did a 435 mile transmission in the UK, and AT&T did a New York-Washington linkup.

This rare image is the one that started the idea for these surprise stories. I found it a about six weeks ago in one of the anniversary editions of the Broadcasting Magazine Yearbook (pg.4).

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-BC/BC-1981-50th/BC-1981-50-Years-of-Broadcasting.pdf

The three black boxes on stage caught my eye first, then the caption, which said, “These General Electric television cameras, from WGY Schenectady were said to be involved in the first TV remote when they covered New York Gov. Al Smith, the 1928 Democratic Presidential nominee, accepting the nomination in Albany.”

I was confused by the black boxes in the photo, but began to investigate. This is where yesterday’s surprises in Part 1 came into play. The two smaller boxes here are the photo electric pick up cells, and the big box in the center…the one we think of as a camera, is actually projecting a strong light through a scanning disc inside the big box.

Put another way, it is a “flying spot scanner”. In much the same way electronic television tubes scan the subject – delivered by the camera lens to the target screen, scanned from left to right, and top to bottom – the mechanical system’s “camera” projected a spot of light that scanned the subject the same way.

The images of the subject are made by the photo electric photo cells which are seen here as the two smaller black boxes.

Surprise #4…At the link is an incredible 20 second piece of film from WGY in 1928 that will explain how this works. WATCH CLOSELY and repeat.

First, notice…the octagonal object on the left is the “monitor”, a mechanical televisor unit with a 3 inch screen. The smaller black boxes with the big glass objects are not lights, but the photo electric “eyes” that make the picture. The big black box with a lens on the front (that looks like a camera) is the light projector and the lens focuses the 1000 watt light inside, projected through a spinning disk.

Watch how the tech moves the small photo electric box like a camera…which is is.

This is part of the first ever dramatic television broadcast called “The Queen’s Messenger” and what you are seeing in this clip is how they shot a close up scene that concentrated on the actors hands, and what they had in them.

There were only four actors, these two hand actors and two face actors…a female Russian spy and a male British diplomatic courier. Only close ups were possible and there were three projectors in the room with six photo electric cell boxes. One projector was for the female face actor, one for the male face actor and one for the hand actors.

By the way, this is a brightly lit reenactment for the film camera, because the studio had to be twilight dark in order for the not so sensitive photo electric cells to capture the 24 lines of light projected onto the subjects.

Also shown here is an April 1928 diagram of the GE mechanical television process that includes the broadcast and reception method. Notice that two radio transmitters were used in these experimental broadcasts. The visual image was broadcast on GE’s experimental shortwave station W2XB operating on 37.33 meters (7.7 MHz) and the sound was broadcast over their radio station WGY, operating on 379.9 meters (790 KHz).

The last image is a simplified version of the broadcast apparatus from an April 1928 Mechanic’s Illustrated.

Tomorrow, how mechanical television morphed into the electronic version, and more surprises! Please share this with your friends, so they can be surprised too. -Bobby Ellerbee

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With so many overlapping and similar events happening not only in the US and UK, but at RCA, Westinghouse, General Electric and AT&T, writing this synopsis is a real challenge. That’s why, as this final part leads us into electronic television, I am only hitting the major events, and giving you links to fill in the glorious details. You will find them at the bottom of the page.

Surprise 1…We start with the first time the photo electric “eye” was actually put inside a light sealed box to make a television camera.

You can see that in the first photo (above), which is the AT&T “Direct Scanning System”. It was first demonstrated July 12, 1928 at the Bell Labs in New York, and was the first demonstration of outdoor television using sunlight and a scanning disc…something no other researcher had been able to do.

It was not revealed at the time, but the 50 hole, 3 foot disc system’s success was due to the new, Bell improved Case Thalofide photo electric cell.

On August 24, 1928, Philo Farnsworth gave a private demonstration of his all electronic system to Pacific Bell. The images on the
one-and-a-quarter by one-and-one-half inch blueish screen made images hard to identify, but the motion was easy to follow. Ten days later, he demonstrated it to the press in San Francisco. Reports were that “the basic principal of electronic TV had been proven and that perfection was just a matter of engineering”.

Surprise 2…Farnsworth applied for his first patent, which was on the Image Dissector tube January 7, 1929, but contrary to popular belief, he did not patent the first all electronic system. His patent did not specify a cathode ray receiving tube, as he was convinced that he could not patent such a basic device.

As I understand it, the real problem with Philo’s system was that due to some unlockable technical relationship between the Image Dissector output and the transmitted image, the size of the picture received was forever limited. That is, the only way to get a bigger picture on the receiving set was to massively increase the size of the Image Dissector tube.

Tests using a mechanical camera and an electronic receiving tube had been done as early as 1926 at Bell Labs, but half tones were not possible until improvements in the photo electric cells were made. That is why Bell’s Direct Scanning or Outside System was so important.

Finally in May of 1929, a 7” by 20” tube, fabricated by Corning Glass was given a willemite phosphor screen prepared by Zworykin’s group at Westinghouse. With it’s green phosphor screen, half of the goal of electronic television was accomplished. Here, half tones made a difference again, as part of the research Zworykin had done on the Westinghouse facsimile machine’s half tone transmission and reception was incorporated.

On November 13, 1928, Zworykin received an American patent on his improved all cathode ray television system. It was not until February of 1933 that RCA was able to demonstrate a fully electronic camera with Zworykin’s Iconoscope tube, which is shown below, with his recently developed spherical Iconoscope tube.
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At this link is a very thorough and photo filled article from Richard Brewster from our friends at the Early Television site.
http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_story_brewster.html

Below is a video that takes us through the whole process…from Nipkow’s disc and Baird’s work, to Farnsworth and Zworykin. -Bobby Ellerbee

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This article and the two videos will answer three questions many of us have about the “Big Bang” set and, the plot line too.

1. Is the staircase set a multi story set shot with a jib?
2. If not, is the stage raised or is there a hole in the floor?
3. Will the elevator ever be fixed?

You are about to find out, but I have to say, these question has intrigued me as much as the MAD Magazine “Schuster’s Fork” optical illusion of the 1960s.

Before I give you the answer, take a look at this short but sweet trip down the stairs from top to bottom, and it will answer Question 1.

As you see, it is a single set with two stair cases, but a single landing. Since the 4th floor is where all the action is, if long stair climbs are needed, the landing is redressed for each floor as the actors ascend or descend.

That still doesn’t answer the big (bang) question though, so let’s look a great tour of the set with Howard and Rahesh, with the stairs at 3:29.

With the camera dollies rolling down what looks like a concrete floor, it is beginning to look like maybe it is not a raised set, right? But if it is not…what about the hole? Was it there, or did “Big Bang” make it?

Here is the answer: When the pilot episode was shot, the project was done on Stage 25, which is one of the biggest and best on the Warner lot. To build the stairs, they had to dig a hole in the floor, which caused some friction, but it turned out to be a good thing for the bangers.

After the series was bought, Warner wanted to assign them a smaller stage. Creator Chuck Lorre said OK, “but we’ll have to dig a new hole there too”. With that, Warner let them stay on Stage 25.

As for Question 3, the answer is NO! The walks up and down the stairs are to useful as a plot device as it gives the writers a chance to tell parts of the story that would be hard to tell elsewhere. Now we all know! -Bobby Ellerbee

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