Thread: Rca tk40a
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Old 01-29-2018, 07:59 AM
julianburke julianburke is offline
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Rca tk40a

Speaking about Television City in LA, it was a CBS facility and we all know how CBS hated RCA especially in the 50's. However CBS in 1954 purchased 25 RCA TK40's of which about half went to LA. This was a early run of "A" models.

Ed Reitan who worked for CBS had one of these cameras of which I bought from the ETF auction.

My question here is does anyone know how long it was used there or when it was retired? Is anyone out there still familiar with it or operated it? If it wasn't for Ed, it probably would have been destroyed.

It is well known that if CBS purchased any cameras, they would usually paint them blue and take off any RCA emblems with the B&W cameras. Mine of course has no RCA regalia and the holes in the side covers are appearing to have been professionally "studded" on the backside and painted flat black to hint RCA did this as it looks to have been done by RCA. The flat black paint on the inside covers appears original from the factory or else a terrific in house job at CBS. The outside is the usual silver color like all other TK40 or 41's. There are two small holes still there that held the CBS eye logos on both sides.

Lytle Hoover who is an expert on this subject, was with RCA in the purchasing department and didn't come onto the RCA scene until much later and doesn't have any documentation on these early color cameras as such. He was only able to tell me that mine being serial number 508 that it was the eighth one in line of the 25, with production dates and other info lost. Unfortunately, he was "bushwacked" while gathering/compiling such info when without any notice all of his file cabinets were taken out and destroyed. This was when GE purchased RCA and wanted no part of any historical data from RCA. Also, sadly he was keeping tabs on a new old stock (complete) TK41 chain which he wanted to go to the RCA museum and unfortunately it was snuck out along with much other equipment, taken out to a metal recycling company and sledge hammered in several of $100,000 lots. This begs the question, "what was GE thinking"??
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Last edited by julianburke; 02-06-2018 at 08:36 PM. Reason: capitalization
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