Eisenhower WRC-TV 1958 (oldest known colour videotaping)

Youtube ^ | 3-1-2010 | Oldtvhistory

[bigbob]

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/category/news/watch/v191020606nr3MbJG . 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!!!

(Six minute excerpt at the link)

[Erasmus]

There was an impromptu debate between Nixon and Khruschchev (sp?) at the US exhibit at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. They were debating the merits of their respective political systems, when Nixon gestured to the (US RCA Color) TV camera and gave color TV as an example of US leadership in technology.

The Russians deserve credit, by the way, for being involved in work toward color TV by that time. They had various experimental systems going, including a field-sequential system (the one with color wheels, similar to the abortive CBS system of 1950-53). They had also reverse-engineered much of the RCA color gear, including the CTC-5 receiver chassis.

The Soviets finally got on the air with color broadcasts in 1968 with the French SECAM system. This adoption was an essentially political deal where DeGaulle was in cahoots with Khruschchev; it also gave the Russkis a system whereby their subjects on the borders of free countries (notably West Germany) could not view those countries’ transmissions.

[Erasmus]

Here's some interesting test film from Kodak, 1922. It's touching to think of the great grandchildren of these girls now living among us.

[KC_Lion]

Yeah, the 1920's must have been an Amazing time in America.

All we hear now is how great America WAS, but that could change too.

[Erasmus]

Sound on film could be done either with separate media (originally, phonograph discs) but that was very, very, clumsy. The system that finally prevailed (until the digital sound era, that is) was one in which the sound is recorded at the side of the image, next to the sprocket holes. This is called "sound-on-film." It solves the major problem of synchronization and a few other problems as well, and also introduces a few of its own.

I met the man who first publicly demonstrated sound-on-film in July of 1922. Uhhhh, I didn't meet him in 1922, that was in 1967. ≤}B^)

Nowadays with digital sound, it can either be encoded as a large number of microscopic photographic bits between the sprocket holes, or sent on separate CDs, where the synchronization is handled automatically. Or, with the recent introduction of digital theater projection, it's just computer files which are just as easily synchronized.

[Erasmus]

Those RCA TK-41 cameras gave brilliant pictures back in the day!!!

Wotta beest!

The whole camera chain (head plus racks of electronics) took several kilowatts. Per camera. I never saw so many tweaking controls! It took a sort of artist to shade the cameras from the control room or van and keep them looking good. And a combination of artist and athlete at the camera itself to swing that 300+ pound monster around to follow a foul ball at Wrigley Field.

Also, literally tons of cables--three ca. 56-conductor 2-inch cables per camera head. (That's because it actually was three cameras in one.)

The solid state sucessor, the TK-42/43, incredibly was almost as big (although it had a much smaller chassis and adjustment panel back in the control room). Of course it had four camera tubes instead of the TK41's three. Many studios hung on to their TK41's until the generation after the TK42/43.