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Old 01-25-2021, 05:41 PM
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old_tv_nut old_tv_nut is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rancho Sahuarita
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Telecolor, you asked about control of the turret.

The outside cameras used at the World's Fair in 1939 only had no turret and only one lens, but they had remote control of the focus. The reason was that they didn't have either an electronic viewfinder or a twin-lens optical viewfinder, only a wire sighting frame. So, the video engineer/shader had to adjust focus remotely.



Some much later closed circuit cameras had remote controlled turrets.
An extreme example is the RCA TK-45 color Vidicon camera (the 1960 version, not the 1973 studio Plumbicon camera that used the same number). It had remote turret and focus, and was used at the U.S. Walter Reed medical center (at least three), Strategic Air Command weather center, University of Michigan, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

https://www.oldradio.com/archives/ha.../TV/RCA-TV.htm

I have not seen any record of how many were sold, but it must have been very few, as the camera required extremely high light levels and was undoubtedly expensive.

Of course, these days, small high-definition pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) webcams are easily available.
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Last edited by old_tv_nut; 01-25-2021 at 06:08 PM.
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