RCA color graphics scanner?
 

Anyone know if RCA made graphic arts color scanners? This auction item implies that they did in 1968, but I had not heard mention of them.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...E:B:SS:US:1123

Such a very amazing link!

I Just recently saw some old obsolete TV studio equipment. It was RCA and was called a film camera by the person selling it. He had one or two of these tall rack mounted units probaly from the 60's? It had TK 68 on rack or something similiarTK. I mentioned to him to call the TV museum in Hillard, OH.

This cameras might be used with an image card? Not sure. Only if image card size is same as projectoed film image size possibly. I had the bad luck of buying an antique projector from him on the rainiest day of the year! I could'nt inspect units since rain was going sideways whipping into the garage where these were stored. A bummer to miss a rare opportunity to see an oddity.



Good guess for film camera?

I have read your post several times and don't understand it. If truly rack mounted as you say, could it be a flying-spot scanner? Otherwise, could you describe what you mean by "huge beast?" Was it a large rack full of equipment, or a large unit of some kind in a rack?

Another type of camera chain I haven't seen mentioned here (yet) is the old DuMont "Electronicam" system. From what I understand about it, this supposedly was a TV camera that could capture images on motion-picture film at the same time it was sending those images to the TV station's control room. This system was used extensively by the old DuMont television network, particularly with the DuMont TV series "The Honeymooners" in the mid-1950s. If you look at the ending credits for these shows, you will often see the phrase "Filmed on the DuMont 'Electronicam' T-V film system." I think the Electronicam was the one sure way networks (at least DuMont) had of preserving shows on film in the '50s, as video tape hadn't been invented yet. If not for the Electronicam system, The Honeymooners, not to mention other DuMont productions, would have likely been lost forever once their first network run was done. I wonder, however, if any of the major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS) used similar systems to save their programming for later broadcast, for example to the West Coast which is three hours behind Eastern time. :scratch2:

Jeff, it looks like if you lived on the west coast, you had a bit more than a three hour delay in some cases:

http://www.metnews.com/reminiscing.htm

go to the "reminiscing" page, then "early television" the first article is called "snowy kinescopes-two weeks late"

He has some neat articles on his early tv experiences.

I just looked at that page, and it was a real eye-opener. In Los Angeles and elsewhere on the West Coast, network TV shows were often seen two weeks after their original broadcast in New York -- and don't forget network affiliates in Alaska and Hawaii, which more often than not got the shows as late as three weeks or even a month (!) after viewers in most of the lower 48 had seen them. Today's TV viewers do not realize this, having become accustomed to the immediacy of TV programming thanks to satellites (networks no longer use coaxial cable links), the Internet, et al. As I said, I was surprised myself to read the article on the page you mentioned, but then again, I live in Ohio and have never been anywhere west of the state so I have no experience with time delays of TV shows, except for those times when I time-shift programs myself with my VCR. Being used to watching, for example, NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. in this area, it would take me quite a while to become accustomed to watching the same broadcast at 5:30 p.m. if I lived in Chicago, or even Indiana before the latter switched exclusively to Eastern Standard Time across the entire state.

I'm not sure how, in the 1950s-'60s before video tape, West Coast affiliates of the major television networks handled delayed broadcasts of shows that originated at, for example, 5 a.m. on the other coast, or how they handled other time differences for the Mountain and Central time zones. That would mean the West Coast stations would either have to broadcast the show live (at 2 a.m. Pacific time[!]) or videotape it so that they could show it later in the day. Of course, before videotape this would have been impossible except for systems such as the DuMont Electronicam, but then again, there would be the usual two-week delay before the stations out West could broadcast the program.

Videotape made things easier for the stations in the West, I'm sure, but the time zone bugaboo was still a problem. Even today, with the networks all uplinking their programming to satellites for distribution to affiliates, stations in the Pacific time zone often must videotape the programs to fit their schedules. I recently saw a promo for a program on NBC that announced the show would be seen live everywhere in the US; the program aired on the network at some ridiculously early hour of the morning Eastern time. How on earth was it possible for all the US to see this program live? If the show were aired at, say, 6 a.m. Eastern time, it would be seen in the Central time zone at 5 a.m., the Mountain zone at four a. m., and out west in the Pacific zone at three a.m.! Who is going to get up at three o'clock in the morning in the West (for example) to watch a program, unless it is something of national importance such as a space mission? :scratch2: This would also be the only time TV stations would stay on the air all night in those days, before infomercials were thought of.

I often wonder who actually watches those paid programs and infomercials that air on most stations from roughly two to four thirty or five a.m. on most networks. I can see the importance of such things as early morning newscasts (all three major networks have them), but those infomercials and paid shows seem to me to be a waste of time, money and RF power for TV stations. It would save the stations quite a bit of money, IMHO, if they would sign off after the last network talk show went off the air, then sign on again at 5 a.m. for their early morning news. That system worked for TV stations in the '50s through the end of the eighties; why not now?

My best guess is that the stations' management feels they can make more money for their stations by running paid shows and infomercials after the networks sign off, but the question in my mind still remains: Who actually watches these things, which are nothing more than television commercials thinly disguised as half-hour shows? :scratch2:

The Electronicam itself was not something especially advanced in nature, it was simply a TV camera and film camera in one unit. It was certainly advanced as a method of preserving a live telecast on film (a bit of research indicates that The Honeymooners episodes of 1955-56 did not go out on the network live, but the Electronicam must have been designed with that technique in mind), but the development of videotape was hot on its heels. Videotape delay broadcasts began within months after the last classic 39 Honeymooners episode aired, which was pretty much the last anybody heard of the Electronicam.

Incidentally, although Ralph and Alice Kramden were introduced on a variety hour hosted by Jackie Gleason on the Du Mont network in the early 1950s, he was lured away by CBS for the similar-but-much-larger-budgeted Jackie Gleason Show in 1952. The 'Honeymooners' sketches proved so popular on that show, Gleason and CBS eventually decided to concentrate on that element alone, thus the debut of The Honeymooners on CBS--not Du Mont--in 1955. In fact, there effectively was no Du Mont network by September of that year.

Not that I know of. The TV stations I worked for in that period had RCA filmchains consisting of a 3 tube color camera, a B&W vidicon preview camera, two TP66 16mm projectors, a TP35 dual drum slide projector and a mirror multiplexer to reflect the proper projector into the color camera. The only graphic art camera I know of is the ancient Gray Tel-OP or Bal-Optigon, an Iconoscope camera from the early 1950s that could air 4X6 inch art cards or a credit roll which consisted of a roll of paper with the show credits that was attached to a drum that rotated past the Iconoscope's field of view.

Cliff