Everybody knows that the lighting requirements in early television were extraordinary, and the horror stories are legion--actors' hair catching on fire, etc--but in Television in America: Local Station History From Across the Nation the author Michael D. Murray makes a statement that sounds unlikely. In discussing KSD-TV in St. Louis, Missouri, he says "...working conditions were quite demanding. Early television required a lot of lighting, and these programs routinely employed five banks of spotlights, each with 1,000 650-watt bulbs..." [p. 217] By my reckoning, this means they were drawing three-and-a-quarter million watts for lighting alone, which seems excessive. Unfortunately he doesn't cite a reference so I can't check it. How does this figure strike everyone here?

What's a 650-watt bulb look like? I actually have a 750-watt bulb around here somewhere. It's very roughly equivalent in size to an 8BP4. Just imagine how big a bank of 1000 would be. I don't know what that person was thinking of but just one of the thing they describe would be gargantuan.

"...five banks of spotlights, each with 1,000 650-watt bulbs.."

Something is garbled there. First of all, "spotlights" would not be used in "banks."

Reflector flood lamps were used in banks - I have seen pictures (movies?) of a studio with such banks on rotatable supports - have to go searching...

See this at 1:53 - I am looking for a better shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV0Ralac0w4&feature=related

See this one at ~14:06-14:10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A7MN4TjC2Q

Looks like the banks contained 6 reflector floods each in these cases.

Yes, that's the other thing that made me skeptical; I didn't think that spotlights were arranged in banks. (Actually, according to Louis Sposa, who was the chief broadcast engineer at WABD at the time (1947), the high light levels required by Iconoscope cameras pretty much ruled out the use of any kind of modeling lighting.)

this should help - description of the lighting at Radio City studio (which is probably what is seen in the Youtube clips), per Zworykin and Morton, "Television" 1940.

I'm skeptical about the number of lights the article claims are used. KSD was the first station to go on the air with Image Orthicon cameras as opposed to the Iconoscope. The amount of light needed was a fraction of the 1000+ footcandles required for the Iconoscope. I've got a photo somewhere of their studio and the lights appear to be mostly 1000 watt and 650 watt instruments.

I'm skeptical about the number of lights the article claims are used. KSD was the first station to go on the air with Image Orthicon cameras as opposed to the Iconoscope. The amount of light needed was a fraction of the 1000+ footcandles required for the Iconoscope. I've got a photo somewhere of their studio and the lights appear to be mostly 1000 watt and 650 watt instruments.

Use of five 1000 or 650 watt fixtures per scene area would be reasonable, so maybe that's what the author should have written.

The NAB Handbook 5th Edition (1960) recommends feeder capacity for monochrome of 25 watts per square foot, with on average 50% of that capacity being used. For color, four times the above figures are recommended. This is to provide base light of 75 foot-candles, base plus key of 100 foot candles. Again, the numbers are multiplied by four for color.

So, the 2000 foot-candle level suggested for good iconoscope results with the iris stopped down would imply 250 watts per square foot actually in use. Whew!

By the way, the Television Engineering Handbook (1992) says that modern cameras can use much less light than the image orthicons, but that the trend towards brighter interior lighting in most places means that anything less than 100 foot-candles is "a depressing and abnormal environment for the talent."

In other words, the talent should feel that there is no stinting on lighting even if the cameras don't need it!

when i last saw a taping of a television show, i was amazed at how dimly lit the studio and sets were, and how orangey the light was because they were dimmed so low.

I know even in the 90's when we upgraded to CCD cameras in the studio that they saved on light bulbs because they lasted much longer being run at about 60% brightness

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've written to the author of the book and asked him for a clarification. BTW, is there any fairly straightforward way of calculating how many lamps you'll need of a given wattage if you know what the amount of illumination required is in foot-candles?

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've written to the author of the book and asked him for a clarification. BTW, is there any fairly straightforward way of calculating how many lamps you'll need of a given wattage if you know what the amount of illumination required is in foot-candles?

Not totally straightforward. Depends on the directivity of the instruments, reflectivity of surroundings, etc. Those rules of thumb I posted from the 1960 NAB handbook are a reasonable starting point, but... I think they assumed very broad lighting as a base. Current lighting practice probably would use much less flat flood lighting and more directional spots, since the system as a whole has a much better contrast capability than it used to. CCD cameras and high-contrast displays mean that TV lighting can be similar to cinema lighting. Soap operas have used much more dramatic lighting for a couple of decades now, I believe.

Yes, soap operas have very dark, dramatic lighting, which matches the sets, which are also very dark. Evidently everyone lives in houses that don't have any windows, because from what (little) I've seen, daylight never enters the picture.
When daytime soaps first came to television around 1950, the budgets were farcically small, even by the standards of the day; they didn't run to building full sets, for example. They usually had a black cyclorama as a backdrop, and some props and furniture to suggest the setting: a table with chairs, a refrigerator and a stove would suggest the kitchen. The camera would pull up tight on the actors so that it wouldn't be so obvious, but inevitably the black background would show at least a bit, and it gave the whole thing a spooky look, as though it were being performed at the bottom of a coal mine.
I've included a few screen shots from two mid-50's soaps, The Secret Storm and Love of Life. On You Tube Secret Storm clips are dated 1951, but that's a mistake--TSS didn't go on the air until 1954.
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173605

173606

By the way, I looked up the old TK-45 3-vidicon color camera that was used for closed circuit televising surgery at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The RCA Color Television Manual for Technical Training says that it required 2500 foot-candles for high quality pictures.

http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/rca-wramc(2).jpg

Wow. Why did it need such intense lighting? From what I've gathered, early Iconoscopes needed something like 1,000 ft-candles, and that was an insufferable amount. What 2,500 ft-candles was like I can only wonder about.

For one thing, the vidicon target voltage (and therefore sensitivity) had to be kept low to minimize dark current variations (shading). Plus, the lag was much worse with a high target voltage. Also, the relay optics were not very efficient, plus absorptive trimming filters were needed to get the color response right.

All the illustrations of usage I have seen are for surgery, microscope slides, or graphic charts, except for the "see yourself on color TV" exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The lighting for that consisted of a row of PAR bulbs that cast dark shadows in the subjects eye sockets and still were almost blinding. Even so, the lag was pretty awful. When someone stepped in front of the background mural, you could see the palm frond "through" them for several seconds. I don't think anyone used this camera for live studio work.

Sorry, what are PAR bulbs?
Also, to ask a couple more questions, some of the television primers mentioned that WRGB, amongst others, experimented with mercury vapour lamps like the ones in the two pictures I've attached. The large housing is for a water-cooled jacket, and the principal drawbacks were the expense, the weight of the lamp, and that the jacket sometimes leaked. I think there were some issues, too, with the emission spectrum, which caused colours to be rendered into gray scale in unusual ways. Does anyone know how widely this kind of floodlighting was used?

Parabolic Aluminized Reflector - like the floodlights used for many decades in outdoor security lamp fixtures
http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=139441

Edit - by the way, I do not know how widely mercury lamps were used in TV.