[QuadList] Some of RCA's "other" publications are on-line--Sarnoff Library digital collections

[Charles Park Seward]

WOW indeed. Thanks, Ted.

Best,
Park

C. Park Seward
Cell: 818-535-2747
Home: 541-476-6657
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The Transfer Lab at Video Park
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On Mar 8, 2014, at 5:49 AM, Steve White <Steve.White at 800CallNow.com> wrote:

> 
> WOW!
> 
> Thanks, Ted.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 3/8/14, 4:03 AM, Ted Langdell wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> There's more hours of reading ahead at the Hagley Museum and Library, and details about RCA's involvement in television tape recording. Among a lot of other things!
>> 
>> The Hagley Museum is at the site of the original DuPont gunpowder mills, family estate and gardens, while the Library is in the Greenville area of Wilmington.
>> 
>> The Wilmington, Delaware institution has a growing on-line collection that encompasses material from companies like DuPont, ConRail and RCA as part of collections that document the history of American business.
>> 
>> The Hagley was recently awarded $291,500 to process and catalog the David Sarnoff Library collection, which was housed in Princeton, New Jersey before the Sarnoff closed in 2009.
>> 
>> While the College of New Jersey received the objects in the collection, the Hagley received nearly 3,000 linear feet of documents.
>> 
>> They include David Sarnoff's personal papers, RCA corporate papers and publications and some materials from NBC.
>> 
>> Some of the materials were digitized by the Sarnoff Library before the Sarnoff closed.  Others have been digitized since processing began.
>> 
>> http://www.hagley.org/2013/08/sarnoff-digital-collection
>> 
>> The online collections include: 
>> RCA Laboratories Newsletters, 1943-1986: internal publications used to disseminate information about research related to RCA product development
>> RCA Engineer, 1955-1974: technical journal published by RCA’s Product Engineering Division in New Jersey
>> RCA Annual Reports, 1921-1945
>> RCA/Victor advertisements: advertisements for RCA/Victor products primarily from the first half of the 20th century
>> Click here: 
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16038coll11
>> 
>> to see some recently digitized 1930s Broadcast News magzines, and a link to browse all the items currently digitized.
>> 
>> I found using the "Browse all items" link, sorting by subject and the maximum number of items worked well. 4 loooong pages, ending with issues of the RCA Engineer.
>> 
>> You can download many of the PDFs... and make adjustments to the viewing window in the viewer.
>> 
>> To get you started, here's a link to the Feb/March 1968 issue of RCA Engineer, 
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/19104/rec/162
>> 
>> with articles that include:
>> 
>> Spectrum Analysis of Magnetic Video Recorder FM System
>> Correction of Hue and Saturation Errors in TV Tape Recording
>> RCA's TA-19 Video Processor
>> Improving Automatic Sensitivity Performance in Color TV Film Cameras
>> and 
>> The World's Most Powerful Television Transmitter
>> 
>> Here's a look at RCA color studio cameras from 1939-69 :
>> ]http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p16038coll11/id/30294/rv/compoundobject/cpd/30341/rec/571
>> 
>> These 47 pictures include a (1947?) view of a 4-camera studio at WNBT/NBC New York with cameras pre-dating the 1951 "Coffin" TK-40 style cameras used in the color TV standard demonstrations.  Dichroic mirrors, anyone?  They show them.
>> 
>> There are the cameras used at WNBW, Washington, DC, and what appear to be others used in the color TV field tests from NBC, NY... Studio 3H if the stencils on the lighting instruments are a valid clue.  And a selection of pictures of TK-40s and TK-41s
>> 
>> Television film and video recording are mentioned in the 1956 RCA Labs Research Department Annual Report (click on the link for Page 69). There are other interesting items in the report.
>> 
>> I saved the Quad for last...
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/30293/rec/581
>> 
>> Here are pictures... beginning with a TRT-1AC captioned for release on April 12, 1981... including RCA's linear television tape recorder used on May 12, 1955 for "the first transmission of a tape recorded color TV program over commercial network facilities" from NBC-NY to 3M in Minneapolis.
>> 
>> The development of RCA's Heterodyne approach to recording and playing color from Quad tape is described in the February/March, 1958 RCA Engineer
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/23611/rec/61
>> 
>> This edition appeared just before NBC began full-scale time zone delay in Burbank using mostly Ampex VR-1000 units with RCA-developed color circuitry.
>> 
>> In the article "Engineering Color Videotape Recording," A. H. Lind outlines the Quadruplex recording process, RCA's TRT-1 development, and RCA's approach to obtaining stabilized color playback.  
>> 
>> "The basic technique is to cancel out time "jitter" in the chrominance signal by translating it to a higher frequency spectrum and then heterodyning this translated signal with a signal which also contains the jitter and is of such a frequency that the difference signal frequencies fall back into the original frequency band. If this signal is derived from a signal recorded on the tape, it will contain the same time jitter effects as those in translated chrominance signal, but the difference signal obtained by heterodyning will be free of the jitter because the errors have been cancelled by subtraction." 
>> 
>> He concludes by noting that "Special credit is due the RCA Laboratories for the color processing technique."
>> 
>> Television Tape Head manufacturing is described in great detail in RCA Engineer's April/May 1961 edition:
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/27401/rec/1
>>  Click on Page 15 for the article.
>> 
>> This is a good article to read in case anyone wonders why it costs what it costs to refurbish Quad video heads. The precision needed is quite... intense.  As is the technical detail in the article.
>> 
>> TV Tape at NBC is described on Page 4 of the June/July 1961 issue of RCA Engineer.
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/27460/rec/12
>> 
>> Written three years after NBC began time zone delay in 1958, it offers a glimpse of how the network was actually several networks, patched together at different times for transmission in different dayparts.
>> 
>> How NBC used recorders in New York and Burbank to achieve program delay during daylight savings time (DST) involves the use of three "networks."  
>> 
>> The "A" network—or "live" network—received the live feed from NY covering eastern and central US areas on DST.  NY and Burbank both rolled two tapes each.
>> 
>> A "B" network was fed tape playback from NY delayed an hour for southern and central areas not on DST. Two tapes were running in sync during TZD to avoid glitches.
>> 
>> Burbank played the A network feed to the western "C" network three hours after the NY start time.
>>  
>> Shows that originated live in Burbank would be performed at the correct NY start time and fed to the A network, recorded in NY and Burbank, and then played for the "B" and "C" nets as outlined above.
>> 
>> Viewership (and resulting ratings-related revenue) for shows in the B-network areas was improved by delaying an hour. It avoided people being outside when say, an 8pm DST show would have occurred at 7pm in their area.
>> 
>> NBC's development of the successful "EditSync" off-line editing technique used on hundreds of shows is outlined in the article.
>> 
>> The extremes taken to maintain the same picture quality over days of taping a single show are relayed, using the 1960 presentation of "Peter Pan" as an example.  Star Mary Martin was appearing on Broadway in "The Sound of Music," so the recording sessions had to be scheduled around her performances.
>> 
>> William Howard and Robert Mausler write:
>> 
>> "Peter Pan is a show which was done in three different color studios; the Ziegfeld Theatre, located in Manhattan, and Studios I and II in Brooklyn, with the taping done over the period of nine days.
>> 
>> Taping a two-hour show, done in three different color studios, extending over nine days, is a formidable undertaking. In addition to studio lighting problems, special precautions were demanded to insure matched luminance and chroma levels at the studio control room and TV tape room, if the successive tapings were to be free of flesh-tone changes or other color differences. 
>> 
>> All line equalizers, TV tape recording heads, and other circuit equalizers were logged, in an attempt to exercise as close a control as possible over signal-transmission characteristics."
>> 
>> Differences between individual videotapes could cause as much as a 20% difference in chroma level, they report.  So NBC used only the same tape recorders for the entire batch of sessions, and assigned specific headwheel panels for Peter Pan use, only... then stored them for later playback.
>> 
>> NBC developed a procedure to match color from day to day, using a reference tape with the NBC Color Girl and bars, coupled with recordings made on the same piece of tape at the beginning of sessions. The "day-of-session" tests were played back to the video engineer so he could shade the studio's cameras to match the tape.
>> 
>> What's not stated... but I seem to recall... is that back then NBC did all its NY recording at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, even though the studios were across town (or the East River in the case of the NBC Brooklyn studios in the Midwood section.)
>> 
>> For some reason, the amount of tape used is quoted in feet, not hours or minutes.
>> 
>> At 15 inches per second, 62,800 feet of tape seems to be 13.95 hours of recording for a two-hour show.
>> 
>> It would be interesting to know how they deployed the tape used, and what sort of production and post techniques were involved.  Also where the tape elements are today.
>> 
>> Howard and Mausler say that television tape made possible NBC programs that would have been harder or impossible to do live.  They note the Jack Parr "Tonight" show taped Monday through Thursday in the early evening, with and edited "Best of.." show airing on Friday.
>> 
>> We're accustomed to the morning counterpart, "Today" originating live in the Eastern time zone, with time zone delay in other parts of the country.  
>> 
>> In 1961, did they do "Today," yesterday?  The article says: 
>> 
>> "The Today Show is taped five days a week for playback on the network early the next morning." 
>> 
>> Maybe Today Show editor Dennis Degan can provide some insight into the 1961 practices.
>> 
>> And in the June/July 1973 issue of RCA Engineer...
>> http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16038coll11/id/25049/rec/1
>> 
>> R. N Hurst describes RCA's development of the TCR-100 Quad cart machine.  
>> 
>> If you click on Page 78 (to see Page 77 of the magazine) you'll see three pictures at the bottom of the page. I'll bring  Figure 3 to the Quad Videotape Group Annual Lunch at NAB. (Note to self... pack now.)
>> 
>> It was one of several items Robert Hurst's son, QuadList member Norm Hurst made available via a November 22, 2010 post to the QuadList.
>> 
>> Which kind of brings the list back around to a question I posed of Norm... regarding RCA Labs Heterodyne Color, and his answer about the Sarnoff archives being dismantled.
>> 
>> We know where things went, and with the digitization being presented via the Hagley Museum and Library, have the ability to enjoy some of the Sarnoff Library artifacts from home.
>> 
>> Enjoy!
>> 
>> Perhaps some similar funding can someday (soon?) help unlock the information within the Ampex collection at Stanford University.
>> 
>> Ted Langdell
>> Secretary
>> Skype:  TedLangdell
>> e-mail: ted at quadvideotapegroup.com
>> 
>> Annual Lunch at NAB at 12:30pm on Tuesday, April 08, location TBA: 
>> NAB 2014, Las Vegas, April 7-10, 2014
>> Free Exhibits Pass registration! Use our number: LV9822. Free passes end March 21
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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