Visit to the Early Television Museum

I'm at the Museum of Early Televisions in Hillard Ohio and we're going to go in and see what's going on so I'm inside the Museum of Early Televisions and let's take a look at the

early

mechanics so here are the sets on display in this room and they have an audio narration that talks us through five of the

television

s quite interesting collection of mechanical

television

s with spitting wheels the first televisions used mechanical means to create an image find the little green sign with one on it the first patent was granted for television in 1884 described a system that used rotating disks with holes drilled in them one disk was in the camera in front of a photoelectric cell an identical disk was used in the receiver in front of underwear in a tube the image was viewed through a magnifying lens in front of the disk at that time many of the components necessary for the system to work did not exist, such as vacuum tubes, many years later, in 1926, a Scottish inventor named John Logie Baird produced the first televisions in his laboratory from London, three years later. he was broadcasting to viewers the images were extremely crude today's television images are made up of over a thousand lines allowing for very clear image bird transmissions or with 30 lines in 1830 there were about 30 stations in the US. and stations in most major European cities because they use the same channels as AM radio signals can be received over long distances this is the television that Baird's company sold starting in 1929 about 1,000 were made the cabinet is made of metal and they looked at us through the lens on the front you could buy a TV or you could build your own, as they were simple devices.

A few years ago we interviewed Marie Mercier with the pictures of her on her wall, who told us that when she was a teenager she asked her father to make the first television with coal. the table was their first game in 1928 they watched some of the first American broadcasts from Schenectady New York and Washington DC the following year they built the largest game on the table Rory's father rented a store on North High Street and put the game on the front window where his job was to sit in the shop window at night and keep the justice system people walking up and down High Street could watch television, so here is a Western Union Telegraph dated 28 November 1928 GE or General Electric radio.

Station WGY in Schenectady New York says it receives a human face turning from side to side and moving its lips also toward other objects next to our television receiver. This is the Western view as an example of an American television that was sold to the public. About 500 of these were. This is the Western Empire State Receiver circa 1932. New technology emerged that allowed the image to be projected onto a screen, allowing more than one person to view it. However, the image was very faint and only had 45 lines due to poor quality. picture quality with mechanical television it was impossible to make real television programming because of this and since the Great Depression limited the number of people who could afford televisions, mechanical television transmission came to an end in 1932, some of the tubes used In

early

rotating disc televisions there are two main components in an electronic television system the camera tube that converts an image into an electrical signal the picture tube that converts that signal into a visible image in the 1930s engineers developed picture tubes that were suitable for television on the shelf is a small one from the late 1920s, however, a working camera tube had not yet been developed.

Two inventors were responsible for solving the problem. Philo Farnsworth grew up in rural Idaho and with no formal science education came up with an idea for a camera to discourage investors. and he moved to San Francisco in 1927 he produced a crude image with his camera, the problem was that it required too much light and he never overcame that limitation. The other inventor was Vladimir Zworykin, his work and he worked for Westinghouse in the 1920s. He also made a chamber tube and demonstrated it in the late 1920s in 1830 he began working for RCA, the largest radio manufacturer.

At the time, RCA was run by David Sarnoff, a visionary who realized that television would be the next big thing and who spent around $50 million during The Great Depression to develop the Sorkin TV camera tube, the Icona display worked with a relatively low amount of light and allowed a practical television system to be developed in 1935. RCA had a working system, but Sarnoff decided not to start selling televisions because the technology was expensive. and unreliable and because the Great Depression was still going on, the British had a government-run broadcasting entity, the BBC, and decided to launch the first electronic television in the fall of 1936 using primarily RCA technology. next door they were made between 1936 and 1939 this is the first British electronic equipment we have in our collection it was made in 1936 as there was only one television station in the country the equipment did not have a channel selector knob a modest equipment It cost as much as a new car, so only about 19,000 were made during those three years.

About 300 of these devices survived. The larger screens had mirrors to view the image. This was because the picture tubes were approximately two and a half feet long and mounting them vertically made it possible to make a more attractive cabinet since television broadcasting was limited to a couple of hours a day. Many of the devices had shortwave radio. It was built when England declared war on Germany in 1939. Television manufacturing and broadcasting ended in England in 1939 RCA decided it was time to make television available to the American public. RCA had a large pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair with television.

There was an area at the fair where people could stand in front of a television camera and their friends could see them. on television, this camera may have been one of those used at the fair when the fair began. NBC, which was owned by RCA, began regularly scheduled television programming. RCA introduced its line of television products at the show, the cheaper one on the left needed a separate radio for sound the more elaborate one on the right included a radio and had a 12 inch picture many other companies also started to sell gadgets in 1939 Andrea made a 5 inch gadget with a magnifying glass to make the image appear larger next to it is a kit set that took dozens of hours to assemble, you could save a few dollars if you did it yourself General Electric made five models different from televisions in 1939 and 1940.

About 7,000 televisions were manufactured in the United States during 1939 and 1940 and about 350 survive today. As with pre-war British televisions, a mid-range television set cost as much as a new car when the United States entered World War II in 1941. Television production stopped, although many stations continued to broadcast with programming experimental throughout the war. During the war RCA engineers worked on military projects, including a television-guided bomb. This camera was placed inside a wooden glider that was placed underneath a B-17 bomber. It was released when it was close to a target and the television was you to guide the bomb during the war.

I learned a lot about technology, especially radar communications and aircraft, than could be applied to television, as a result the sets made just after the war were much simpler, more reliable and cheaper. A typical 10- or 12-inch set cost about $400 compared to $1,600 for a television. car, these games are from just after the war, as you can see manufacturers were experimenting with all kinds of cabinet designs to figure out what would sell. There were dozens of companies making games. In 1948, the 7-inch game was introduced, some with built-in magnifying glasses. This might seem like a step backwards, but it allowed televisions to sell for less than $200 because the cost of a television continued to drop.

Television grew very rapidly in late 1947; By the end of 1953, there were only 200,000 televisions in the United States. Years later there were 18 million and half of the homes in the country had a TV. This is a national 7 M television and it says Nacional was another manufacturer of amateur radio equipment. In the late 1940s they decided to enter the television business. This television is building a cabinet. like the ones used for your amateur radio receivers has a meter to measure signal strength 1949 7 inch Emerson Videograph video jukebox was made in 1947 before most people had seen televisions, insert a coin twenty-five cents and you can listen to five songs from his jukebox. or watch television for 30 minutes.

This is a Dumont custom. It was made to be mounted on a wall in his living room. There had to be a closet behind it for maintenance as something went wrong with the first TVs. A TV like this often cost almost $2,000. now go past the first row of curtains and look to your right at the end of the room, find the little green sign with five on it. These devices were sold in bars and clubs in the late 1940s, when only a few people had televisions in their homes. However, many people went to bars and clubs to watch television.

The 1948 World Series was televised and millions of people watched it in those places. The Dumont Royal Sovereign was the largest black and white set ever made with a 30-inch screen. Made in 1951 and cost almost $2,000 in the late '50s, manufacturers began using plastic and metal for cabinets, the red-gold portable RCA and the duel aqua Sylvania in are examples, the space-age-looking Philco Predicta, This version has two parts, the screen that goes in front of the room and the control unit that goes next to your sofa or chair, the heavy cable connects them, a wheel containing segments of each of the three primary colors was placed in front to the camera and another in front of the receiver, one after another, red, blue and green images were transmitted, it happened so fast that the eye integrated the image into a full color image.

The same method called the field sequential system was used by CBS before World War II in an electronic version after the war. CBS pressured the government to adopt a color system before sales of black-and-white sets took off; the main problem with the CBS system was that it was not compatible with black-and-white broadcasting. Two channels will be required in each city for each station, one for color and one for RCA black and white. He was working on a compatible system but progress was slow. Finally in 1950 the FCC which regulates television standards agreed to hold a competition between the RCA compatible system and the CBS field sequential system to see which would be the standard for the United States at that time. moment.

The RCA system was in the early stages of development and produced poor images. The CBS system produced excellent images and the FCC adopted the CBS system. Some programs were broadcast in some cities, including Columbus, in 1951. This is a studio monitor for the CBS system on the left. It is a converter that was placed in front of a black and white television to produce a color image. RCA was making great progress on their compatible system and by 1951 it was clear that they would be successful, so CBS abandoned their system late. 1951, well, Larry tried to turn on this rotating dial color monitor and we couldn't get it locked, we're filling it with various controls trying to synchronize it.

The RCA system was eventually adopted by the FCC as the color standard in late 1953. The first color sets were sold to the public in the spring of 1954. Westinghouse and RCA sets had only 12 large screens and cost more than $1,000. At that time you could get a very nice 21-inch black and white set. As a result, for $250, only about 5,000 were sold during 1955. Televisions with 21-inch screens were introduced over the next 10 years. Televisions became somewhat cheaper, but few sold due to unreliable costs and the lack of many color programs in the mid-1960s. RCA partnered with Walt Disney to produce a program called The Wonderful World. of color its purpose was to sell color televisions and it worked 1970 was the first year in which more color televisions were sold than black and white and we have more British and European color televisions in this room Spartan CBS rx 90 CBS rx 89 and This is a field sequential color camera, you can see the rotating disk.

My hunch is that the lens would focus the light there as the disk rotatespowered by a fairly strong motor, but the problem with color sequential camera filling is that when the action pans, the image is split into a red, green and blue trail. I still use field sequential color cameras for the lunar missions and if you go back and look, you see the astronaut jumping. On the moon you would see the red, blue and green edges. This is an interesting looking set, the Tsukuba Comet and was made in Germany. It was built in 1962. It's about 7 feet long.

It has a 21 inch tube and looks like it probably has an am/fm receiver and a turntable another look around the room here let's take a look inside this monster took a lot of stuff in these big sets I would say the chassis next to the CRT probably there's the signal and the bias maybe and the power supply at the bottom and there was a lot of tube for a small picture and this was a 1952 cpa RCA prototype. You see it was definitely a laboratory model with a lot of space inside for the engineers to go in and poke around, make modifications and and and a lot of the picture tubes are on display here here is a good display of all kinds of camera tubes, picture tubes, some of these I've even used, so I have one of these.

It is an 1850 Icona scope tube that was used before World War II. I actually got one of the tools when I was working on some equipment at a TV station in Texas. One of the engineers had several at home. He ran home and picked one up and I took it home on the plane. It survived and this is a four and a half inch image orticon that was used in the TK 60 camera that I used at the Rochester Institute of Technology and this is a three inch image orticon and this was used in the GE camera that I was using when I went to college making remote controls. a w76 two 140, the shallowest color TV in the world: it has a deflection angle of one hundred degrees and 40.

You know, it really took a lot to bend that beam. Well this was built by Thompson and then bought by RCA but they were never able to get it working and never went into production this room contains our collection of early television cameras and other broadcast equipment in the middle of the floor our first cameras the RCA TK 31 was the first camera sold after World War II it was used on television stations across the country during the 50's and our first color cameras from the 60's and 70's were also on display the large camera behind the van is the RCA TK 41 the first color camera made in 1954 that we are in the process of restoring Next to the brand is an RCA TK 1 monoscope camera from the 40s and 50s.

The monoscope produced a test pattern that was used after it was finished early morning programming to adjust the equipment on the television stations. The row of large cabinets is one of the first. television transmitter this was owned by channel 6 here in Columbus and was located at the top of the Levesque tower as of 1949 the big truck is a 1948 RCA mobile production van this type of van was sold to television stations around The country was originally in Salt Lake City, Utah, contains most of the original equipment from 1948, including three cameras in 1960, was sold to an educational station in Newark, Ohio, where it was used until 1970, then donated to the Ohio Historical Society, which lent it. to us in order to send an image to the station a microwave dish was placed on top of the truck a similar dish was mounted on the television station's transmission tower these two dishes had to be aligned for them to work someone had to climbing the tower in all types of weather to aim the dish originally the truck did not have air conditioning imagine being an engineer in the summer in Utah the windows had to be closed since they needed darkness to see the monitors and the equipment generated a lot of heat, this ends our audio tour of the

museum

, feel free to take your time and look around thank you for

visit

ing television's first

museum

, we hope to see you again soon, this is the camera that got me into television.

I used a remote truck with three of these. In the early 70's I mainly did bowling shows so it used the Orthicon three inch picture tube and zoom lenses were quite rare in those days so a turret with fixed focal length lenses was used . This RCA TK 60 we had 3ds at RIT Rochester Institute. of Technology uses the big four and a half inch value, this was probably the last of the black and white studio cameras built and it still has a turret, but it also has a zoom lens. Taylor Hobson probably ten to one and another shot. of the lenses, the zoom lens worked with cables that went back to the handles that were mounted on the arms of the camera, so this is the zoom crank and on the other side is the focus and this is where the cameraman worked, it had a viewfinder and it had some controls, a big crank to rotate the turret, but I don't think it rotated it with that zoom in there, so I'm seeing a little bit behind the scenes here, so this is the lab where they can reconstruct the image. tubes, this is a lathe, I imagine they turn it to seal the neck of the tube.

You know, Litton did similar things in Grass Valley, they were world famous for their glassblowing designs and this is a forest, okay, so this all came from Hawkeye Photo to Platt in Iowa and this is probably one of the few facilities left that can rebuild a tube so I'm in the back shop here where a lot of things that have been donated and work in progress are stored so that's the other side of the museum wall and it will work on old TVs. You'll need a lot of these good old vacuum tubes too if you're working on TVs.

Sam's photo fax for years had all the manuals lined up and troubleshooting, so there you go. all the big black notebooks here are the writers series and for my broadcast days I recognize many of these, the camera manuals and such for RCA and Sony Ampex and that concludes my tour of the museum of old television. I hope you enjoyed it, please. Visit their website and YouTube channel for more interesting material and now I leave you with many of the steel funnels that I took.