Thanks to Chuck Pharis, and his very rare RCA “Red Book”, I have new information and images to share with you, that include not only the first color remote unit, but also, new details on the Washington, Studio 3H and Colonial Theater color trials. I will set the stage with some background on color history, and with some new dates which have been confirmed by RCA information.

Remember, Washington was where the first phase of color experiments were done, with two first generation cameras at Wardman Park studios. Both of those cameras were retired and sent back to RCA in Camden in December of 1950.

The second phase of color testing was done in New York in NBC’s Studio 3H. In January of 1951, work began on the color installation there, and was completed by March. Three experimental cameras were installed in 3H and are called the “coffin cameras” due to their size and black color.

The third phase of color testing began at The Colonial Theater in New York. RCA/NBC leased the theater and began installation in late September of 1952 and the first transmission from here was March 19, 1953. There were four prototype models of the RCA TK40 in operation there, that underwent a full year of tests before RCA began production on the TK40 in Camden.

I felt it would help to refresh your memory, as we now know that this mobile unit was used in both the 3H and Colonial field test. As I mentioned in Thursday’s (8/4) post on this unit, this is one of the original NBC Telemobile units built in 1937.

The first use of the color mobile unit was in September of 1951 with a five day remote test from The Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY. Support equipment was permanently installed in the unit, but a “coffin camera” was borrowed from Studio 3H, which for a week, sent pictures three times a day. The morning test was shown in black and white on WNBT, to see how the images looked on the monochrome sets. The two afternoon tests were closed circuit color test seen on color sets at The Center Theater, The RCA Exhibition Hall across from 30 Rock, Studio 3H and in Princeton at the RCA Labs.

In 1952, there were over 30 remote tests, including two from Palisades Park NJ, but the big one was on October 18, when two of the coffin cameras were used to telecast, in color, the Columbia-Pennsylvania football game from Baker Field. One of the cameras was equipped with the new RCA Electa Zoom lens, while the other used the a normal field array of lenses on the turret.

Although there were very few color sets, RCA’s main objective with the experimental color broadcasts was to satisfy the FCC, with the fact that their Dot Sequential system was truly “Compatible”- in that it could deliver the same quality image to black and white TV sets, that monochrome broadcasts offered. Via newspaper ads, local viewers was asked to write to NBC with their comments on reception and picture quality of the color segments.

When color operations moved to the Colonial Theater, the new TK40 prototype cameras were delivered, which had very different control equipment. So, the mobile unit had to have a complete refitting, but when remotes were done, cameras were borrowed from The Colonial for a few days at a time. For more, click on the pix. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

Source

Chapter One: by Bobby Ellerbee

Over a period of months in 2009, I spoke to former RCA engineers Lou Bazin and Larry Thorpe, and to Fred Himelfarb of NBC, about a troubled period for both companies…the 1960s. Those conversations focused on topics from how the RCA TK41 cameras continued to evolve, to what happened when the TK42-43 did not evolve. There is more on this on the RCA TK60 page, so please visit that too.

That topic led to my first hearing of the secret back-story of the TK44A development. I have written my account of these conversations below. What is now the first chapter was sent to the principals for comment and later, for ‘color commentary,’ I sent it to two eminent television historians, Lytle Hoover* (RCA) and Jay Ballard** (NBC/ABC). As you will see below, Jay and Lytle have added a whole new second chapter, and so we begin.

When RCA came out with the ‘new look’ TK12 in 1960 (which became the TK60 in ’63), they began to feel it was time to replace the TK41s with a new model; the TK42, and had an experimental model at the NAB show as early at 1962 as seen below.

In essence they wanted to put a TK41 and a TK60 in the same camera head. They wanted the TK60s 4 1/2 image orthicon, so the image broadcast to the millions of still mostly black and white receivers was sharp, but also wanted the kind of great color images that came from the TK41. With the plan to put the lens inside the TK42, that did not leave enough room for the three image orthicons and optics from the 41, so they opted for color vidicon tubes.

As a young engineer at RCA, one of Lou Bazin’s assignments was to work directly with Fred Himelfarb *** , “Pharaoh of all cameras at NBC”. Originally an RCA engineer himself, Fred had moved to NBC with the TK40s to be the master link between theory and reality. At NBC, Fred could see the cameras in their real working environments and adapt solutions to improve the 41s’ pictures and operations. He was in constant touch with Lou, and thanks to Fred, RCA made lots of hugely productive modifications to the TK41s and built in as they were made. One of the many improvements was Fred’s design of a new single camera cable to replace the 3 cable design on the early TK40s and 41s.

Above is the experimental TK42 at the 1964 NAB convention…one that is now legendary. This was the year the Norelco PC60 debuted, and the year RCA brass pulled the plug on the TK42. Literally…they turned it off and left it off. Seems that after station owners saw the plumbicon tube pictures, they were asking RCA too many hard questions about why the four-tube TK42 pictures were not that good. (On the left, the newly-renamed RCA TK60; on the right, the experimental RCA TK42).

Remember…RCA stopped making the TK41 in 1964, but NBC needed new cameras and they were not happy with the TK42. Below is an extremely rare artifact that I hope you will read. It is a two page RCA memo from May of 1964…Fred Himelfarb’s comments on the preliminary engineering model of the TK42. The intrigue continues after the memo.

It was 1965 when the TK42 got its final ‘new look’ style and 60 were shipped to local stations as none of the networks ordered any…not even NBC. The four tube design and lens ‘chatter’ were big problems for them, but more on that below. With the Norelcos out now, RCA worked to find a way for the TK42 to match the picture quality of the PC60 but were not having much luck.

With nothing on the drawing board at RCA that could equal the new PC60, the ‘sin of all sins,’ the unthinkable, was being thought by NBC management…maybe they would buy cameras not made by RCA. Finally the word came. In late ’65, Fred was instructed by management to buy 35 Norelcos for NBC’s remote trucks, but not before he worked with Norelco on custom improvements.

The RCA corporate strategy to go ‘all out’ on the TK42 was a problem at many levels, including the ego level, but this is where a great back story begins…the stealth, ‘off the books’ development of the TK44A! Yes, RCA was already thinking of the TK44, BUT, they were still thinking 4 tubes!

Under RCA Broadcast Manager Andy Ingles, Norm Hobson was the management’s link and Lead Engineer on the TK42-43. Norm suspected that soon, there would be something other than the 4 tube TK44 design needed, so he told Lou Bazin that he “found some money” in another project, and Lou got started on a 3 tube TK44A design long before everyone realized the 4 tube version would not “cut the mustard.”

Upper Management at RCA did not have any idea that plans for a 3-tube A version was in the works, but it turns out that they were glad it was happening because it saved a lot of time when word came down from the top that it was time for something new. Larry Thorpe and Lou Bazin were both fairly new RCA engineers and worked under Hobson. They were both in on the ground floor of the stealth TK44A project. Fred knew too – and remember, Fred was working with Norelco to improve the pictures for the NBC version of the PC60. RCA engineer Harry Wright was in on it too because Harry was the mechanical engineer for the 42, 43 and 44. Please visit a special section on Harry in the Archives section to see the very first sketches of all these cameras and more one of a kind images.

Now the plot thickens AGAIN! While trying to work out a 3-tube design, Lou and another RCA engineer got a very unexpected invitation from Amperex to come visit and look at the possibilities of using their tubes in RCA cameras. Amperex was a Philips subsidiary (as was Norelco) and the US source for the new Plumbicon tubes and yokes…the main component of Norelco’s ‘magic pictures’. This was a ‘no no’ as Amperex was not authorized to share this technology with RCA…but Philips was way over there in Holland and Amperex was just a short ride from Camden. There was money to be made is selling tubes to RCA. Interestingly the plumbicon tubes were made in Rhode Island at another Philips subsidiary. I have a feeling Fred Himelfarb had a hand in this unexpected invitation. After all, he was already working with Philips and Amperex for their cameras with the shorter custom plumbicons.

Above is the 1967 artist rendering of the experimental TK44, but this is not to be confused with the great TK44A that used three Plumbicon tubes. This is a 4-tube camera, using an image Isocon tube in the luminance channel, and was a camera that came out just after the 42 – just before the 44A in ’68. More on this below from Jay and Lytle.

With all this brain power studying the Norelco, it wasn’t long until the RCA TK44A 3-tube Plumbicon camera was introduced, and the first ones were sold to WBAP in Dallas and delivered in early 1968. The TK44As made better pictures than the Norelco and were much more stable.

Lou told me that to prove the stability point, Fred once sprayed Freon on one of the Norelco preamps and the picture just fell apart…registration went nuts. Then he sprayed the TK44. Although the preamp circuit board had frost all over it, the picture never even wavered.

My original draft of this story was sent for comment to all the principals and the reply from Jay and Lytle has basically added another chapter to the TK44 story.

Chapter Two: by Jay Ballard and Lytle Hoover

There is one chapter missing in the evolution of the TK-44A from the TK-42. RCA developed an interim camera between the TK-44A (plumbicon) and the 42/43-it was called the TK-44, and was a 4-tube camera, using an image Isocon tube in the luminance channel. The Isocon was used in astronomy applications and had very low noise, but could not handle the dynamic range encountered in television. The TK-44 (not 44A) was thought of as a field version of the 42/43, but still retaining the 4 tube concept.

When the TK-44 was brought outside, the picture bloomed in the intense daylight, and the story goes that Harold Seer, another RCA engineer, knew than that this design was not going to fly. The TK-44 never went into production.

Another component that made the Philips camera successful was the small prism, which RCA initially bought along with the yokes and the tubes. They were the key to the success of the PC-60/70 series. True, RCA later upgraded the TK-41 to prism optics, but the 30mm tubes made the prism much smaller than the one used for the 3″ IO.

I believe that both GE and RCA had designed lead oxide tubes, but only the Philips people were able to produce a stable target in quantities. Hats off to the Eindhoven scientists. The design was later licensed to EEV, Matsushita, and RCA with the Vistacon.

In the mid 60s, the only high-end 3-tube design was the Norelco (although Norelco experimented with a 4-tube design in Breda, per Fred van Roessel). Everyone else was 4-tube, with a luminance channel. You can see why, as there was still a large monochrome viewing audience, plus germanium transistor circuitry was prone to drift, and the 4-tube design always gave a non-derived, wide band luminance signal. It even spilled over into telecine design (TK-27, PE-240,etc).

The 42/43 sold about 500 units because the color conversion was underway and there was a desperate need for cameras and lenses. Station managements trusted RCA for its magnificent support organization, its unequaled sales force, research facility in Princeton, huge variety of products, engineering expertise; all the legends fostered by Gen. Sarnoff. But the 42/43 left RCA with a black eye, and many loyal customers turned to GE, Philips, Marconi, and others.

The Japanese were not yet a force in the world scene-yet. Station managements were also much more tolerant and trusted their chief engineers. They were making so much money in the pre-cable days-who cared if the cameras weighed 280 lbs and were noisy? Some of these stories were documented in Andy Inglis’ book Behind The Tube.

The TK-44A was a great success for RCA, and deservedly so. Almost 800 were sold, according to my customer list. Fred had a lot of input on the design. It was a big improvement over the Norelco cameras-the power supply concept, automatic cable compensation, a video operator’s dream. There were problems with cold solder joints, and grounds, but they were repairable. The TK-44-A/B spanned 20 years at NBC. Successors TK-45/46 were also popular.

Footnotes

* Lytle Hoover was a television director before becoming the manager of market research at RCA from 1968-82 and is a hugely important source of information on all things Television. His site at http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/RCA-TV.htm is the most comprehensive RCA history site on the world wide web.

**Jay Ballard is a world class Television historian who has recently retired from ABC NY as the engineer in charge of pre testing all the equipment the network is considering adding. Before moving there, Jay worked over twenty years at NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza headquarters with NBC legend Fred Himelfarb.

***Fred Himelfarb worked at NBC from 1950 to 1990. His title when he retired was Principal Engineer of NBC Television. Unfortunately for all of us, Fred shed his mortal coil in April of 2010. Although gone, he is not forgotten.

He helped design the RCA TK42, TK42XX, TK43, TK44, TK47, TK48, TK76 and more.

The man in the suit is Harry Wright, one of RCA’s most respected mechanical engineers.

I had the privilege of getting to know the man who designed some famous cameras for RCA, Mr. Harry Wright. To get things started with a big bang, here are the first ever, hand drawn images of two of those cameras.

This is Harry’s first rough sketch of how the RCA TK42 should look.

Here is Harry’s first sketch of the TK44.

Here are some of Harry’s ideas on a new viewfinder hood for the TK44.

This simple schematic from June 1967 lays out Harry’s first thoughts on the internal construction of the TK44.

WOW! Great stuff, isn’t it? I have about a dozen more of the first detailed schematics of the TK42, 42XX, 43, 44 and 45 cameras that I would love to show you, but they are huge, blueprint size 20 x 30 inch sheets and too big to display here.

If you are curious about the TK42XX as mentioned above and wonder what in the world that is, well, take a look…perhaps your first ever at the dual-lens TK42 experimental camera below.

Above, you see the finished product…the RCA TK42XX dual-lens camera, and although it never was put in production, it was built. To build one, you have to have plans, and below is one of Harry’s early schematics of the TK42XX from October 1963.

Before we go further, I want to comment on the first image on this page…the one of Harry looking at a red plastic tape. In that photo, he is double checking the information on the dot coded ‘instruction’ tape for the new, automated three-axis lathe at RCA. The project he is working on is the front face panel of the TK44 plumbicon camera. Just below is the three-axis lathe and below that, the finished product, the TK44 face plate.

Below is the first mock-up of the TK44 from RCA’s art department. Harry’s copy shows that he knew some top vents would be necessary, so he drew them in on his copy; later, Harry came up with the hinged top door with horizontal vents.

Among the papers and photos Harry sent are some delicious, never before seen images from the RCA engineering lab in Camden where each camera’s first editions were built. Below are photos of TK42 and TK43 cameras in that lab, in various stages of their initial mock-up construction and completion.

Looking closely above, you can see the Varatol 3 internal lens sticking out of the camera body though the lens hole as the first TK42 is constructed. This was the TK42s Achilles heel of sorts. With the lens now inside, the heat of the electronics affected the internal mechanics of the lens and made the zoom process unreliable at times when the lens elements expanded and ‘chattered’ instead of gliding smoothly. Note that the images had to come all the way to the back of the camera before being split up and sent to the optics side of the camera (right side) as seen below.

Here is a close up of the Varatol 3 lens used in the TK42 and 43.

Above is the art department’s final version of the TK42 and below is the engineering lab’s final version as it sits finally mounted, ready for testing. Below that is a close up of the mock-up camera from the operator’s position.

Above, two images of the completed TK43 in the Camden RCA lab and below, two close ups of the front of the 43 without the Varotal 3 external lens.

 

 

Now to something that, to me, is quite interesting. Unknown to most is the name Fred Himelfarb, but his name is something you cannot avoid in the historical discussion of color television at NBC and RCA, and even Norelco. As you can read on the TK41 Camera page top, Fred was a driving force in the development of how color cameras were built and operated. Fred came from RCA to NBC with the first TK40s and was the official ‘man in the middle’ between NBC and RCA on all their cameras. Below is a memo that Harry was included on, and it’s all about what Fred thought of the RCA TK42 after a visit to Camden on May 5, 1964.

 

Item one in the memo is the D handles on the TK42. These were designed by Harry Wright, and if you read the TK42 page on this site, you will see that there were very mixed emotions about this new ergonomic addition. Harry was actually kind of in the dog house for a while, but not for long. Item three deals with camera cables and the expense of changing them and accessing them at NBC’s 30 Rock headquarters. What is interesting about this is Fred is the one that came up with the single cable fix on the TK40-41s that eliminated the bulky and excessive three-cable setup that each camera required early on.

Finally, although Fred did not condemn the TK42, he did not praise it either. Matter of fact, NBC never bought a single TK42 or 43, HOWEVER, below are the only known pictures of one of two TK43s RCA “loaned” to NBC NY and never came back to pick them up.

This is one of two TK43s that were delivered to NBC in New York by RCA as loaners. Fred told me they came in the day before a big election so the plan was to put them to work on the election set. Try as they may, they could not get them the pictures right before air time, so they put the logos on them and used them as prop cameras with cameramen behind them on the set just to make it look good. They eventually wound up in a small ‘always hot’ news studio with the cameras on 24 hours a day just in case there had to be a live news bulletin from an NBC news reporter. I think that studio was also used by WNBC for a 1:30 AM newsbreak. The unusual looking lens is believed to be an experimental Varotal Mark XIV with possible a 16 to 1 ratio. No one knows what ever happened to them.

Well, well, well. What have we here? Above and below are the only two known images of what are believed to be an early prototype of the TK47 camera. I like this a lot better than the final version of the TK47.

Although I wish my friend Chuck Pharis luck in finding one of only two TK48s ever made, here is something almost as rare: an RCA promotion piece on the elusive, never-manufactured TK48 Studio Camera. Below is the full document with all the features and details, and below that is a close up of the image.

 

Above is an ad for the TK44 and below an ad for the TK47…oddly, the only RCA studio camera to ever win an Emmy Award.

In closing, I need to mention that early on at RCA, Harry was quite involved in telecine camera creations and worked on many projects during his many years there. He started as a young pup and worked for RCA his entire carrier and left with a bang! One of Harry’s last projects was a camera that changed everything when it debuted in 1976. It was the RCA TK76 ENG camera (thus the 76 in the name), and if you look at the RCA ad below and think of how Harry’s designs always demanded that RCA cameras be rugged, you can understand how this camera survived a fall from an airplane and continued to work. There is much more to the Harry Wright story, but I feel fortunate and privileged to be able to tell part of it and to know him. Thanks, Harry, and God Bless You!

Since Harry has such a good sense of humor, I want to leave you with one last thing. Below is an official RCA memo of ‘thanks’ to the people involved with the TK47 project and the less than lavish memento given to them in appreciation for all their hard work on this Emmy Award winning camera. It’s kind of funny and kind of sad, but, such is life!

 

Below I have collected more than twenty images of the fabled CBS Field Sequential Color cameras in action. Until their debut here, these images have not been seen like this before. Below, Ed Sullivan prepares for his part in the production that is documented in this one-day sequence of photos.

This page is mostly about the cameras and some history, but the full technical story, beautifully told and impeccably accurate, is available at Ed Reitan’s great site. http://www.earlytelevision.org/Reitan/index.html

Other parts of the Ed’s posts and research include the entire story and chronology on the great battle between CBS and its Field Sequential Color System and RCA’s Dot Sequential Color System, and how we morphed into the NTSC standard.

It should be quite obvious that these are retrofitted RCA TK10s, but I’ve just recently discovered the two images below. At top, we see a prototype of a different color camera configuration that possibly anticipates strong pushback from RCA on the CBS customization of its TK10 design. Below that is a photo of the console that controls each camera. The camera appears to have two lenses on a hinged front, and on the camera’s left side, there is what looks like a Mitchell movie camera viewfinder.

In the photo below, you can see the color wheel just behind the turret in a place you would normally find the filters. That color wheel has alternating clear film sections of red, blue and green filters and spins to give an effect similar to this, but much faster.

On the other end, there is an identical mechanism in the home receiver and you can see a trial version of it below. The broadcast signal has an embedded timing pulse to synchronize them.

Interestingly, this story is a lot like the one told in the NBC 8G Camera section of this site. Both prototype cameras had their own studio, were built by network engineers, and in limited numbers. There were four of the 8G cameras, but I can only identify three of the CBS Color cameras and only by their left side (operator’s left) vent systems. One appears to have no left door vent, one has a vertical row of center vents, and one has a wire mesh configuration.

These photos are from Life Magazine and the only reference was the date of June 1951. Using the information from Ed’s CBS Color Programming page, I believe these pictures were all made the same day…probably June 24, 1951, at the final dress rehearsal of Premiere. The air date was the next day, June 25th from 4:30 to 5:30, and it originated in Studio 57 (not to be confused with the current Studio 57 at the CBS Broadcast Center).

CBS Color Studio 57 was located at 109th Street and 5th Avenue. The host for the first half-hour was Arthur Godfrey, while Ed Sullivan handled hosting duties for the second half. Among others on that day’s show, there was Faye Emerson, Garry Moore, Robert Alda and Isabel Bigley (stars of Guys and Dolls), the New York City Ballet, William S. Paley (CBS Chairman) and Frank Stanton (President of CBS), with Archie Bleyer and His Orchestra (the house band for Arthur Godfrey’s programs). FCC Chairman Wayne Coy also appeared, talking about the FCC’s decision on color and praising the “hour of triumph” for CBS…but, given what would soon happen, those words would ring hollow.

By the way….the crane cameraman here went all the way up the corporate ladder, to become a very valued VP of CBS Sports. His name is Harold Classen.

(All photos below courtesy of Life Magazine).

The first thing I noticed in this shot was that everybody is hot and mopping sweat. I’ve heard it got so hot in there the floor buckled. This is June in New York with massive lights in a huge studio with NO air conditioning.

With monitor in view, this crew member sits on the pedestal of one of the cameras. Notice the metal mesh-like sides on this camera. As we go along, you’ll see that every camera had different side panel modifications for cooling.

Before we get too far along with the cameras, remember that the CBS Field Sequential Color system worked on the basis of a synchronized spinning color wheel. There was a wheel in the camera and a wheel in the receiver…eventually. I’m guessing here, but this seems to be a external color wheel distributed for home demonstrations of the CBS color broadcasts, as I don’t think there were any receivers in 1951 with the wheel inside. Only a few hundred were ever made, and then were actually recalled.

Host of the first half of Premiere, Arthur Godfrey, in a Ritz live spot run-through…

…and performing “On Top Of Old Smoky.”

Given what I’ve seen in the full set of pictures, I believe there may have only been three of these cameras. The one mounted on the Sanner crane has vertical center vents on the left door vent, one of the cameras has the partial wire mesh door, and the camera below seems to have no vents in its door.

CBS Chairman (in the crane chair…naturally) William Paley and CBS President Frank Stanton as guests on the Premiere debut show.

Co-host Arthur Godfrey and guest star Faye Emerson are getting along famously. Godfrey was already famous for his radio and television programs, but Faye Emerson was a big star in her own right. Referred to as “Mrs. Television,” she was a well-rounded entertainer, and such a ‘natural’ that she even hosted two late night talk shows in 1949…one on CBS and one on NBC. Wow! For more on Faye’s very interesting life, click here.

Above and below, Faye Emerson shows off colorful paintings by Picasso, Renoir and Hopper, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.

Above, Isabel Bigley and Robert Alda perform Irving Berlin’s “You’re Just In Love” from the musical Call Me Madam.

Members of the New York City Ballet, under the direction of George Balanchine with staging by Sol Hurok, perform Maurice Ravel’s La Valse.

From here on, I’ll just let the pictures below explain themselves with no further captions.

Here are about 16 images from Georgia’s first TV station, WSB-TV in Atlanta, showing their RCA TK30s at work. The station signed on September 29, 1948 and use the TK30 till around 1954, when a few TK11s were added. In the early ’60s, WSB went to the RCA TK60s, then got the first delivered TK42s. WSB has been on the air more than 68 years and is a favorite of mine as I grew up watching it, but it amazes me how few photos there are to document those years. Unfortunately, this is a common story with many legendary broadcasters.

Before the photos, here is a great save from the 1950s and early 60s…the WSB color booklet that guests received when visiting White Columns.

This was Atlanta’s second TV station. It was a CBS affiliate until the late 1980s. WAGA had TK30s and later TK11s, but never had TK60s. The station bought Norelcos in 1966 or so.

Like WSB, there are virtually no photo archives left, but here’s all that I know of. The station is now a FOX affiliate and was part of the mass change that came to Atlanta 20 or so years ago when all the stations switched networks. WXIA was ABC; now it’s NBC. WSB was NBC; now it’s ABC. WAGA was CBS; now it’s FOX. A station that was an independent became the CBS affiliate.

Here are more photos of TK30s at work at WAGA-TV. Photos are from the Special Collections Department, Pullen Library, Georgia State University.

Bob Hope being interviewed at WAGA’s Atlanta studio

U.S. Senator (and former Governor of Georgia) Herman Talmadge being interviewed.

In this piece, you’ll see television history in the making that starts in 1949 and continues into the present. Now standing safely in Boston is one of the first two color cameras ever delivered to a local station: WKY-TV in Oklahoma City.

The Black and White Years  /  The Color Years  /  The Rescue of the Historic TK40

After a brief introduction, you’ll see a large part of this station’s unique story, told in more than 80 photos.

It truly amazes me how stations that are not in major markets take some of the biggest risks and make some of the biggest breakthroughs. Take, for instance, Oklahoma City in 1949. That’s when WKY (now KFOR) became Oklahoma’s first TV station.

This station reminds me of the people at WGAL in Lancaster, Pa. who started about the same time and built a big station in the nation’s smallest TV market, but had the vision to buy first-class equipment and produced a first-class product. Just look below at the Sanner crane and Houston Fearless Panoram dolly with TK10s and TK30s mounted on them. WKY-TV was intent on being the best.

In 1954, WKY would be the first local station in the country to receive a pair of RCA TK40 color cameras, even before the NBC O&O stations had them. Only NBC and CBS network studios had TK40s prior to WKY, but more on that below.

And in the big box below, it’s nothing short of a brand-new Ampex VR 1000!

There are so many images that I can’t caption and comment on them all, so I’m just going to lay them out below in a few sections that show the Black and White and then the Color Years, and then…SOMETHING SPECIAL! You’ll see one of these historic WKY TK40 cameras as it sits today and see the story on its rescue.

But, first…let me share what I think is a universal truth, and we see it in the image below. It is my humble opinion that for some reason, the young tall guys always get to carry the light stuff and the older, short guys always wind up with the heavy stuff.

The Black and White Years

Below you’ll see more than three dozen RCA TK10s and TK30s in action, and a couple of shots of the WKY control room.

If you are wondering what Ed Sullivan is doing at what is now a NBC affiliate, remember that early on, local stations didn’t have to be bound to a single network and could carry shows of their choosing from CBS, NBC, ABC or DuMont. Remember Sky King and Penny? They’re here, too. (WKY was also the TV home of country music star Buck Owens, but I don’t have any pictures of him, alas.)

The Color Years

Inside this nondescript wooden crate is a revolution. Here’s how it looked when the first two RCA TK40 color cameras ever delivered to a local station were uncrated and made ready for work at WKY.

The rest, as they say, is history. Below is color television history as it happened.

The Rescue of the TK40

One day around Thanksgiving 2008, Lytle Hoover sent me a few photos that someone in Oklahoma City had sent to him to post on his great web site, the RCA Television Section of Old Radio.com. In those pictures (seen below) was one of these historic TK40s still in storage at KFOR (formerly WKY).

I had seen a picture of the other WKY TK40 at the Oklahoma History Center and was glad to see that at least one camera made it to safety, but I immediately became concerned that this camera might not. Unfortunately, these days broadcast properties are being bought and sold much more often than in the past, and when the accountants show up one of the first priorities is often to get rid of “the junk.” Countless cameras, pedestals, videotape machines and other early artifacts have been sent to the scrap heap with not so much as a thought as to its historical value.

I called my friends Paul Beck and Tom Sprague in Boston at the Museum of Broadcast Technology. Paul was as ecstatic and amazed as I was that this camera still existed. We talked and emailed each other for a few days about the camera, but that’s all we did…talk. That is, until I called KFOR’s general manager and asked if the station would be willing to donate it to a reputable museum, as they had with the other camera. He was open to the idea, so I immediately called Paul and let him know of the conversation.

Within a few hours, Paul called me back and sent me a copy of the letter outlining the points of the conversation he had had with the same gentleman. An agreement was in place for the camera to go to Boston. It took several months of back-and-forth communications, but in May 2009, a road trip was on the books.

In the meantime I had found out from Chuck Conrad, another camera collector in Texas, that he had an RCA TCR 100. I had called Chuck about it after seeing it on his Chalkhill Media website. I knew Tom and Paul were looking for one for the museum, so I introduced them and they were able to work out a trade that got Chuck some equipment he wanted and gave the museum the TCR 100. Below, you see the huge TCR 100 video cartridge player; below that, the monster being loaded into the truck.

Paul and a friend, Dick Webb, flew to Oklahoma City, picked up the TK40, then drove to Chuck’s near Long View in east Texas to pick up the TCR 100. From there, they headed to Georgia and to my house. Below, you see Paul and Dick with my TK41. Paul is no stranger to the TK41, as that’s him in his early years running one at WHDH on Romper Room.

I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of myself with Paul, but the truth is I was so excited to see him, I just forgot. Paul Beck is one-of-a-kind and I am honored to call him a friend! He is a true gentleman in every way and knows more about television and television’s history than anyone I know. After two more days on the road, Paul and Dick made it back to Boston. Below, you see the WKY TK40 at its new home with Marc Berman at the controls.

For more on the Museum of Broadcast Technology, click here or visit them at http://www.wmbt.org/