[QuadList] Kitchen Debate Video turned 50 this weekend--Pictures from an Exhibition

Mon Jul 27 01:00:00 CDT 2009

The so-called "Kitchen Debate" with then Vice President Nixon and  
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was recorded 50 years ago last  
Friday (July 24).

It happened during the opening of the American National Exhibition in  
Sokolniki Park in Moscow.

RCA supplied a pair of TK-41 cameras, and Ampex supplied Quad  
Videotape equipment for recording and playback for a Color Television  
exhibit, where eight hours of live and filmed programming were  
displayed on monitors around the park for visitors to see.

See the last picture on this page http://www.kitchendebate.org/ 
pictures-from-an-exhibition
which includes a photo of the VR-1000, a TK-41 outside with a zoom  
lens, and that TK-41 and another with just turret lenses televising  
Nixon and Khrushchev.

William Safire was a press agent for the manufacturer of the house  
that had been erected for the exhibition, and in which the famous  
kitchen was located.  Safire recalled what happened in this OpEd  
piece for the NY Times, Friday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24safire.html?_r=1

The recording took place in the Color Television Exhibit, before  
Nixon and Nikita got to the kitchen. Pictures show the two TK-41s and  
an Ampex VR-1000(B??) displayed and working.

Safire writes:
"Instead, “Nik and Dick,” as the adversaries were promptly dubbed,  
were steered into the RCA color television exhibit, a consumer marvel  
at the time. This display of technical superiority must have  
irritated the Russian leader, who noticed the taping going on and  
demanded “a full translation” of his remarks be broadcast in  
English in the United States. Nixon, in his role as genial host,  
readily agreed, expressing a hope for similar treatment of his  
remarks in Russia."

The Ampex team included engineers Bill Barnhart and Russian-speaking  
Joe Roizen. Roizen rolled the recorder, and recorded the 16:30 of  
color video, and then hit rewind.

The tape from the Color Television Exhibit was played back...

  Ampex VP Phil Gundy (far left next to Khrushchev) played a role in  
getting the tape out of the USSR.

The tape was spooled off the reel using a pencil for a core,  
according to former Ampex engineer Jim Wheeler in this post to the  
AMIA website:
http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/ 
2006/06/msg00205.html

Gundy put the tape—under dirty laundry, according to his son, Mark— 
in baggage his dad took with him on a quick flight out of the Soviet  
Union. The tape wound up in New York, and was broadcast by all three  
networks in the US on July 25, and in Moscow on July 27, 1959.

The content of at least one version of the tape was restored using  
AVR-1 boards modified by QuadList member Ed Reitan, who recounted the  
story in a thread on the Telecine Internet Group (TIG) list, which  
has some comments by QuadList charter member David Crosthwait:
http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009090.html

The transfer was done by Don Kent on the AVR-1 that transferred the  
Eisenhower WRC-TV dedication video and a number of other early color  
Quad recordings.

Crosthwait has worked on Quad tapes of the "Kitchen Debate."

Vidipax founder and archival technical consultant Jim Lindner of  
Media Matters, LLC has worked on several versions of the "Kitchen  
Debate tapes, and wonders where the original recording is.  In a  
white paper titled "The Loss of Early Video Recordings," Lindner writes:

A unique restoration effort completed by the author in 1995  
incorporated elements held by the Library of Congress, the UCLA Film  
and Television Archive, and a broadcasting company. Despite these  
efforts, no one knows if this restoration accurately represents what  
the original tape looked like, because neither the documentation nor  
the original is known to exist.

He describes the different tapes' contents on Page 3 of the white  
paper, and suggests:

"Although we will never know whatever happened to the original tape,  
the New York Times may have provided a clue. Part of the furor  
surrounding the tape was due to the demand that it be shown in the  
United States at the same time as the Soviet Union. According to  
Mr.Gundy, that could not be done because of "the need to adapt it to  
the different technical standards of Soviet television and the delay  
in the work of translation."13"

Limited information on the internet about Soviet TV in 1959 leads me  
to believe it used the 625 line/25 frames per second standard that  
much of Europe had chosen, but in monochrome, as SECAM had been  
patented but not implemented at that time.

Cursory research discovers no mention of electronic standards  
conversion between 525 line NTSC and 625 monochrome, but the exchange  
WAS played in Moscow late in the evening of July 27, 1959.

I've seen no language to indicate whether it was via videotape or  
kinescope, or whether the content had Nixon's remarks translated into  
Russian before the copy was sent to Moscow.

Lindner believes that the standards conversion could only have been  
done at Ampex facilities, as if to say "that's where the original  
tape went," and says if that is the case, none of the existing tapes  
are accurate representatives of the original tape flown out of Moscow.

"In the specific case of the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate  
videotape, the record of a significant world event has been distorted  
and permanently lost by the obsolescence of the system used to record  
it, the instability of the media used to record it (which has severe  
shedding, causing image distortions and "dropouts"), the lack of  
proper documentation and labeling and the lack of a management and  
preservation strategy that included proper environmental conditions  
on the media. As a result, scholars and historians will never have an  
exact record of an historic interchange between two leaders in the  
Cold War and one of the first color television recordings ever made."

Joe Roizen received an EMMY® for recording the exchange.

Pete Challinger recounts a tidbit as told by Ampex engineer Bill  
Barnhart during a Sacramento SMPTE Section meeting:
http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009105.html

Barnhart said the State Department required that the Quad Head  
Assembly be removed from the machine every night, taken under armed  
escort to the US Embassy and stored there overnight. That required  
coaxing the machine to life every morning.

And since I'm posting this rather late, and need to coax myself to  
life in the morning... I'll remove my own head to a more comfortable  
and secure location... and see you all tomorrow.

Hope you had a good weekend.

Ted

Ted Langdell
Secretary

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