The GE PE 20…A Witness To History In Dallas

On October 30, 2014 - TV History

The GE PE 20…A Witness To History In Dallas

The Broadcast Engineering ad here is from March of 1962 and is part of the introduction of GE’s new PE 20 monochrome camera. Nationally, not many broadcasters used GE equipment, but there was an unusually large market for GE product in the southwest, and Texas in particular.

The first time most of us saw pictures from a PE 20 were in November of 1963 when President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. The then CBS affiliate there, KRLD had these and you can see a couple of them here in these photos of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Thanks to Jeremy Butler at The University Of Alabama for sharing the ad with us…this gives us more information on the rather sketchy GE equipment timeline. Anyone ever work with these? Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee




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11 Comments

  1. Richard Bauer October 31, 2014

    Yes we had some GE cameras at chi KRLDTV Dallas, tnx.

  2. Steve Phillips October 30, 2014

    Innovative for it’s time regarding the most devastating turning point in history in my lifetime, but the quality, professionalism, and credibility of the news coverage of it was best you could get!

  3. Charles MacDonald October 30, 2014

    this guy?

  4. Charlie King October 30, 2014

    We had GE cameras in Amarillo. I have never since leaving Amarillo in 1969, been able to remember or confirm the model numbr. I do know when we went color we went with the PE-250’s and when it became available got the PE-350 upgrade kits. We also bought the PE-240 for our Projection Camera with the Eastman Multiplexer and Projectors. The RCA TP-7 was by no doubt the most popular Slide Projector.

  5. Mike Clark October 30, 2014

    was the camera operator in this shot from a WCNY-TV (Syracuse) remote in 1969.

  6. Petter Olden October 30, 2014

    Do You have this camera Bobby?

  7. Dennis Degan October 30, 2014

    I saw this in a display case at the Newseum in Washington last year. It was in a section of the museum about the JFK assassination. The camera was described as one of those used to cover the story, though it’s labeled ‘CBS’ for some reason. It almost certainly had ‘KRLD’ on it originally:
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/9504717077/
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/9507511684/

  8. Chris Clementson October 30, 2014

    In those days all you had to do was take an RCA 5820 I/O, wrap it in deflection coils, give it a preamp and make sure the pulses were legal. Color cameras were a different story. G.E. made a good color telecine camera but their PE 250/350 studio cameras left a lot to be desired.

  9. Martin Perry October 30, 2014

    Here’s mine. And its in my office in downtown Dallas, not far from where all that history took place. I don’t know the back story of my camera, however. It has no markings as to who owned it back in the day.

  10. Jeremy Butler October 30, 2014

    Fascinating context for this ad, Bobby!

    And I thought the same thing that Jodie Peeler did–that FB’s collage of the images blends one ad with the Ruby photo!

  11. Petter Olden October 30, 2014

    Would You say the picture quality from this camera was inferior from other cameras at the time?