WEBVTT - RCA and Color Television 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.880 stuff works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.880 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:19.360 How Stuff Works, and I heart radio and love all 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:24.000 things tech. And before I jump into what is going 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:28.280 to be the main focus pun intended for this episode, 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.559 I want to mention something about our CIA, because we're 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.040 continuing our story about our CIA and something that happened 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.320 to our c A. That was the year that Howard 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:43.640 Hughes would buy controlling steak in r k O Pictures, 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.960 the motion picture company and also theater chain. Our Cier 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:52.199 had purchased a theater chain and created r k OH 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.800 specifically in order to get a foothold with its optical 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.400 on film sound system. So if you listen to the 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:02.880 earlier episodes of Our Cia, you remember they went so 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.640 far as to create an entirely new film company in 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:11.360 order to establish this technology. Well that being done now 0:01:11.400 --> 0:01:16.080 in ninety they no longer sought necessary to keep this 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:20.160 motion picture company around and sold off the controlling interest 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.039 to Howard Hughes, someone that I should probably do in 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:25.560 a full episode about in the future, but that is 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:31.479 one complicated cat right there. Anyway, In nineteen forty nine, 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.760 David Sarnoff, the man who was the general manager and 0:01:35.760 --> 0:01:39.039 then the president of our CIA, would then become the 0:01:39.160 --> 0:01:42.320 chairman of the board of our CIA. He also remained 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.360 on as president of the company, so he had unprecedented 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:50.480 control of our CIA, and starting off, you may remember, 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.560 had a bit of a reputation of being something of 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:59.000 a control freak, someone who really wanted the company. He 0:01:59.080 --> 0:02:04.120 worked for two Excel and he greatly resented anyone who 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:07.560 appeared to stand in the way of that. Well. In 0:02:07.600 --> 0:02:10.640 the previous episode, the most recent one, I talked about 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:13.720 how our c A was a pioneer in consumer electronic 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.480 televisions and how the US government forced our c A 0:02:17.560 --> 0:02:20.680 to spin off one of its two NBC radio and 0:02:20.760 --> 0:02:26.240 television networks, which would become ABC. Also remember CBS, the 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.880 third of those of the big three networks in the 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:33.480 United States, actually grew out of a talent agent's failed 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.480 attempts to get his clients booked on NBC radio shows. 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:40.200 So we are now in an era in which we 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:47.080 have three broadcast giants, NBC, ABC and CBS. And NBC 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:49.919 and ABC both came from the same company, CBS came 0:02:49.919 --> 0:02:55.200 out because no one at NBC would hire this guy's talent. Interestingly, 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.079 so television is slowly starting to pick up, and as 0:02:58.120 --> 0:03:00.920 I mentioned at the end of the last episode, our 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.840 c A would push a new innovation in the early 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.320 nineteen fifties, which was color television. But our c A 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:11.680 wasn't the only company working on color TV. CBS was 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:14.960 also very much in the game. Both companies have been 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:19.040 experimenting with color TV strategies since the nineteen forties, and 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:22.800 it was a CBS engineer who seemed to win, at 0:03:22.840 --> 0:03:25.360 least at first. Now I want to chat about this 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.760 for a moment as well, because the system that this 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:33.520 guy made was truly amazing, and it was dependent upon 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.840 a peculiarity of human biology. We have what some people 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:41.680 refer to as the persistence of vision. This is the 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:45.680 same thing that makes animation work for us, animation or 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.520 or film. If you're looking at a real film, you know, 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:53.600 like something that's actually posted to photographic film, it's just 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.320 a series of still images. If we play those still 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:00.960 images back at a fast enough speed, we perceive what 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.640 appears to be movement, even though if you were to 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:05.960 slow it down enough you'd see it's just a series 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.400 of still images. There's no actual movement happening. The human 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:12.880 eye and brain can process about ten to twelve separate 0:04:12.920 --> 0:04:16.520 images per second and can retain an image for about 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:19.640 a fifteen of a second. So if you have an 0:04:19.680 --> 0:04:22.880 image and you replace it with a new image faster 0:04:23.040 --> 0:04:25.839 than one fift of a second, you can create the 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:30.159 illusion of continuity of movement from one image to the next. Now, 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.960 a common term for this is the persistence of vision. 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:36.279 And again a lot of the different illusions depend upon 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:41.560 this is it's this limitation of our faculties. And a 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.520 guy named Peter Carl Goldmark, who was a Hungarian born 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:50.000 engineer who immigrated to America and then would work for CBS, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.039 would rely upon this peculiarity to create an early form 0:04:54.160 --> 0:04:59.520 of color television. And his system was an electro mechanical system, 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:03.520 and so I the television was a color wheel with red, green, 0:05:03.640 --> 0:05:07.520 and blue sections on it, and both the camera the 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:11.520 television camera and the receiver or TV set had a 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.760 color wheel. The wheels positions and rotation would match precisely, 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:19.160 and the wheels would spin at an incredible one thousand, 0:05:19.440 --> 0:05:23.279 four hundred forty times per minute. That was the speed 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:27.599 of rotation. So the light coming into the camera would 0:05:27.600 --> 0:05:30.240 pass through this color wheel, which would kind of act 0:05:30.279 --> 0:05:33.640 like a filter. So remember earlier when I mentioned in 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.839 the previous episode UH that an electron beam would make 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.120 sixty passes over a screen in a second, but it 0:05:41.120 --> 0:05:44.839 would only hit the odd lines on one pass and 0:05:44.880 --> 0:05:48.560 the even lines on the next pass. Those individual passes 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.799 are called fields. So if you hit all the odd lines, 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.040 that's one field. All the even lines that's the second field. 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:57.919 Two fields make up a video frame because then you 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.839 have all the lines, then you have all the lines 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:05.240 that make up the entire picture, So that's a video frame. Now, 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:08.920 that standard wouldn't work for the color images in gold 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.760 Mark's system because there would be noticeable flicker from the 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:17.839 different colors. If you were only doing this at sixty 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:20.719 really really thirty frames a second, it would actually end 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:22.640 up being closer to twenty because you have to divide 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:26.120 it by three one for each color. Instead, gold Mark 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:30.080 would increase the field rate to one forty four fields 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:34.080 per second instead of thirty. Each color would get scanned 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.080 twice in a second, and the number of frames or 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:40.840 complete images shown on screen would drop down to twenty 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.680 four frames per second instead of thirty frames per second. 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:47.680 Gold Mark decreased the resolution of the image from five 0:06:48.640 --> 0:06:52.920 lines to four hundred five lines, which means you're you're 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:57.480 making the picture smaller. Uh. And the reason he did 0:06:57.480 --> 0:06:59.480 this was because otherwise he would need a lot more 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:04.920 bandwidth per channel to send that much information to a receiver. Anyway, 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.560 because of that persistence of vision, these colors, while they're 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.240 technically changing very very quickly, our eyes and our brains 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.600 can't keep up with that. They can't distinguish how those 0:07:15.600 --> 0:07:18.559 colors are changing so fast from red, green, and blue, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:22.720 so we perceive a mixture of those colors. And thus, 0:07:22.800 --> 0:07:26.040 with a combination of electronic and mechanical elements, gold marks 0:07:26.040 --> 0:07:29.280 approach allowed for color TV. And it gets way more 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.960 technical and psychological really to describe exactly how this works 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.560 so that you represent all the different colors, but this 0:07:35.640 --> 0:07:39.000 is the basics of how the system worked. By the way. 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:42.240 Side note, gold Mark was also in charge of the 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.960 team that would develop the micro groove technology that would 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.720 make thirty three and a third RPM long playing vinyl 0:07:49.800 --> 0:07:53.680 records possible. And since our c A had previously attempted 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:57.120 to market thirty three and a third RPM records, though 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.600 they did not do so with a micro groove. I 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.800 sis be. Saranoff felt gold Mark was a thorn in 0:08:02.880 --> 0:08:06.600 his side. After all, Goldmark had created a new standard 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:11.000 for color TV and a new standard for records, and 0:08:11.520 --> 0:08:15.280 uh Sarnov wasn't really happy when other people took the lead, 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.440 or other companies took the lead. R c A had 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.520 its own version of this same sort of mechanical color 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:26.720 television approach they had developed there's independently of gold Mark. 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.480 But the CBS version provided a better picture, and so 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.040 in nineteen fifty the f c C made the CBS 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:39.199 approach the standard for color televisions. Now temporarily it was 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:41.560 only temporarily the standards. So if you've listened to my 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.319 earlier episodes on our c A, you know that David 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.360 Sarnoff wanted to be the leader in all things, and 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:50.120 he was fiercely competitive, and I suspect he was very 0:08:50.200 --> 0:08:53.360 much infuriated that the FCC would choose the technology of 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.880 a rival company. Actually, I don't have to suspect he 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:02.520 absolutely was, because Sarnoff led a crusade against CBS and 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.680 the f c C. So r C A and another 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:10.680 company called Color Television sought an injunction against the f 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.960 CC's decision to go with the CBS standard. That actually 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:18.360 put a temporary halt on Color Television's because while the 0:09:18.400 --> 0:09:22.280 matter was being decided, CBS couldn't accept any sort of 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:25.120 sponsorship money for color television programming, so there was no 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:28.199 money coming in to support the programming. Uh, there was 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:31.360 very little chance to make the programming in the first place. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:35.520 CBS wasn't going to invest in something without knowing for 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.679 sure that it could go forward with it, so it 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.600 kind of put the brakes on Color TV. Now, the 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:45.080 courts rejected this injunction. Our c A then appealed it, 0:09:45.520 --> 0:09:48.160 and this went up the court system, and in nineteen 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:50.640 fifty one the matter got all the way up to 0:09:50.679 --> 0:09:53.559 the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.560 Court also agreed with the FCC, or at least they 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.240 said the FCC had not acted improperly in state that 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:05.199 the CBS standards were fine. But Sarnov was not ready 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.440 to give up. Once it was clear that gold marks 0:10:07.480 --> 0:10:10.000 CBS approach was going to win out, our c A 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:15.079 concentrated on moving away from this electro mechanical approach toward 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:20.720 a purely electronic method of transmitting and displaying color television. Meanwhile, 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:24.240 CBS was running into trouble of its own. The company 0:10:24.280 --> 0:10:27.840 was finding it hard to convince a public, a market, 0:10:27.920 --> 0:10:32.360 a consumer market to purchase a new, expensive television set. 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:34.840 And not only is it new and expensive, it was 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:38.720 incompatible with existing black and white broadcasts. It was a 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.240 different resolution, and it was a different methodology. And in 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:46.200 the summer nineteen fifty the United States entered the Korean War, 0:10:46.320 --> 0:10:50.920 which disrupted CBSS manufacturing processes, which meant the company couldn't 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.840 make sets for people to buy. Only a couple of 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.920 hundred sets had been produced at that point. Color television 0:10:56.960 --> 0:10:59.760 had stalled out early, and that gave Sarnov some time 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.120 to iss team into getting the all electronic approach ready 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:09.280 for display. So how did this electronic version work? Well, 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.240 I talked in the last episode about how cathode ray 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:16.360 tube TVs work, so I'm not gonna go over all 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.000 that again because it's exactly the same thing up to 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.560 a point. The cathode ray tube is like a giant 0:11:22.760 --> 0:11:25.959 light bulb, and it has special phosphors that glow when 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.920 struck by electrons. The filament inside the cathode. Ray two 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:33.839 gives off an electron stream that anodes are positively charged 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.560 elements focus and direct towards specific points or pixels on 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.760 the back side of the screen. Service that creates television pictures. 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.760 I guess I did go over it again. I never learned. 0:11:44.880 --> 0:11:47.440 So how does color television work? How is it different 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.160 from this? Because this approach, really it just means that 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:53.320 when electrons hit the phosphors, the phosphors get excited and 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.640 they start to glow. If they get a lot of energy, 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:57.800 they glow brighter. That they get a little energy, they 0:11:57.800 --> 0:11:59.760 don't grow glow as brightly, and if they don't get 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:03.319 any energy, they're dark. And that combination gives you the 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.280 images of black and white pictures that move across your 0:12:07.280 --> 0:12:11.240 TV screen. This is happening lots of times per minute, 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:15.800 right like, every every single pixel is being eliminated thirty 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.760 times per second. So it's pretty amazing. Or at least 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.760 the electron beam is passing over, maybe not activating, but 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.960 passing over every phosphor thirty times a second, sixty times. 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:32.320 For a second, the electron beam is actually crossing the 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.800 entire screen. It's only but it only concentrates on the 0:12:35.840 --> 0:12:38.400 odd lines or the even lines. So how does the 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.760 color television work in comparison, Well, the basics are the same. 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:46.080 You still have the filament that generates the electrons. You 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:50.480 still have the phosphors, You still have the positively charged 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.640 elements directing the stream of electrons. You still direct the 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.680 beam across the screen line by line from the upper 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.240 left to the lower right, sixty times per second, at 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.240 least in the United States. But there are three ways 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.160 a color TV screen differs from a black and white screen. First, 0:13:08.800 --> 0:13:12.040 you have three electron beams, not just one, and each 0:13:12.080 --> 0:13:14.280 of those beams is responsible for one of the three 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.520 main colors from which all other color on screen originates. 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:23.000 So they're called the red, green, and blue streams. Now, 0:13:23.080 --> 0:13:26.360 let me get that clear. The electron streams themselves are 0:13:26.400 --> 0:13:30.280 not red, green, and blue. They are electrons you don't see, 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:32.400 like a red laser, a blue laser, and a green laser. 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:34.360 We could call them streams one, two, and three and 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.240 it would be just the same. But they are responsible 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:41.920 for specific groups of phosphor dots, and the phosphor dots 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.920 are what are red, green, or blue. So one stream 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.520 will only activate the green dots. One will only activate 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.679 the red dots and one will only activate the blue dots. 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.600 So if you have a black and white screen, you 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.280 have that whole sheet of phosphor, that substance that gives 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.319 off light when electrons excited to a higher energy state. 0:14:00.720 --> 0:14:03.480 With a CRT color TV set, you have three different 0:14:03.559 --> 0:14:07.040 kinds of phosphors that correspond with those colors imagined earlier, red, green, 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:09.760 and blue. Now explain how this works in greater detail 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:12.120 in just a moment, but first let's take a quick 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:22.640 break to thank our sponsor. All Right, The phosphors in 0:14:22.760 --> 0:14:28.200 a color CRT television are either in dots or stripes 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:31.440 on the back side of the screen. The screen that's 0:14:31.480 --> 0:14:33.960 on the inside of the TV from where you are 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:38.080 and between the phosphors and the electron beams is another 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:40.800 layer that you don't find in black and white televisions. 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.960 It's a metal screen. It's called a shadow mask, and 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:47.640 the shadow mask has timing perforations that line up precisely 0:14:48.480 --> 0:14:51.760 with the phosphor positions on the back side of the 0:14:51.800 --> 0:14:55.640 screen to create the pixels that will create your television 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:59.080 screen picture. So you turn on your color TV and 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:02.160 you change the channel to something that's in color. Maybe 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:05.920 it's Kurmit the frog singing rainbow connection, which is pretty sweet. 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.320 So Kurment is green. So everywhere Kermit is on the screen, 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.000 you have the green electron beam hitting those green phosphors 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:16.560 to create green pixels. Uh. You also have the other 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:20.240 beams hitting the other phosphors to change that color green 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:24.360 to just the right hue. The red and blue beams 0:15:24.520 --> 0:15:27.680 excite phosphors to make colors red and blue. So how 0:15:27.680 --> 0:15:29.440 do you get all the other colors, Well, it's by 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.520 that combination that was just talking about. The combining the phosphors, uh, 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:37.000 and combining them at different intensities creates all the different colors. 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.520 So if you were to excite the red, green, and 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:44.120 blue phosphors at a single pixel with the same energy, 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.520 you would create a dot of white light. Those colors 0:15:47.520 --> 0:15:50.080 would combine, you would get white. If you want it black, 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.040 then you would just not have any of the electron 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.480 beams hitting any of the phosphors at that pixel. Every 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:00.520 other color is some combination of those phosphor is getting 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.280 lifted to that excited state by these electron beams. So 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.440 in these old CRT TV sets, every single point of 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:14.400 light on a screen. Every single dot has three smaller 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:17.280 phosphor dots behind it, and the color you see on 0:16:17.360 --> 0:16:20.440 screen depends upon which electron beams are active at that 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.960 specific point in any given instant. And all of this 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:28.080 is happening all across all the dots on the screen 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:36.280 thirty times a second, so pretty phenomenal. So I still 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:39.200 find this an amazing thing that's happening so fast that 0:16:39.480 --> 0:16:43.000 we perceive it as motion. We perceived the color as 0:16:43.040 --> 0:16:46.320 being a solid color instead of a combination of different colors, 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.160 and uh, it's it appears to be seamless to us. 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:54.680 It really says one something interesting about the limitations of 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:58.560 human biology that we are not able to see these 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:03.560 differences because actual limitations on on us as as bags 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:08.800 of meat, and to the lack of limitations on human ingenuity, 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:13.200 that we can actually create systems that depend upon these 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:17.200 limitations and do so in a way that's not predatory, 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:21.800 but is is beneficial or at least entertaining. Now, color 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:24.639 television only works if you have something capturing an image 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:28.240 and color to begin with. Obviously, you couldn't send a 0:17:28.400 --> 0:17:31.560 black and white feed from a camera that can only 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:33.720 capture images in black and white and expect it to 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:36.719 come out in color. So r c A introduced the 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:41.679 world's first commercially available color television camera in nineteen fifty two. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:45.440 This was called the r c A t K forty. 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:49.159 There had been previous cameras in the t K line, 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.600 but those are black and white cameras. The company would 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.119 then introduce the r c A t K forty A 0:17:54.720 --> 0:17:57.520 in nineteen fifty four, and that camera would become the 0:17:57.600 --> 0:18:01.400 first mass produced color television camera in the world. This 0:18:01.480 --> 0:18:05.359 was the culmination of many years of work. The company 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:08.320 had largely made the move toward developing an all electronic 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:13.080 approach starting around nine That's when they began to see 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:17.320 that they needed to to abandon the electro mechanical approach 0:18:17.400 --> 0:18:20.680 that CBS was developing because CBS was just way too 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:23.920 far ahead. The first few cameras were all meant as 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.800 prototypes and sort of developmental steps toward the t K forty. 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:31.280 So r c A did make some color cameras before 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:34.280 the t K forty, but they were all prototypes, experiments, 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:39.240 internal things. The first two cameras that the company developed 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:42.960 were often referred to as the Wardman Park cameras because 0:18:42.960 --> 0:18:45.639 they were used in a Special Color Studio and the 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:49.320 Wardman Park neighborhood in Washington, d C. R c A 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.920 operated the studio there in part because it was close 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.240 to the seat of government and therefore the f c C. 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:58.719 So this was our CIA's attempt at making a system 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:00.840 that would be easy to show off to the f 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.600 c C and then hopefully persuade the FCC to choose 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.960 our CIA's approach as the standard for color television. Next 0:19:09.040 --> 0:19:11.879 came a couple of cameras that were still prototypes that 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:15.520 were referred to as coffin cameras. They were called that 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:18.800 because the operators would joke that the cameras were large 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.040 enough to bury a man inside of them. These were 0:19:22.080 --> 0:19:25.159 mainly used in our CIA's New York studios at thirty 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:29.240 Rockefeller Center. You remember the show thirty Rock where NBC 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:33.919 is centered. That that's our CIA's old studios. Often the 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.480 tests were broadcast to the r c A exhibition hall, 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:41.400 which was right across from thirty Rock, and the demonstrations 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.639 were public, really public, and this was another one of 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:48.080 Starnoff's ideas. He was determined to bring as much attention 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:51.159 to our CIA's efforts as possible, which would create added 0:19:51.200 --> 0:19:53.640 pressure on the f c C as the public got 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.760 a chance to see a color set, and more importantly, 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:59.879 it was a color television that could still show black 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:05.320 white programming because unlike the mechanical one that CBS was developing, 0:20:05.920 --> 0:20:09.320 this one had the same number of lines of resolution 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.320 as a black and white set. You could send black 0:20:12.359 --> 0:20:15.520 and white content to a color set, it would be 0:20:15.720 --> 0:20:18.480 displayed in black and white, but you could actually still 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:23.000 watch older programming. Very important unless you're planning on changing 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:27.159 the entire format of broadcast overnight, which is a pretty 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:29.800 tough thing to do once you've already established a standard. 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:34.320 During this prototyping, the camera crews noted that the cameras 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:37.879 would tend to get real hot, not just from the 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:41.160 internal operations going on inside the camera, but also from 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:45.200 soaking up energy. So one of the limitations of color 0:20:45.320 --> 0:20:48.960 television UH in the early days was that you needed 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:52.679 a really brightly lit studio. It's very similar to color film. 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.040 You needed to have a lot of light, and those 0:20:55.080 --> 0:20:57.520 lights would get really hot and that would heat up 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.320 the cameras. Also, if you were shooting on Look Paian, 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.160 you would soak up sunlight and get really hot, and 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:08.400 electronics and heat are not there. They don't go well 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:11.920 together typically, so in order to avoid overheating, our c 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.200 chose to make the t K forty cameras silver that 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:17.639 would reflect some of that light away from the camera. 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:22.159 This was after some enterprising camera crews had done a 0:21:22.280 --> 0:21:26.240 d I Y approach and taken silver paint and coded 0:21:26.400 --> 0:21:30.960 earlier prototype cameras in silver paint to deflect some of 0:21:30.960 --> 0:21:33.800 that light to to make sure that it didn't get 0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.239 too hot, and our c A took a note and 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:40.240 decided to make that an official design point. These cameras 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.520 also had what are called lens turrets. If you take 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.879 a look at old school television cameras, you'll see that 0:21:47.920 --> 0:21:50.800 they appear to have four lenses poking out of the 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:53.359 front of them. That's actually a lens turret. It's kind 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.600 of a disc that has different lenses mounted on it, 0:21:56.800 --> 0:22:00.040 and then you can turn the disc so that a 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:06.359 different lens is actually active. So the the whole purpose 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:10.880 of this is to create different focal lengths of of lenses. 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.920 Rather than having to physically remove them and swap them out, 0:22:15.080 --> 0:22:17.119 they were all mounted on the camera. You could just 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:20.479 change whichever one was active at a given time, so 0:22:20.560 --> 0:22:23.080 the commons set up on one of these lens turrets 0:22:23.200 --> 0:22:25.160 was to have one eight and a half inch lens, 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.880 one million meter lens, one nine millimeter lens, and one 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.439 fifty millimeter lens. And I gave the camera operator and 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:37.280 director some options to choose the focal point for specific cameras. 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:38.720 You know, whether it was going to be a close 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:40.960 up or a wide shot, they could choose whichever lens 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:44.080 they wanted to use. Now, it was possible to change 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:47.080 lenses during a live show. Typically you would do so 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:50.760 by switching to a different camera and then changing the 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:53.960 lens on camera one while camera two is active, but 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:56.840 this was pretty uncommon. Usually they would just set the 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.119 lenses for whatever shot they wanted and that was it 0:23:00.160 --> 0:23:02.920 was gonna stay as our c A had introduced lens 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:05.359 turrets with the older black and white television cameras, so 0:23:05.400 --> 0:23:08.240 this was kind of a holdover from those days. Now, 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.080 once light passed through the lens of one of these 0:23:11.119 --> 0:23:14.760 color cameras, it would hit a beam splitter and that 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:17.920 would divide the light into three beams. Each of those 0:23:17.960 --> 0:23:22.479 beams of light would then hit an individual orthocon tube. Now, 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:24.360 in the previous episode, when I was talking about black 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:27.480 and white TVs. I talked about a special component called 0:23:27.520 --> 0:23:31.640 the iconoscope, which was in charge of taking light, having 0:23:31.680 --> 0:23:34.840 it hit a photo electric base, and then using an 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:37.720 electron beam to scan it, and that would send out 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:42.280 the signal. The orthocon was the successor to the iconoscope. 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.720 It used a low velocity electron beam instead of a 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:49.040 high velocity electron beam. The econoscope used the high velocity ones, 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:52.560 but the problem with that was that it would sometimes 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:56.160 produce secondary electrons and so you would get quote unquote 0:23:56.200 --> 0:24:00.880 noise in the signal. The orthocon used low velocity electron 0:24:00.920 --> 0:24:04.480 beams which would not create these secondary electrons, and again 0:24:04.480 --> 0:24:07.480 it would use it to scan a photoelectric mosaic on 0:24:07.520 --> 0:24:10.520 a special plate inside the tubes. The lights hitting that plate, 0:24:10.880 --> 0:24:13.720