1964-5 NYWF RCA Pavilion--new tape discovered

[jmdocs]

Posted today to the QuadList by Bill Seery of the Standby Program (http://www.standby.org/standby/)--newly discovered color quad tape from the RCA Pavilion at the 1964-5 New York World's Fair! Phenomenal stuff. Thought the list would appreciate. Bill's note is below.

Jeff Martin
Chicago, IL



"It was found in an RCA case labelled as a low band alignment tape. I lent it to Maurice Schecter thinking he could make use of it and he discovered something very different.

The minute I saw it I knew what it was. It's a fragment of a Quad videotape shot at the RCA Pavilion on closing day of the 1964-65 NY World's Fair, Oct. 17 1965. I grew up within walking distance of the fair and spent a lot of time there.

Here's the description of this exhibit from the 1965 Official Guide Book:

"YOURSELF ON TV. Near the entrance to the pavilion, visitors may also walk by a unique "color carousel" and see themselves on color television twice, once "live" as they pass the camera, and moments later on TV tape."

http://youtu.be/s9Vm_peHmKg

If you recognize anyone, please let me know. I'll put up more when I have a chance.Thanks again to Maurice for transferring this!

[holmesuser01]

Thats a good looking piece of video tape. The colors look really good. All the low-band I've seen had alot of noise in the video.

When I was still trolling in broadcasting, we had several high-band VTR's, and a single Ampex low-band VTR that was maintained to death. We had several syndicated series on tape that played on the low-band machine daily.

[old_tv_nut]

Sometimes it takes a while, but...
One of my good friends in the industry found a contact who worked at the RCA Pavilion, Herb Kircher, who is currently at ABC, WPVI. When I contacted Herb, he came up with three pictures of the tape machines!

[Need a dancing blue banana here!]

Herb is the guy on the left in the first picture. He explained that the center and right machines are the ones for the delay, so although there were three machines (and a fourth in the far background of the third picture), there was only one delay stage.

[ohohyodafarted]

There sure were a number of strange folks in that clip. Or, did we all look that wierd back then? It has been so long that I forgot how many people smoked at the time, including myself. Glad I gave it up more than 30 years ago. I was a junior in high school at the time this was taped. That makes me an old fart now along with the folks on this clip.

[ceebee23]

the crowd in the marvellous snippet of 1965 are quite intriguing... mmm

[old_tv_nut]

RCA set up for shooting some tumblers and the New Christy Minstrels. Courtesy of Herb Kircher.