[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by RJMiranda

Thanks about the CCUs picture! You know, the very first time I went into a TV studio, I was graduating from tech school back in 1978 and went there with some of my fellow students. The engineers had just powered up the cameras for the day, had one fully open, and there were 2 guys around the camera head with scopes, meters, maybe a hydraulic jack for lifting things (I live in Cuba, and thew were mostly-tube, at that time state-of the art USSR-made B/W cameras). After one hour or so, they went away saying "this No. 1 is a honey, wish all the other cameras were so easy to get running in the morning!"
You know, after the spare part stopped coming from the US (I am talking about facts, not politics), the Soviet Union started making super-orthicons for the DuMont and RCA cameras we had here. They used metric units, of course, so no Soviet pick-up tube could fit the US inch-based cameras. After a while, they came up with something that worked, and Cuban TV used those pick-up tubes until mid-1970s, when started buying newer B/W USSR cameras, and even a Magnolia SECAM OB-van that our engineers converted to NTSC. (And it worked very well. But it was very difficult to do so, and as soon the Sony DXC-M3 and M3As were released, you could never again see a Soviet camera around here).

I seem to recall reading that for a brief time before the embargo Cuba adopted NTSC color. I'd love to know if any early American Color equipment was ever installed in Cuba, and how long it was maintained. Did Cuba stick with NTSC after Castro took over?