Off screen WWII Iconoscope bomber camera images

[Aussie Bloke]

G'day all. I have seen some really good videos on the Critical Past site showing off screen film footage of the WWII Iconoscope bomber cameras in action which look pretty clear and give a good taste of the sorts of images you'd expect to see from such cameras and Iconoscopes in general. Here are the links to the videos:

Off screen footage of the remote bomber camera footage (1944):
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...arget-explodes

Longer off screen footage of the remote bomber camera footage (1944):
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...rolled-missile

Off screen footage of remote control boat missile camera (1944):
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...missile-attack

Off screen footage of aircraft camera television demonstration using a bomber cam doing aerial shots of the city (1946):
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65...takes-pictures

The footage taken looks quite clear and gives a good taste of what iconoscope pictures look like! In a sense they kind of compare to vidicon pictures particularly in the 1946 aircraft cam demonstration.

What I also find amazing about these early bomber cams is that it shows that today's wireless remote camera technology in unmanned aircraft, vehicles, boats and their hobby radio controlled versions is nothing new in terms of the basic principles of camera technology. It's still a portable powered camera with transmitter and receiver and receiving monitor, the main obvious difference with today's versions is their refined to CCD colour cameras with crisp colour pictures running off low powered batteries and the transmitter/receiver techniques far greatly refined to give clear pictures over far greater ranges. Either way it amazes me that all this was done in the earliest days of television!!!