Posted on 11/05/2010 9:50:59 AM PDT by Callahan
This is sample footage of the earliest surviving colour videotape recording which is the Dwight Eisenhower inaugural address to WRC-TV on 22nd May 1958. The first 15 minutes of this event was shot in B&W which you see the president arriving to the building and the news reporter giving details of the event, then about nearly 15 minutes in Robert Sarnoff hits the colour switch and on comes the colour. For the remaining 15 minutes Robert Sarnoff, Dwight Eisenhower and David Sarnoff speak about the station and the colour television technology while being recorded in living colour!!! The whole program is available for download in DVD quality from a user on Veoh right here http://www.veoh.com/browse/videos/cat... . In the sample I've included the B&W portion where the president arrives and the colour portion which Robert Sarnoff and Dwight Eisenhower speak.
USA started broadcasting colour in late 1953 and colour TV sets were available to the public in 1954 at an expensive price. Colour videotaping began in USA in 1958 and this footage is the earliest known to exist and it has been successfully transferred to digital for preservation. It is totally awesome to know that some colour programs from the late 1950s have survived on colour videotape as they show to us younger generations how good colour television really was back in its earliest days!!! Those RCA TK-41 cameras gave brilliant pictures back in the day!!!
I recall being at a college football game back in the late 50s early 60s that was being televised in color (NBC I think). It was a very hot September day. They strapped blocks of dry ice on those three-tube color cameras to keep them from melting down. Those big cameras must have sucked a lot of Watts.
Our ancestors, as with Ike, were mostly awkward in public speaking and often frozen in front of a camera. Now, any fool will perform for a camera and too often do.
You're not my kid, are you? That was about the year we got our first VCR and touch tone phone. We also bought a microwave oven for my wife's parents, for $165 but they didn't want it, so we got it. I remember buying a #6 countersink bit to install it under the kitchen cabinette. I did own a Mac Plus in 1985 ($2,200, used! With image writer dot matrix printer and 10 MByte SCSI hard drive.)
My first television was a Sony Trinitron which I purchased back in 1969-1970 era. It was still working well into the 1990's. Watched many a Super Bowl on that TV ...
There might be earlier color recordings of television because some TV shows were archived by filming a TV running a live show.
As for antique color, I just saw the first part of a history of WW II\. They showed a color (one of the earliest) film of the World War I victory parade in Paris. They made it quite clear that it was filmed in color and not a colorized B&W film.
This was way back when the good old USA was still America! Not the Amerika of today. I’ll always miss you, America.
The first mobile video tape cameras and record decks were an ungainly pair. The camera weighed about five pounds and could be carried on my shoulder. The deck was a 50 pound monster, as big as a television set, requiring a pair of bandoleer battery packs carried across each shoulder. On a cold day, you might have 12 to 15 minutes of record time.
You're right - it's an amazing time...
Now Trump is in the White House so the color has returned once again.
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