I've been working on this for some time (as some of you know already) - calculated illustrations of the color performance of the early image orthicon cameras. Thanks to info saved by Pete Deksnis, and a lot of other input, you can see the effects of the RGB responses, gamma correction, and noise in the image orthicon cameras, and view it on your own computer monitor.

Grab a cup of cocoa (it's a long piece) and go to
www.bretl.com
and click on
"Viewing 1950s Color TV Again..."

Great material! Thanks for sharing all of this. I may have just a few of those magazines but this is a comprehensive article of most magazine hype of color TV pre 1966. I love the article of Setchell Carlson of modular color TV. I suppose they lost out to Motorola in their Quasar series.

BTW, I love the article of "Rio Gets Mountain-Top TV" depicting the antenna just before erection and what's that supervisor engineer (idiot) doing dressed in a coat & tie (leather shoes) which appears he is standing on a fence holding on to the beacon??? How did he get there in that "precipitous" position? Yeah, I can sure visualize that one! OSHA would be all over me if I did that.

This thread reminds me of a couple years ago a local woman contacted me and told me her husband was a RCA tech and had worked full time at the NY Worlds Fair. His job was to help keep the equipment working and I'm sure that WAS a full time job!! They moved down from NY to here in Knoxville to retire. His name was Ed Cook and certainly was a prince of a man. It took me several months to get over to his condo and when I did, we talked for hours and he gave and sold some stuff to me to include a real full size Nipper that was used at the NYWF. (plastic one) He also had a scrap book that he kept up for over 60 years starting with his military duty. He remembered everything and what a treasure trove of info! It is somewhat hard to realize/remember that this was ALL tube type equipment (not hardly a transistor in the pile) on a commercial basis. Ed said he had all the replacement tubes he needed in his work van. I think he also said he replaced at least one tube every day he worked. I can't remember how many roundie sets were at the fair but I am sure there were many throughout the event.

About 6-7 weeks later I was at my local flea market and some guy about my age was selling some TV stuff cheap. In buying it I looked through some papers and there were some RCA awards denoting "Ed Cook". I said "I know him!" He then told me that he was his son from California and that Ed had passed away about a month earlier. I was truly blessed to have met him and certainly was saddened by the news. He apparently was one of their senior techs and showed me many awards and certificates. I wish now that I had got some of them from his son but I talked him into saving them. His son really had no interest in early TV.

Here is that Nipper:
http://www.geocities.com/julianburke/studio9.JPG

Julian, excellent story about Mr. Cook. A reminder: please, folks, seek out the retired (or retiring) TV techs in your area. Listen to what they have to say, and try to keep their treasures out of the landfill. The clock is ticking.

I wonder if they're a dying breed. I used to see "TV Repair" signs everywhere. I don't remember seeing one in a long time.

Outside of the Geek Squad who can perhaps do a convergence on a projection set and replace a DLP bulb for the technically challenged, I wonder how many are left?

Well, maybe it's not too bad. I just looked in the Yellow Pages and counted about eight in a 40 mile radius around Lansing Michigan. There are probably a few more than that.

John

Julian, thanks for the story about Mr. Cook. As has been stated elsewhere here, my other interest is the NY World's Fair, and my avatar is me seeing myself on color TV at the RCA exhibit. If you have any items related to the NYWF, it would be great if you could share some pictures and stories. I'd be happy to be the conduit to the NYWF community, which you can find at
http://www.worldsfaircommunity.org/ (discussion)
and
http://www.nywf64.com/ (extensive web pages about all aspects)

My story of the RCA exhibit is at
http://www.nywf64.com/rca01.shtml


I thought I would never hear anything about any of the people who worked there.

Thanks again!

Julian,

This reminds me to ask if you learned anything about the tape delay for "see yourself on color TV". The published plans for the exhibit included one tape delay, but when I saw it in June of 1965, there were two delays, synchronized to a turntable that carried you around, first in front of the camera, then a tape-delayed black and white playback, and finally a second delayed playback in color. I marveled at three tape machines in a row with rollers for zig-zag tape delays in between, but (darn it!) I didn't take a picture. I have not been able to find out if the double delay and turntable were in place at the opening of the fair in 1964.

We never covered that-I wish I did but didn't know about it at that time.

Back in the mid to late 70's when I was servicing TV's, there were two things that myself and a friend did on New Years:

(1) When the new phone books came out, we looked through "Television" in the yellow pages to see who was new and who went out of business. There were always 4-6 pages!

(2) Pick up the latest retail tube price list from out distributors-there were three or four from different distributors and I still have most of them! The first tube we would look up would be a 6JE6/6LQ6 to see what the latest price was! They would list in the $17 bracket back then.

There was a "TV shop" here in Knoxville in the late 60's to early 70's (if you want to call it that) called "Big Orange TV Service" that took up a whole page. (later a half page) All of the shops would talk about them as their van was a virtual tube warehouse as that was all they could really do. It was full of Zenith tubes on long trays in their Ford van. (I remember Bobby Parker who was Mgr/parts sales of Graybar-Zenith Distributor saying, "Well, at least they use a good tube!)The ad would say that we will fix your TV in your home or no charge-we will not take your TV out of your home. They butchered more TV's and it was a father/son operation. The son was goofy looking at that time with waist length hair with a hair brush attached to his belt like a cell phone today. (don't write me about this-I had long hair too) I remember running a service call to an elderly woman's house for a 1959 Zenith B&W TV with power tuning. They were built like a National Cash Register in those days-never gave much trouble but you didn't want to disassemble one either! Big Orange had taken it apart completely for whatever reason-couldn't fix it and just threw everything back in the set in pieces and said there would be no charge and left! They apparently couldn't do any actual trouble shooting-just plug tubes. I'm sure the ad attracted the masses and if the set was beyond their capability, they left usually damaging your set. There were many sets that they filled up with new tubes and actually got out the door with payment in hand only to find the set still was not fixed. Don't know whatever happened to them either. No one ever knew where their "shop" was either-most likely the van.

Later I worked for Dan Geddings TV Service. He was a good Zenith tech but what a redneck!! He really was a good man but it had to be a Zenith and only that brand. He hated RCA because of what they did to him in the mid '50's. One day he reached for a 12BY7 tube and in the Zenith box was one but with an Admiral brand on it. Boy was he mad! Yup, he took it back to Graybar. (tube manufacturers always traded back and forth as it was expensive to set up tooling for a particular tube. Everyone knew what others did and bought so many pieces to save their cost and would package in your brand. Light bulb manufacturers did/do it too)

We never covered that-I wish I did but didn't know about it at that time.

that's too bad - but if you have any items you could share pix of, like Nipper, I'd still be interested.

Edit: another thing - RCA issued a RCA exhibit souvenir medallion, which still shows up on ebay from time to time. I have one from ebay, but I've often wondered how they were originally distributed - sold as souvenirs? If so, where? Or were they given to VIPs and such?

In 1960 my father was transferred to Seattle Wa. We were there in 1962 for the worlds fair and I was 11 at the time. I watched them build it and also tear it down. After school I would go down there every day as it was walking distance for me. At the Seattle Pavillion, KING Television (Ch 5) had an exibit there and would also use it for coverage of the fair itself. I distinctly remember they had a "see yourself on color TV" with the TK41 camera and a 1962 model RCA roundie. This was a big deal then and would impress everyone who sat in the chair.

Funny, you never hear of World's Fairs anymore and if you do, how much money they lost. Strangely, it was exactly 20 years after Seattle that we had one here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Our theme was "Energy Turns the World." It was fun but also left a bad taste here as Jake Butcher & his brother were the officials who were later disgraced and lost all of their banks along with almost half a billion dollars of the depositors' money. They were not FDIC insured and were classified as a "thrift". Always political.
It also says we had a special TV station for this fair of which I don't remember. Also says the "touch screen" debuted too. There are other items in this article that are not accurate facts such as why they tore down the US Pavillion. Structure had nothing to do with it-it was so large and was mostly windows with solar panels that never worked right and was plagued with leaks from all the glass. It was too costly to fix and was never built right or a very poor design in the first place. For years it was in a tug of war between the city and the Federal Gov't for ownership. City finally got it donated to them and almost immediately demolished it because of the valuable property. (That's all they wanted in the first place-stuff they don't tell or really want you to know!) Today a new convention center sits there and is always in the red at our (taxpayers) expense. Again, always political and the people had no say in it-just the politicians to try and make us look like Atlanta!

Here is a link to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_World's_Fair

[QUOTE=old_tv_nut;2384949]that's too bad - but if you have any items you could share pix of, like Nipper, I'd still be interested.

Here it is again:
http://www.geocities.com/julianburke/studio9.JPG

Thanks for reposting the link - oblivious me