The GE PE250 Early Color Television Camera

[julianburke]

Originally Posted by dtuomi

Julian,

Do you have a picture of the CCU that went with this camera? I'm interested in seeing it. The studio I interned at in 1989 had just replaced these with Sony cameras, so I never did get to work one. But I'd be interested in seeing more.

David

I found this camera with others that were stored in an outside trailer that were used as spare units that were donated to a small production studio who did quite a bit of church work. At that time he would take anything donated and a good thing that he did. Unfortunately, he passed away at 62 years of age and the family could not keep up the studio so they sold most and threw out the rest. I got about 12 cameras and many did not have their CCU's as was the case for this one. I only wish it was complete. I did find part of a CCU that I think is for a very early B&W GE camera but have temporarily lost it in my building!

For any intuitive strange reason, I felt really bad for the family as I felt a connection with their father. I also felt a sense of his love for this equipment so I have a different appreciation for all that I removed from their studio property. He was doing the best he could with a minimal budget and not only did excellent work in keeping up obsolete 20-35 year old + equipment but supported his family and churches combined. I only wish that I could have met him and asked a thousand questions!

[dtuomi]

Originally Posted by julianburke

I found this camera with others that were stored in an outside trailer that were used as spare units that were donated to a small production studio who did quite a bit of church work. At that time he would take anything donated and a good thing that he did. Unfortunately, he passed away at 62 years of age and the family could not keep up the studio so they sold most and threw out the rest. I got about 12 cameras and many did not have their CCU's as was the case for this one. I only wish it was complete. I did find part of a CCU that I think is for a very early B&W GE camera but have temporarily lost it in my building!

For any intuitive strange reason, I felt real bad for the family as I felt a connection with their father. I also felt a sense of his love for this equipment so I have a different appreciation for all that I removed from the studio property. He was doing the best he could with a minimal budget and actually did good work in keeping up obsolete 20-35 year old + equipment, hence all of the extra parts. I only wish that I could have met him and asked a thousand questions!

I understand what you mean. I've worked for years in local cable programming, which is pretty well the ass end of television production. We deal with a lot of these kinds of small studios and people and some of them are pretty cool. A local studio who I dealt with on a regular basis just lost its owner to pancreatic cancer, which is a bad way to go. There was a benefit concert for him just a couple of months ago (he also did a lot of music production work) and that was the last I saw of him. It always amazes me how some of these guys manage to stay in business. It takes a lot of passion to keep on going.

As far as your camera, you my friend have a bad habit. You need to go into collecting some CCU's for your cameras. Without the CCU's the old cameras don't work, they're just big props. I'm still glad you saved it though. Many of these old cameras are gone forever now, so its nice to see a representative still in existence.

David

[julianburke]

[As far as your camera, you my friend have a bad habit. You need to go into collecting some CCU's for your cameras. Without the CCU's the old cameras don't work, they're just big props. I'm still glad you saved it though. Many of these old cameras are gone forever now, so its nice to see a representative still in existence.]



Bad habit nothing!!!

I go after every piece and look in every closet. For some reason, the CCU's are gone 9 times out of 10. The cameras survive after the CCU is tossed. I wish I had that CCU and I would have this camera working.

[dtuomi]

I'll send an email to the studio I interned at. True, they replaced those cameras probably 20 years ago. But as recently as 10 years ago they still had a lot of the CCU and GE camera stuff in storage. They might still have something left. Send me a PM and remind me.

David

[John Hafer]

Wow! great pictures and these bring back memories. I am a fan of ealy color television broadcast equipment and I have a collection of pictures from all the early color teleivision broadcast cameras, including the PE-250 and PE-350 cameras.

I do remember the PE-250 was announced at the 1966 NAB convention and was sold at the same time as the RCA TK-42. The RCA TK-44 came out several years later partly in response to the success of the GE PE-250 and Norelco PC-70. I grew up in Syracuse New York, (home of GE broadcast equipment) and both WHEN-TV, ch. 5 (CBS) and WNYS-TV ch. 9 (ABC) went with the PE-250s' in 1966, while WSYR-TV ch. 3 (NBC) opted for the RCA TK-42s'.

It should be also noted that GE made a good color film camera, (PE-24) and it was used by ABC and CBS at their network centers for color film broadcasting.

[W.B.]

Originally Posted by John Hafer

Wow! great pictures and these bring back memories. I am a fan of ealy color television broadcast equipment and I have a collection of pictures from all the early color teleivision broadcast cameras, including the PE-250 and PE-350 cameras.

I do remember the PE-250 was announced at the 1966 NAB convention and was sold at the same time as the RCA TK-42. The RCA TK-44 came out several years later partly in response to the success of the GE PE-250 and Norelco PC-70. I grew up in Syracuse New York, (home of GE broadcast equipment) and both WHEN-TV, ch. 5 (CBS) and WNYS-TV ch. 9 (ABC) went with the PE-250s' in 1966, while WSYR-TV ch. 3 (NBC) opted for the RCA TK-42s'.

It should be also noted that GE made a good color film camera, (PE-24) and it was used by ABC and CBS at their network centers for color film broadcasting.

First up, as far as New York City was concerned, two of the three commercial independent stations (WOR-TV and WPIX) used PE-250's starting in the late 1960's (while WNEW-TV had Norelco PC-70's); WPIX's lasted up to about 1975 when they were replaced by RCA TK-45A's. As for those PE-24 film cameras, I see they had four-Vidicon tubes; which GE color film camera had 3 Vidicons? I know in CBS's case, their equipment purchasing philosophy was "Anything but RCA" (before color TV caught on in the mid-1960's, CBS replaced the aging TK-10 and TK-11 cameras with Marconi Mark IV's, before going with Norelco PC-60's and some Marconi Mark VII's). It seemed to me the picture emanating from PE-24's (especially on slides) was somewhat better and more vibrant than RCA's TK-26 and TK-27's - or is it an optical (pardon the pun) illusion?

In addition, I noticed (looking at old Broadcast Engineering issues) that in 1966, the PE-24 film camera was superseded by a newer model, the PE-240.

[W.B.]

Incidentally, The Joey Bishop Show as in its ABC talk show incarnation did use PE-250's; from what I've read, the program was based at 1313 North Vine Street, which had PE-250's (as opposed to the Norelco PC-60's and -'70's that were at the Prospect and Talmadge complex). It would seem that by 1970 or so, the Vine Street studio had the PE-250's replaced with PC-70's. One of ABC's New York studios was equipped with PE-350's.