CBS prototype camera?

[Pete Deksnis]

Hmmm Since the model is not Patti Painter and the camera looks like a hand-made prototype, I'd say it's a pre-1949 version. That is, one that came before the sequential color camera CBS used in their famous 1949 demo that had 19-year-old Patti as the model.

Pete

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis

Hmmm Since the model is not Patti Painter and the camera looks like a hand-made prototype, I'd say it's a pre-1949 version. That is, one that came before the sequential color camera CBS used in their famous 1949 demo that had 19-year-old Patti as the model. Pete

I feel that Pete is correct that this must predate Patty Painter.

Goldmark, in his 1973 book, indicates that he used Patty Painter in the famous 1946 UHF tests where the signal was transmitted on UHF between the Chrysler Building in downtown NYC to the Tappan Zee Inn in Nyack, NY. I feel that this camera is 1945 or earlier.

This looks like an improvement on the WWII era drum based camera, but more crude than the 1945 one shown in the below picture from ETF.

http://earlytelevision.org/images/cbs_camera_10001.jpg

In the eBay picture, you can see a motor on the back that turns a color drum, similar to the motor and color drum in this picture also from ETF, with a silver surface mirror in the center to reflect the picture into a modified standard B&W camera such as the below1945 image:

http://earlytelevision.org/images/CBS_3.jpg

The hastily built aluminum lift-up cover on the right side of the camera is probably to hide the fact that Goldmark is using a normal B&W RCA camera with the lens removed.

I would place this camera prior to the 1945 twin lens drum camera shown above simply because it does not have a viewfinder and you get the idea that the cameraman is watching a monitor to adjust his lens.

The 1945 cameras had the left lens reflecting the image off a mirror inside the color drum and into a camera. The right lens went through a dove prism prism (or three mirrors) that inverted the projected image on a ground glass for the cameraman to see and use to focus as both lens were on the same rack mount.

Goldmark caught some flack in an early color test when someone caught the fact that the color was wired and not broadcast and this may have been the camera used for that earlier test. I cannot remember the date or where I read about it, but it was prior to the 1946 UHF tests.

James