The GE PE250 Early Color Television Camera

[KentTeffeteller]

John,

Thanks for explaining the history between GE and Gates/Harris. Just hope the Gates Color TV Cameras weren't "Value Engineered". For the uninitiated, Value Engineering was the watchword at Gates Radio Co. in 1958 when Harris purchased them in radio. We went from reliable, solid 1000 watt AM rigs which lasted many years and were easy on tubes (the old BC1F and BC1J) to the BC1T which would run for 10 days at full power on a set of tubes and then didn't make power the rest of the way. This was when many 250 watt AM stations were increasing power to 1 KW. This explains the nickname Quincy Tin Works!

[W.B.]

Originally Posted by John Hafer

Here are some pictures of GE and Harris live and film cameras. Note that the Live cameras went from the PE-250 to the PE-350 and then the Harris PE-450. (Missing in my pictures is the GE-400)

For the film cameras, there was first the GE PE-24, then the PE-240, and then the Harris PE-245. The PE-24 & PE-240 are 4 tube vidicon cameras.

Also note from the 1965 picture, the 3 tube IO GE PE-25 live color camera that was sold against the RCA TK-41.

I have a box of pictures from RCA, Norelco, GE, and Ampex broadcast equipment photos from the 50s' and 60's. These are just a couple of them. Hope these help in this thead discussion.

John

Oh, do they help. I seemed to notice that when the PE-240 and PE-250 came out, it seemed a case of adding "0's" to the end of the numerals, because the predecessor to the PE-250 was the PE-25 3 I/O color camera, and the PE-240's predecessor was, of course, the PE-24.

I read in various places (such as Ed Reitan's early color TV site) that GE had a three-vidicon color film camera prior to the PE-24. Would anyone know what model number this 3-V camera was?

[W.B.]

I'm also curious as to whether one can identify the GE film chain cameras in these pictures, from Dennis Degan, taken in 1978 (the cameras as shown on the right in each one):





All I know is that former CBS technicians who frequent the CBS Retirees website (where these pics are featured) have said the Broadcast Center in New York (where the photos were taken) used "4V" cameras, suggesting they'd possibly be PE-24's. But the top looks a little earlier in make than the model as shown in the 1965 ad.

[John Hafer]

Maybe this will help: (Click on picture to enlarge)

GE PE-240001.jpg

[W.B.]

Originally Posted by julianburke

I love how Gates touts this GE PE400 Camera as a "lead oxide color camera". Isn't this the same thing as a car battery?

I presume they used the term "lead oxide" because Plumbicon was a registered trademark of Philips - and they didn't want to pay royalties on the name? (Similar to RCA referring to their videotape models as "television tape" because Ampex trademarked the name "videotape.")

But PE-400 actually came out within the last two years of GE's ownership of the broadcast equipment division (1970), prior to selling that unit to Harris. Here are some web pages with photos which clearly had GE markings on the PE-400, as used throughout the 1970's by Tampa, FL television station WTVT:

http://www.big13.com/Facilities/facilities_cameras.htm
http://www.big13.net/Adrian%20Snow/adrian_snow8.htm

In short, Harris inherited (but did not originate) the PE-400.

[Sandy G]

I think Harris must have made a little bit of EVERYTHING at one time or another...There was a Harris-Seybold division that made guillotine paper cutters for the printing/packaging industries-We had several, until in the mid-80s they just got so worn out & you couldn't get parts for 'em anymore. We replaced 'em w/ cutters from Heidelberg Eastern.

[jhalphen]

Good day Gentlemen,

Just a bit of personal experience with CCD sensors. Late in 1985, Ampex (where i was working back then) sold the entire Betacam range of products.
Sony was afraid of Matsushita, a much bigger company, and sought allies to make Betacam the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) standard. They therefore signed alliances with Ampex (USA), Thomson (France) and Bosch-Fernseh (Germany).

Several times i got frantic calls from customers commenting that their CCD camera had suddenly developed a rash of black or white permanent pixels and were therefore unfit for Broadcast use.

This is how we learned that Sony had in the UK a production line machine which would read the CCDs pixel by pixel, then reprogram a ROM mask which contained all the addresses of the "no good" pixels. This was a duplicate of a machine in the Japan OEM factory, and Sony was pretty "hush-hush" about its existence.

Apparently under certain conditions, heat being one of the them, the ROM would loose its memory and the defective pixels would appear. We would send them the optical prism block containing the 3 x CCDs factory-cemented to it (positioned to half a micron precision in the X/Y/Z directions) and would get it back a couple of weeks later producing again a perfect picture.

It would be interesting to know if the same scheme is still used today or if CCD production techniques have reached such a high level of quality that it is no longer necessary. Personally i think it's still used; getting 1920 x 1080 perfect pixels with a near 100% yield is a tall order to achieve, even today.

and oh by the way, a spare prism with 3 CCD sensors was US $16,000 back then...

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[J Ballard]

Hi all-

Re: The GE 250 camera was fairly popular, especially in the Midwest U.S. It was a 4 tube design, as was its successors, the PE-350 and PE-400.

The 250 had dichroic optics for color separation, but later, a kit was offered that upgraded the camera to a beam splitter, a big improvement.

The encoder was prone to drifting, that I recall.

Another interesting feature pioneered by GE was "AutoTrast," their term for an auto knee.

ABC had them also in TV-15 in NYC for the "Dick Cavett Show." With an experienced VO and sufficient light, the camera made a fine picture.

For telecine, I don't believe ABC had any GEs, relying on TK-27s, TK-28s, a TK-29 at Prospect, and probably TK-26s in the early days. If anyone has any contray information, I'd be interested, as I worked at ABC.

CBS definitely had GE telecines, although I once saw a TK-28 at Television City.

Regards,

J. Ballard

[John Hafer]

J Ballard: Actually ABC did use GE Color Film Chains and may have been the first network (or even station) to use them. I attached a picture from April 15,1963 BROADCASTING MAGAZINE showing ABC with the new GE 4-tube color camera. It is my understanding that ABC did have an original RCA TK-26 chain for the Fall of 1962 color startup but by the Fall of 1963 had switched to the new GE cameras. I also have ads from 1965 claiming ABC is using GE color film cameras.

John

[J Ballard]

Thanks John.

That was way before my time there and the veterans that I knew never mentioned GE film. Was this in NY or LA, or the O&Os?

I bet that they didn't have many, as there were several TK-27s in NY, and that model was introduced just a couple of years later. Also, the ABC network wasn't flush with cash then. Legend had it that the TV net didn't make money until some of the comedies (Happy Days,etc.) took off. ABC publicly complained that the cost of a vectorscope was excessive!

Frank Marx later went off to run ABTO, the lenticular film company formed by ABC and Todd-AO. Later, Julius Barnathan took over, and finally making money, ABC started spending on equipment for color.

Later on, a Bosch FDL-60 was added to the TK-29 at prospect for network film transfers.

Thanks
JB

Thanks
JB

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by J Ballard

...Frank Marx later went off to run ABTO, the lenticular film company formed by ABC and Todd-AO...

What did ABTO do with lenticular film?

[John Hafer]

I did not know ABC used TK-27 film chains. All of my ads show GE color film chains although I have an old RCA ad from 1955 that shows a B&W RCA TK-21 film camera connected to a RCA 35mm film projector so I know ABC did use RCA equipment (as well as others).

I am not at home right now but somewhere at home I have a link that explains how ABC started colorcasting. From what I remember (and I could be wrong), when ABC started to colorcast in September 1962 with the Jetsons and Flintstones, they had no color film cameras in NY so they had to have their LA broadcast center (that had a RCA TK-26) show the programs and microwave them across the country to NY for network feeds. It was not until seven months later (April 1963) when ABC installed the GE color film cameras in NY that they were finally able to originate colorcasts from NY.

We got our first color TV in the fall of 1963 and I spent many of hours watching color back in those days and could actually tell what brand of color film camera a station had by just watching their film broadcasts. RCA TK-26 and GE looked similar, but TK-27 films looked way different and were awful compared to the GE and older RCA TK-26. TK-27s were washed out, low in contrast and saturation and did not the "wow" look of the others. I have read since that even NBC did not want to use the TK-27s for the same reason and kept the TK-26s going until the TK-28 3 tube film cameras came out later.

[dtvmcdonald]

Originally Posted by John Hafer

RCA TK-26 and GE looked similar, but TK-27 films looked way different and were awful compared to the GE and older RCA TK-26. TK-27s were washed out, low in contrast and saturation and did not the "wow" look of the others.

Could not these properties be have been changed by a changed set of
adjustments, at the cost of increased noise?

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by J Ballard

Frank Marx later went off to run ABTO, the lenticular film company formed by ABC and Todd-AO.

What was ABTO's goal?

Lenticular projection screens (for super brightness theatrical) or
Lenticular camera film (for easy-to-process hot color kines on B&W film stock) or
Lenticular film for front projection (instead of rear screen projection for process shots during live or taped shows.)??

(Of the three only the first was a success.)

I worked at ABC NY, from 1965 to 1968, but in Film Services (450 West 56th) and not Engineering and this is news to me. In 1965, almost all of our kines were B&W. In fact, at the time, all of ABC's 35mm and 16mm network air prints included B&W protection copies of color video tape commercials as a back up if the video tape recorders went belly up.

James.

[Dave A]

Can't find your $200 TK-40/41 hiding in the basement of some retired engineer from West Oatmeal? Don't want a TK-42/43 along with everyone else in the day? Now you can blaze a trail in broadcasting history collecting with your own GE 250/350/400 because the seller does not know what it is. Neither do I as it is not mine.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-GE-Gener...item20d72c3072

HTF=Hard To Find.