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Hi all-
John, the September 1963 date as the commencement of ABC color film was obtained from a retired ABC engineering manager on the WC. I did no research to confirm that date, so my apologies.
Color film origination had its pitfalls in the early days. Somewhere, I have an NBC memo about the colorimetry on "Bonanaza" and its overall red cast. It turns out that the film stock was passing a large amount of near IR light, so a correction filter was added on TK-26s for that show.
It was generally regarded at NBC and ABC that the TK-26 was a superior camera than the TK-27 in most respects, and they were assigned prime time network programming. Considerable work went into improving both designs in the field. In the case of the 26, new SS preamps were installed (reports at both the network level and at ambitious affiliates), adding 2H enhancers, and replacing the encoder. NBC even designed a polarity reversing amplifier for color negative film for a few 26s.
The TK-27 could operate in automatic mode using "auto target." Many users were not pleased with results, as tracking among channels was not uniform. A small company, Beston Electronics, developed an ND wheel and servo kit for cameras using auto target such as the TK-27. This was a big improvement in color tracking, I thought, but a former RCA field engineer said that the ND wheel was not neutral throughout its range. Many customers added 2H image enhancers, and you could replace the proc modules in the color channel with Proc D modules designed for the TK-42. This gave you variable gamma control in the color channels. Color trim filters were also modified.
The TK-27 never registered very well, and the tubes made in Lancaster suffered badly in quality after a strike in the late 1970s. I know some NYC stations were buying their vidicons from EEV, and even as late as the TK-29, EEV tubes were sold by RCA if the customer so requested.
Some users felt that lag on the 27 was far better than on the 26 and 28/29s, since there was no ND wheel, and the vidicons were being hit with higher light levels.
RCA sold over 1100 TK-28/29/290 telecine cameras by the time the company closed its doors in October 1985.
Regarding the ABC archive, I can ask about it. It was mostly Kodachrome slides of TK-41s on remotes, but also some B&W prints about the early days of color.
Regards,
JB
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