ULTRA RARE! Meet NBC’s FIRST CAMERAMAN…Albert W. Protzman

Late yesterday afternoon, I stumbled across this incredibly rare piece of television history in a happy accident, while researching the locations for the guided tour post just before this. In the coming days, I will share what I learned from Mr. Protzman’s writings, but for now…let’s meet the man.

Beginning his career at AT&T-Bell Laboratories School in 1922, Al Protzman became one of the first and youngest radio broadcast engineers in the country…he was 20 years old and working with the AT&T stations WEAF and WJZ, and later, with the National Broadcasting Company after its founding in 1926.

From 1930 to 1936 Protzman worked in Hollywood as a sound engineer for Fox Film and its successor 20th Century-Fox. Among his screen credits were several “Charlie Chan” films and “The Power and the Glory”, starring Spencer Tracy.

In 1936, NBC was just beginning television program tests and they approached Protzman with a job offer to become their first TV cameraman. He accepted and eventually became one of TV’s earliest Technical Directors. In 1939, Protzman presented a paper, “Television Studio Technique” to the Society of Motion Picture Engineers which described NBC’s TV experiments in great detail and I’ll share that with you soon.

Al Protzman retired in 1966 as Director of Technical Operations for NBC. He died in 1981 in Bronxville, New York, aged 79. Thanks to NBCU Photobank for the image. Enjoy and SHARE! -Bobby Ellerbee

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