The GE PE250 Early Color Television Camera

[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.

[BrianSummers]

Hi

Reading this thread with interest, I note the GE PE-250 has a startling resemblance to the Harris gates PE-400 camera.

I am in the process of adding the Harris PE-400 to my museum site at www.tvameramuseum.org ( its not there yet!)

I wondered if anyone had any ideas as to who made it and who is the badge engineer?

regards Brian

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by BrianSummers

Hi

Reading this thread with interest, I note the GE PE-250 has a startling resemblance to the Harris gates PE-400 camera.

I am in the process of adding the Harris PE-400 to my museum site at www.tvameramuseum.org ( its not there yet!)

I wondered if anyone had any ideas as to who made it and who is the badge engineer?

regards Brian

Brian,

Your Harris-Gates PE-400 sure looks like a rebadged GE PE-250. Probably a bit tougher to find then the GE.

-Steve D.

[matt_s78mn]

Years ago, Harris used to make TV cameras. They purchased the TV camera division from GE. I imagine some of their early ones were just rebadged GE cameras, but they did eventually come up with their own design. Harris stopped making cameras in the early 1980's about the time that all the manufacturers were switching from tube based to solid state imaging devices. I have in my collection a Harris TC-85 studio box camera that was one of the last models they produced. (Mine was used as a test jig at the factory, it never saw any use in an actual studio.) How do I know that? Well about 10 years ago I worked at Harris's Quincy, IL location and bought the camera at an employee sale. One of the interesting things about the TC-85 was that it utilized a microprocessor driven CCU that featured automatic setup and registration by the touch of a button. Even though it had that option, many engineers preferred not to use it and would set up and paint the cameras manually, because the automatic method was hard on the tubes.

Also, I don't remember all the exact details of this, but one of the reasons they abandoned making cameras was that they filed a lawsuit against their imaging tube vendor (Amperex I believe,) stating that the quality of the tubes was below par and not up to the standards to compete with the brand new solid state CCD cameras of the day. The lawsuit primarily focused on the Harris TC-90 cameras, which were a shoulder mount EFP camera. Harris ultimately lost the lawsuit and was forced to recall and destroy all the TC-90's

I will try to post some pictures later of some of the different Harris cameras, as I have some old 35MM slides from the '70's sitting around somewhere. Also, some of they guys who worked in the camera division at Harris back in the day are still there, working in TV transmitter field service, in the repair department, and in various management positions.

Originally Posted by BrianSummers

Hi

Reading this thread with interest, I note the GE PE-250 has a startling resemblance to the Harris gates PE-400 camera.

I am in the process of adding the Harris PE-400 to my museum site at www.tvameramuseum.org ( its not there yet!)

I wondered if anyone had any ideas as to who made it and who is the badge engineer?

regards Brian

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by matt_s78mn

Also, I don't remember all the exact details of this, but one of the reasons they abandoned making cameras was that they filed a lawsuit against their imaging tube vendor (Amperex I believe,) stating that the quality of the tubes was below par and not up to the standards to compete with the brand new solid state CCD cameras of the day.

Solid-state sensors essentially either work off the processing line or don't (with some dead pixels, perhaps), and are stable thereafter. Photoconductive tubes are also pretty stable (except for cathode wear-out and maybe gas), but their initial performance also can be variable depending on the manufacturing process. I remember in the 60s or 70s Motorola shutting down their CCTV camera line because the vidicon supplier "lost the recipe." Photo-emissive tubes (image orthicon or iconoscope) were not only variable in production, but unstable in use. RCA's return policy stated that these tubes used cesium and other unstable elements and therefore WOULD have long term variance in performance during use. They strongly implied that they would not take returns unless the customer screamed loud and long.

[BrianSummers]

Originally Posted by matt_s78mn

Years ago,....
...was forced to recall and destroy all the TC-90's

I will try to post some pictures later of some of the different Harris cameras, as I have some old 35MM slides from the '70's sitting around somewhere. Also, some of they guys who worked in the camera division at Harris back in the day are still there, working in TV transmitter field service, in the repair department, and in various management positions.

HI Matt Thanks for very useful info and I lookforward to seeing your picures. Shame about the TC90s. I have a photocopy of the TC-90 brochure.

regards Brian S