THE NEW EYES OF A GENERATION WEB SITE IS UP & RUNNING!

Just in time for Thanksgiving browsing, the all new site ready!

Please share this news with your friends, and let your non Facebook friends know with an email. Now everyone can comment on the new site, and it is very easy. You can sign in with your FB account, or do a simple one time registration…or just visit the site and look around with no sign ins. There is a LOT to see!

My thanks to all of you for your years of interest and support…it is greatly appreciated! This is for you, and all that come after us.

Building the new site would not have been possible without the long hours of effort from our great webmaster, Dave Donaldson who directs the morning news at WTOL in Toledo, and Dr. Jodie Peeler, Professor of Communications at Newberry College. When I was too afraid of the daunting task, she pulled me through. Dave’s ingenuity allowed us to do something no other site has ever done…we are the first to capture all of our Facebook post archives, complete with comments, and import them into our own server. Other sites display FB posts, but the posts are still physically in FB…ours are not.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO YOU! -Bobby Ellerbee, Dave Donaldson, Jodie Peeler

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Another TV History Surprise…Jon Gnagy, One Of TV’s First Stars

Before Howdy Doody, Lucy, Berle, Kukla, Fran or Ollie, there was Jon Gangy.

His TV career began May 13, 1946, in NBC Studio 3H (pictured here) on a trial video version of NBC’s “Radio City Matinee” radio program, which was carried on NBC’s three market network to New York City, Schenectady and Philadelphia.

Gnagy was the opener of the show which also featured a comic, a cooking demonstration, and a woman who modeled hats. When Gnagy picked up his crayon to begin, he found the lights had melted it into a useless glob, so he switched to charcoals. For seven minutes, he showed his viewers how to draw an old oak tree.

There were not many television sets in use then, but the creators of television knew Gnagy was onto something.

Vladimir Zworykin, who had invented the cathode ray tubes that made television transmission and reception possible, was there and rushed over to shake Gnagy’s hand. RCA and NBC President David Sarnoff called to congratulate him. The show’s producer exclaimed that his segment was “pure television.”

By November, Gnagy had his own 15-minute NBC series, “You Are An Artist”, airing on Thursday nights in prime time. In The New York Times, critic Jack Gould praised Gnagy’s ”thoroughly engaging setside manner.” Writing in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Merill Panitt, later to become editorial director of TV Guide, said that ”Gnagy’s Midwestern easy-going manner conceals the hours of rehearsal and gives an air of spontaneity to the proceedings.”

And while Gnagy could never boast Uncle Miltie’s influence, he did have an impact. At the height of his popularity, Manhattan bartenders handed out paper and pencils to patrons who put down their cocktails to sketch along with ”America’s Television Art Instructor.”

It didn’t last, of course. Like so many early TV staples, “You Are An Artist” was cancelled in 1950 to make way for shows with broader appeal as the number of sets and stations multiplied, BUT, there is more to come!

The video above is what most of us remember…the syndicated series, “Learn to Draw”, that Gnagy subsequently co-produced and marketed to local TV stations to fit into their Saturday or afternoon schedules alongside the likes of Meet Mr. Wizard and Howdy Doody.

His show remained on television until 1971 and in syndication on PBS beyond that. He received no royalties, but now had a platform from which to promote his lesson books and art kits. Doubleday sold a copy of his book to one out of every fourteen television set owners in the United States.

His art supply company moved fifteen-million art kits. He even spawned some successful imitators, most notably Bob Ross, whose show “The Joy of Painting” ran on PBS from 1983 to 1994.

Believe it or not, you can still buy Gangy’s kits today, complete with the gum eraser many of us ate.

It’s impossible to know just how many artists were inspired by Gnagy’s show, but here is a quote from someone who was. Andy Warhol said, “I watched his show every week and I bought all his books.” -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 22, 1963: A President Falls…TV News Ascends

Until the day President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, breaking news coverage had been the domain of the print media, but the story of that weekend unfolded so fast, only live television could deliver both the story and the unforgettable images.

During that 4 days of nonstop, commercial free broadcasting, Americans came to accept TV news for its unique ability and trustworthy presentation.

What follows is a very interesting account of how the UPI and AP wire reporters in the motorcade fought to cover the story. http://ajrarchive.org/article.asp?id=1672

After that awful day in Dallas, no one and nothing in this country was ever the same again…especially television news. -Bobby Ellerbee

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Introducing The RCA TK30: Television’s First Workhorse Camera

This is the entire edition of RCA’s October 1946 “Broadcast News” magazine that features this brand new camera in a very detailed, multi page story. One of many new Archive items in the new Eyes Of A Generation site, coming soon.

The cover page photo is in relation to the first ever use of this camera at the Joe Lewis – Billy Conn boxing match held at Yankee Stadium. On page 20, you can read about RCA’s new improved microwave system that help the new TK30 images.

Even after taking in these feature stories, it’s fun to browse the rest of this issue for an interesting look back at audio boards, transmitters and more technology that, at the time, was “state of the art”. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 20, 1958…First Known Videotape Edited Show Airs

Seated on the right is director John Frankenheimer watching Ross Murray edit “Old Man”, which was a ‘Playhouse 90’ presentation that aired November 20, 1958.

This was the first time an entire production had ever been videotaped in advance and edited for air. The year before, Frankenheimer had used videotaped inserts in the live productions of two prior ‘Playhouse 90’ shows which were “Bomber’s Moon” and “The Days Of Wine And Roses”, but “Old Man” was a different ballgame.

Most of “Old Man” took place in a storm on the Mississippi River as an escaped convict fled from the law. The production used two studios at Television City (wet and dry) and was so daunting technically that the only way to do it was on tape. You can see some of the production shots below, including the huge Chapman movie crane they brought in.

On November 30, 1956 CBS had made history by tape delaying ‘Douglas Edwards With The News’ and again on October 13, 1957 when they used videotape to play back ‘The Edsel Show’ which aired live from Television City three hours earlier. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 19, 1959…America Meets Rocky And Bullwinkle

Today is the anniversary of the debut of one of my all time favorite cartoon shows…probably one of yours too. The show debuted as ‘Rocky And His Friends’ on ABC and although done in color, it was broadcast in black and white. Before third season began in 1961, the show moved to NBC where it was broadcast in color and called ‘The Bullwinkle Show’.

Production began in February 1958 with the hiring of voice actors June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Scott, and William Conrad. Ward hired most of the rest of the production staff, including writers and designers, BUT…no animators were hired!?! Why? Because Ward was able to convince some friends at Dancer, Fitzgerald, & Sample (an advertising agency that had General Mills as a client) to buy an animation studio in Mexico called Gamma Productions, originally known as Val-Mar Animation.

This outsourcing of the animation for the series was considered financially attractive by primary sponsor General Mills, but caused numerous problems. In a 1982 interview by animation historian Jim Korkis, Bill Scott described some of the problems that arose during production of the series: “We found out very quickly that we could not depend on Mexican studios to produce anything of quality. They were turning out the work very quickly and there were all kinds of mistakes and flaws and boo-boos. They would never check with us on details…mustaches popped on and off Boris, Bullwinkle’s antlers would change, colors would change and costumes would disappear. By the time we finally saw it, it was on the air.”

General Mills had signed a deal to sponsor the cartoon, under the condition that the show be run in a late-afternoon time slot, where it could be targeted toward children. The show was broadcast for the first time on November 19, 1959, on the ABC television network under the title ‘Rocky and His Friends’ twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, following American Bandstand at 5:30 p.m. ET, where it was the highest-rated daytime network program.

The show moved to the NBC network starting September 24, 1961, broadcast in color, and first appeared on Sundays at 7 p.m. ET, just before ‘Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color’. Bullwinkle’s ratings suffered as a result of being aired opposite perennial favorite Lassie. A potential move to CBS caused NBC to reschedule the show to late Sunday afternoons (5:30 p.m. ET) and early Saturday afternoons in its final season. NBC canceled the show in the summer of 1964. It was shopped to ABC, but they were not interested. However, reruns of episodes were aired on ABC’s Sunday morning schedule at 11 a.m. ET until 1973, at which time the series went into syndication.

An abbreviated fifteen-minute version of the series ran in syndication in the 1960s under the title ‘The Rocky Show’. This version was sometimes shown in conjunction with The King and Odie, a fifteen-minute version of Total Television’s King Leonardo and His Short Subjects. The King and Odie was similar to Rocky and Bullwinkle in that it was sponsored by General Mills and animated by Gamma Productions. NBC later aired Bullwinkle Show reruns at 12:30 p.m. ET Saturday afternoons during the 1981-1982 television season.

Below is a clip of the main voices of the show, June Foray and Bill Scott talking about their “adventures”. Other famous voices on the show included William Conrad as the narrator, Paul Frees as Boris Badenov, Wally Tetley as Sherman, Daws Butler as Aesop Junior and various other characters, Charlie Ruggles as Aesop, Hans Conried as Snidely Whiplash and Edward Everett Horton as the narrator for Fractured Fairy Tales. -Bobby Ellerbee

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FANTASTIC!…First TV Demonstration Of Multi Track Audio Tape Recording

In this 1953 kinescope from “Omnibus”, Alistair Cooke hosts Les Paul and Mary Ford in a recreation of their 1951 hit “How High The Moon”. The song not only topped the ‘Top 40’ charts, but the ‘R&B’ charts too, which was another first.

Although Les and Mary had released a few other multi tracked songs, which were well received, those were done with discs and not tape. Using the disc method was difficult and tedious, with one track at a time being added as the previous compilation of tracks was played back and re-recorded with each new part.

In 1947, Bing Crosby brought Les an Ampex 200 tape recorder to play with, and the rest is history. I am attaching two excellent links that go into great detail about the process and the string of discoveries, so make sure you take a look and a listen.

http://www.les-paul.com/timeline/sound-on-sound/
At the bottom of this page, there is an embedded video of Les recording “Brazil” on the discs, and when the pop up screen appears, click the play button at the bottom and the + and – controls to add or remove tracks.

http://www.soundonsound.com/people/classic-tracks-les-paul-mary-ford-how-high-moon
At this link, you’ll find a great history, most in Les’ own words, that take you from the start, all the way through the 8 track machines and more.

Finally, this clip came to my attention while watching the great PBS series “Soundbreaking” which has so far aired 4 of the 8 episodes (nightly) and I can’t wait for the rest.

By the way…notice in this video clip, the whole thing starts out with a prop given credit for the way the recording system works. That part is pure Les Paul. He was a joker and all around great guy. ENJOY and SHARE! -Bobby Ellerbee

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On November 18, 1928, ‘Steamboat Willie’, starring Mickey Mouse, was released and shown in theaters across the country. It was wildly popular.

This was the first cartoon with synchronized sound and was the first cartoon to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack which distinguished it from earlier sound cartoons.

Although animation filmmakers Dave and Max Fleischer’s Inkwell Studios had already produced seven sound cartoons, part of the Song Car-Tunes which started in May 1924, those failed to keep the sound fully synchronized. ‘Steamboat Willie’ was produced using a click track to help with musical cues.

The click track was sufficiently useful as a synchronization tool as optical marks were made on the film to indicate precise timings for musical accompaniment.

In 1994 professional animators voted Steamboat Willie 13th in the book “The 50 Greatest Cartoons”. By the way, Walt is the voice of Mickey in this historic cartoon, and although Mickey Mouse had been seen in theaters before this, his official birthday is marked as today in consideration of the success of ‘Steamboat Willie’. -Bobby Ellerbee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4

The classic Mickey Mouse cartoon

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NBC’s “Star Time Magazine”…1963-64 Guide To The New Season

This is full of great memories, but make sure you take a look at the last pages, where you’ll see NBC’s new ‘Color Girl’ and a few of the first ever TK40 prototypes at The Colonial Theater.

In 1951, Marie McNamara became the first ‘Color Girl’ and when she left in ’63, Marilyn Gray took over. Thanks to Barry Mitchell for the link. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 13, 1976…Carol Burnett’s ‘Went With The Wind’ Sketch Debuted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0dqnZ2qyj4&ab_channel=TimeLife

One of the funniest and most memorable moments in American television came to us 40 yeas ago today.

In the clip below, Carol talks about the sketch and the dress. In another interview, I’ve heard her say that only she and Harvey Korman had seen the Bob Mackie dress. She had to let Havey in on the site gag, or he would break up to and not be able to do his lines to set her up for the big payoff line, “I saw it in the window and couldn’t resist”. Harvey actually makes for a pretty convincing Rhett Butler doesn’t he? Have a laugh, enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 11, 1967…ABC Debuts First Color Portable Camera

Below is a clip from November 11, 1967 showing the camera in use by ABC at the UCLA – USC game in Los Angeles.

ABC and Ampex worked together to come up with three configurations of the color portable unit. Shown here is the original cabled version, with a mini camera control unit in the back pack. Later, the back pack could be loaded with either an Ampex VR 3000 videotape recorder, or a microwave transmitter for live, uncabled work.

The Ampex, two Plumbicon, BC-100 camera head had an optical splitting system, providing one tube for the luminance channel and the other with an alternate red-blue image produced by a synchronously rotating filter wheel. Basically, this is a modified version of the Field Sequential color system.

The combination of luminance and green, with field sequential red and blue, is sent back to base via a compact microwave link mounted on the backpack. The base station uses a field-storage delay device to reinsert the alternately missed red and blue signals, providing Red, Green and Blue for matrixing and encoding into standard NTSC format. A nickel-cadmium battery keept the system operating for over an hour, with battery changes possible in a few minutes. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 11, 1951…First Video Image From Magnetic Tape

Believe it or not, Bing Crosby Enterprises engineers Jack Mullen and Wayne Johnson were the first to produce an image from video tape.

What follows is a first hand account from BCE engineer Robert R. Phillips. Below that is a link to a much larger article on Crosby’s work in tape of all kinds. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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While there were many interesting experiences working at Bing Crosby Enterprises, none was as challenging as the development of a video recorder for Bing. When Jack told Bing in 1950 that it could be done, Bing responded by setting up the video recorder project to be led by Jack in the Electronic Division.

Mullin reached out and recruited Wayne Johnson to assist him, and by November 11, 1951 they demonstrated the first video picture from magnetic tape. It was a video of an airplane taking off. The image was very snowy and the airplane was a dark blob, but with the commentary by Frank Healey everyone managed to see the takeoff. Frank was an ex-movie producer.

I started with BCE about a week later later and found myself involved in the construction of what I call the Mark II version. The Mark I system used the top plate from one of the portable Ampex 200 audio tape recorders modified to operate at 360 ips (20 MPH) with a modified head that gave it a bandwidth of about 1 MHz. The tape was quarter-inch, and the reels did not have any sides to reduce once-a-round effects. This lack of sides produced large piles of tape if something went wrong. At times I had to go out the front door and down Sunset Blvd. with the tape to get it back on the reel. The drive was an early version of the tight loop.

The Mark II version used the same top plate as that of the Mark I, but it was modified for one inch tape. It still operated at 360 ips with the early version of the tight loop drive. Jack Mullin and Wayne Johnson had decided to build the Mark II system before the November 11 demonstration and were actively engaged in its construction. When I started at BCE they were testing various head stacks and working with William Wetzel at 3M to improve the tape quality for the recorder. It was obvious that main problem was how to increase the recorded bandwidth on the tape. We would find out over the next months that there was a lot that was not known about how the head-tape process works.

A discussion over using a rotary head approach to that of longitudinal had taken place, and there was much doubt that the rotary head would work. It also would have been difficult for the BCE group to implement it because of our lack of the mechanical facilities to build one. The longitudinal approach was selected with multiple tracks. Instead of using a rotary head, the multiple tracks were electronically scanned. The Mark II system had 12 tracks recorded on the 1 inch tape. Ten of the tracks were used for the video, and the other two, one on the top of the tape and one on the bottom, were used for audio, sync and reference signals.

The video signal in the record subsystem was sampled with the rate tied to the video sync signal. These samples or pulses were sequentially recorded across the 10 video tracks. For each set of 10 samples the polarity of the recorded pulse was reversed. This was done to prevent a bias on the tape. The result was a series of pulses recorded on each track on the tape alternating in polarity. The amplitude of the recorded pulse was equal to the amplitude of the video sample, and each channel had a 1 MHz bandwidth.

The playback system had to reverse the polarity of every other pulse and assemble them into a video stream of pulses combined with the video sync signal. The reference signals from the top and bottom tape channels were used to correct for tape speed and skew. This information was used to adjust the sampled video pulses from the tape. The video picture on the monitor consisted of a number analog “pixels” that had to be processed to eliminate the dot structure by averaging between them.

About a month after I started, Dean DeMoss and Chester Shaw were hired to help build and test the new electronics for the Mark II system. Gene Brown provided the mechanical support, and the system was built and operational by early 1952. Wayne Johnson and I were working on the system Friday night, 14 March 1952, and had completed the last adjustment to it. It was ready for its first recording test, and we decided to try it before we went home.

A video program was recorded and played back; it could have been classified as a fair picture. However, it did have the “pixels” since the additional processing had not been added. We jumped up and down and cheered. It turns out that we were the only two to see the picture because Wayne came in the next day and dismantled the recorder to “improve” it. Jack Mullin found out on Monday and was not happy that he missed the first successful test recording session.

During the 1952 and 1953 period the major effort was concentrated on improving the frequency response and reducing the tape speed. Many heads designs were tested using different types of magnetic materials, gap sizes and materials, and head windings. To make the heads, a precision optical lapping capability was installed along with a way of winding the coils on the assembled head segments. After trying many different head configurations, it was realized that there was a limitation in recording high frequencies on magnetic tape. A point was reached where changes in the head configuration and the tape speed made little difference in the upper frequency that could be recorded.

There were a number of other groups that were working on the video recorder. One of these was RCA, and its chairman General David Sarnoff wanted one for his birthday. By 1953 they had demonstrated a system that ran at 360 inches per second like the first BCE machine in 1951. It had better quality using video compression, but only lasted 4 minutes per reel.

The same year Sarnoff of RCA and his board of directors visited BCE to see if they could buy our recorder. The party arrived in a number of black limousines. Sarnoff was in the first dressed in gray and the board in the rest, dressed in black. As Sarnoff marched up the driveway the board fell in two-by-two behind him. They went into our small laboratory for the demonstration. Sarnoff sat in the middle and the board on either side of him.

After the demonstration they went upstairs to the conference room. Sarnoff told Frank Healey that he wanted to buy the recorder, and Frank told him it was not for sale. Sarnoff told Frank that he would just buy them out; to which Frank replied “You do not have enough money!” The RCA group left.

During this period the tight loop drive was perfected, and the correction of wow and flutter effects addressed. Much of this work also was used to improve the recording of the instrumentation telemetry. In the summer of 1953, I met Eugene Sakasegawa who was chief engineer of the USC television station. We were still looking for people who were good engineers with video experience, and I encouraged him to join us. He was hired, and his first assignment was to learn how to make magnetic heads. Gene was a craftsman and took up the challenge. After a couple of months of building new types of heads and not making any progress, Gene produced a head that broke the 1 MHz frequency barrier. Jack and Wayne could not believe it.

When asked what he did to make the head, he said that he made some small cuts inside the head to make it look better. He had been lapping the head halves to create a uniform gap and also the head face. These actions did make a small difference in the performance, but the “beauty treatment” was the key. The head laminations at the head gap were different widths and caused a non-uniform magnetic pattern across the tape (top to bottom). Gene had made a very accurate cut behind the head gap across the laminations. This cut made them the same thickness and caused the magnetic pattern across the tape to be uniform.

A number of different cuts were tested until proper configuration was found. The result of the head “beauty treatment” was to reduced the tape speed of the Mark II to 120 ips and produce a new design for the recording the video information. The new “Mark III” recorder operated at 100 ips with half-inch tape using longitudinal recording and no scanning. It recorded color video and sound with three heads – video, color, and sound/reference. The recorder also employed video compression techniques, and an early version was demonstrated in February 1955.

The recorder was further refined and demonstrated in June 1955. Based on the performance of this new recorder CBS ordered three of them, and the summer of that year we worked building them. In late 1955 Bing asked Jack Mullin to visit Ampex to see their video tape recorder. We knew that they were working on one, but did not know how far they had come.

Jack went to Ampex near the end of the year and came back with the news that it was over, Ampex had a better recorder. Bing sent another $50,000 check to Ampex for the first of their video recorders. It was delivered to his TV station in Washington State. Ampex demonstrated their rotary head machine on 14 April 1956; CBS cancelled their order with BCE and bought the Ampex recorder. The Mark III recorders were then converted to wide band instrumentation recorders and sold.

For MUCH MORE, follow this link.

http://ethw.org/First-Hand:Bing_Crosby_and_the_Recording_Revolution

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