This image of camera equipment deployed to the 1956 political conventions by CBS has led to lots of speculation over the years, but below is the full story of what we see here in this photo.

Although RCA made a great mini cam which NBC used in the 1952 conventions, CBS would not buy them, and we all should now know by know about all the bad blood between them over the color system battles.

This tiny camera above is most likely a prototype made by the French company, Intercontinental Electronics. The camera was four pounds and came with a thirty-two-pound backpack. The battery to power unit and broadcast the signal, which could go almost a mile, weighed over ten pounds

CBS also used the unit at the Republican convention in San Francisco that year along with a three pound “vest pocket” camera made by Lockheed Engineering. Those items are seen with a Dage Porta Camera in the lower middle.  The big camera is the RCA TK10, on the left is the Intercontinental Electronics camera and backpack and the man with the tiny camera is the legendary Sig Mickelson…the first president of CBS News.