Postcard: Hubert A. Lowman photo #LS-110 in a Series
Mirro-Krome Card by H.S. Crocker Co., Inc., San Francisco Manufactured for Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles.
NBC Burbank was dedicated on March 27, 1955. It was completed in 1962. It is scheduled to be replaced by facilities the NBC Universal is building on the Universal lot. The Olive Ave. property will be sold.
Tuesday, April 28, 1958 is the anniversary of the dedication of Videotape Central at NBC Burbank. The tape facility inside 3000 West Alameda (at Olive Ave.) cost $1.5 million when it was started.
The first recorders were a pair of Ampex VRX-1000’s, two of three units ordered for NBC in 1956 after Ampex unveiled the Mark IV prototype at the NAB convention in April.
The third was shipped to RCA’s labs in New Jersey, taken apart to see how it worked, and used as the basis for a successful color recording system.
NBC began time-zone delay from the Burbank tape facility when Daylight Savings Time began in 1958.
RCA:Leftmost of three racks for NBC, Burbank pre-production VTRXRCA: Rightmost racks of Burbank’s pre-production VTRX
From A. H. Lind presentation at NAB Convention, April 28, 1958, Los Angeles
At that time, the facility included one RCA “VTRX” Color Video Tape Recorder, pictured here.
This pre-production model was laid out differently than production models due to Burbank’s plant needs, according to RCA’s A. H. Lind in a 1958 NAB presentation.
In the top photo, the left-most rack had power supplies. Second from left had head wheel servos, motor driver amps and capstan driver amps. The third from left had the capstan servo control chassis, tone wheel amp and 240 cycle refference signal.
Partially pictured in both photos is a rack with monochrome picture monitor, Cathode Ray Oscilloscope, and selector panel for both monitors.
The bottom picture, left rack has the color signal processing equipment.
Center rack has a video frequency modulator, four channel RF recording amp, four channel RF playback amp, four channel RF equalizer, channel combining amp, frequency demod and master control panel.
The right had rack had the transport, erase power source and audio amps.
Eight Ampex VR-1000 series machines were modified to record and play color using RCA Labs color electronics.
Burbank had eight Ampex black-and-white machines that could record color using with RCA Labs electronics.
Soon, three more RCA Recorders were at work.
In March of 1959, RCA profiled the NBC and WBTV installations in its widely circulated “RCA Broadcast News.”Click on the pages for readable size pages in a new window.
Click here to see larger photo of Tape Erase Head area.
Click here to see larger photo of the Monitoring Panel.
Click here to see larger photo of the control panel.
Click here to see larger photo of Quadurature control panels
Click here to see larger photo of the tonewheel assembly.
Another Quad TapeMilestone:
Monitor Photo of dgital tape restoration by Ed Reitan, Don Kent, Dan Einstien
Photos by Ted Langdell, July 17, 2006 visit to CBS Television City-Special Tour for Telecine Internet Group
May 22, 1958, President Eisenhower becomes the first president to be recorded in color on videotape.
The president helped dedicate NBC’s brand-new Washington, D.C. facilities housing network and WRC-TV television studios.
The Quad recording was made 3,000 miles away on one of the recorders in Burbank, using the RCA Labs color recording method.
The Quad tape of this event was located at the Eisenhower Library in Kansas, and is the earliest known color recording discovered to date.
During the process of trying to recover some of the earliest entertainment programs recorded at NBC Burbank—programs that used the RCA Labs heterodyne color method—the technology to also recover the Eisenhower tape was developed.
Capture by Don Kent from KTLA Videotape
There was a lot of dancing going on in order to recover those early entertainment tapes.But that’s another story, to be described on the “Fred Astaire” pages, yet to come.
The Ampex Mark IV 2″ Quadruplex recorder as it was unveiled to a select group of CBS network people and affiliates and during a private showing at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago in April of 1956.
A thunderous round of applause from convention goers several days later greeted the machine’s public debut.
Ampex photo at CBS, Television City, Hollywood
CBS was the first on-air user of the machine, to tape-delay the evening CBS News broadcast with Douglas Edwards on Nov. 30, 1956.
In this photo, CBS Engineer John Radis inspects playback of an evening news broadcast from an Ampex quadruplex videotape recorder at CBS Television City in Hollywood.
Jim Morrison is on the phone to the right of VRX-1000 transport, one of only 16 hand-built machines. The two racks of tube equipment to the left contain the electronics for the recorder.
Photo on CBS-TVC wall
The CBS Television City tape room was responsible for recording network shows “off the line” and replaying them three hours later for West Coast broadcast by the twelve CBS affiliates on that leg of the network.
By early 1958, CBS was operating a million-dollar videotape facility at its Grand Central Terminal technical center. Billed as the largest of its kind, the NY center and TVC in Hollywood soon were serving recorded programs to more than half the CBS viewers, according to papers on the IEEE website.
“Jurassic Park” is the lower-level facilty at TVC that houses multiple 2″ Quadruplex machines, 1″ Type C, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam, D-1, D-2 and machines for other broadcast tape formats.
This picture shows the interformat racks with rack-mountable analog and digital decks, routing and patch facilities, picture and QC monitoring.
Tapes can be fed world-wide from here, and there’s at least one in a deck about to hit a bird.
Thousands of hours of Goodson-Todman game show Quad tapes were re-mastered here for use on the Game Show Network.
Come back to see the rest of our TVC tour… and see the reel with the oldest known entertainment program still preserved on Quad… along with the head that recorded the program.
The “Eisenhower Tape” or what is more accurately, The Dedication of WRC-TV/NBC Washington DC
January 6, 2015: We’ve been advised this morning of the overnight passing of color television historian and engineer Ed Reitan, whose research and modification of an Ampex AVR-1 enabled recovery of this recording and others made using the RCA Labs color system.
May 22, 1958, President Eisenhower becomes the first president to be recorded in color on videotape.
The president helped dedicate NBC’s brand-new Washington, D.C. facilities housing network and WRC-TV television studios in a live afternoon broadcast fed to the NBC Television network.
Recordings were made 3,000 miles away in the new NBC Burbank Videotape Central, according to Don Kent, who helped restore the tape in 1988.
Kent’s restoration collaborator Ed Reitan believes they were recorded on Ampex VR-1000 series recorders that RCA modified to use the RCA Labs hetrodyne color method.
One source believes a recording may have been made at WRC-TV using equipment sent from RCA Labs in New Jersey. We have not found any information to corroborate this.
Robert Sarnoff hit the big button under his right hand…
signalling an engineer to hit the color burst switch on the colorplexer (encoder) of the RCA TK-40 camera… and color suddenly came to the pictures being sent nationwide during the special broadcast.
A tape of the broadcast ended up in the Library of Congress holdings.
Another was sent to the President.
Don Kent holds the B-Copy of content for part of “An Evening with Fred Astaire,” one of the earliest color videotapes still in existence.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Fast forward 30 years. Kent and Reitan are in the middle of trying to restore another early NBC Burbank recording, “An Evening with Fred Astaire.”
“The effort involved historical research into the history of RCA’s development of practical Color Video Tape recording and playback,” Reitan told Quad Videotape Group’s Ted Langdell.
RCA Photo: NBC Burbank engineer adjusts tape wind direction on a pre-production RCA model VTRX” Television Tape Recorder, one of four in NBC Burbank’s “Video Tape Central.”
“I use the terminology “RCA Labs Color” for the format of the original Eisenhower, Astaire, and other NBC color tapes used on the modified Ampex machines at Burbank from early 1958 through at least April 1959,” he said.
RCA Photo, from RCA Broadcast News
“I suggest the term ‘RCA Broadcast Color’ for the format of the tapes produced by the RCA TRT-1AC, the first color recorder produced by RCA Broadcast of Camden, N.J., and also used by NBC at Burbank starting in April, 1958,” Reitan advised.”These are distinguished from tapes made to the later “Low Band Color“ standard later promulgated by SMPTE.”
Don Kent slides in one of the AVR-1 circuit cards Ed Retian modified so RCA Labs color could be recovered after 30 years.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Recovering color meant major work on the Ampex AVR-1 they were using.“The machine was the last operable 2″ that KTLA had,” Kent recalled.“Some ten AVR-1 boards were modified and replaced production boards within the standard AVR-1,” Reitan advised.Reitan did the design and mods to a spare set of boards.
All but two of the oldest known color videotapes are lined up on a cart in 1988 during the recovery of content that’s been held on them for 30 years. The tapes are now in the UCLA Archive.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Testing and adjusting the AVR-1 required the only resources they had… the tapes from 1958.”We actually DID run the original tapes back and forth to set the machine,” Kent says about the early stages of the process.”Their dropouts were sometimes so bad (depending on the tapes we used) that we weren’t really concerned about damaging them any further.””I did do a thorough cleaning of the tape path each time I reloaded a tape, though. Once the correct deemphasis curve was set, the tapes played pretty well.”
Don Kent monitoring a transfer of RCA Labs Color on the KTLA Ampex AVR-1.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
“When Ed modified the de-emphasis curve he had to do an opposite pre-emphasis in another circuit,” Kent advised.The entire process took several weeks. We wanted to get it right the first time,” Kent said.The AVR1 designer—Al Trost—made a special trip down to help, Kent noted.
Don “Does the Dance” while threading the AVR-2 with another reel.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Why an AVR-1?Kent said, “…basically it’s because the AVR-1 made a better picture. It’s AGC circuits meant no-banding.The 1200 had a “non-standard” setting on it’s Colortec, so a heterodyne tape would play from it without assistance, provided that the de-emphasis circuits were modified, but it would still have banding in the picture. Same for a VR-1000 or VR-2000. Besides, this is all we had!”
Sony D-2 Serial # 2 records one of the Fred Astaire Quad reels.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
NEC NTC-10 TBC supplied by Ken Zin of Merlin Engineering Works, with technical assistance provided by Ken Zin.
Zin says he provided information to enable correction of both the luminance and chroma time base errors inherent in the RCA Labs color process, along with additional information relating to the pre-emphasis and de-emphasis used by the RCA Labs color scheme.
This information came from from work Zin did to make a previous transfer of the Library of Congress’ copy of the WRC-TV color studio dedication at Merlin.
Zin made a module to play this version of RCA Labs Color for the Library’s Merlinized Ampex VR-2000 and then went to Washington, DC to install the module and made another transfer of the LoC’s tape while there.
The processing was done through an NEC NTC-10 timebase corrector. It just made a smoother picture.The machine was outputting a fairly decent picture through it’s own “buffer” (before digital timebase correctors came along), but we broke the chain and tapped out of the demod signal to feed the NEC TBC. D-2 copies of the Quad Astaire and other tapes were made.
UCLA Archivist Dan Einstein
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
While this was going on, their other collaborator— UCLA film and television Archivist Dan Einstein— brought in the WRC-TV dedication tape from the Library of Congress.Kent recalled, “It wasn’t in very good shape, though. We played the thing for them, but that had been attempted MANY times over the years and the tape was just plain ‘messed up.'”
Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas
Photo from Eisenhower Presidential Library Website
The playback of the LoC tape offered an enticing tidbit when Robert Sarnoff said something about presenting a copy of the tape to President Eisenhower.”After some detective work by Einstein we found the second copy at The Eisenhower Library. They didn’t even know what it was!” Kent exclaimed.
“Let’s try this again”
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
“They sent it to Dan, who brought it to me. I broke the original hold-down tape on the reel which had been put there in 1958! “
“There were still some technical difficulties in the tape, though,” Kent detailed.
It was originated in Washington; recorded in Burbank; and had 5-kilocycle (bandwidth) sound that was delivered via telco on a different path than the picture. Sound wasn’t multiplexed with the picture then. “
Kent and Ed Reitan at work on the AVR-1 at KTLA.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
“About two-thirds through the show the audio crapped out. NBC had the backup telco line, so they switched to it (during David Sarnoff’s speech). Sounded like a phonecall!
“I ran it through an equalizer and did what I could to match it, but there just wasn’t much there,” Kent says.
“The original sound is on one track of the D-2 and the equalized audio is on another track.”
“There’s also a video dropout in the Eisenhower tape that couldn’t be fixed because of missing frames. I just left it.”
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Einstein (left), Kent (behind Bob Rosen, the Director of the UCLA Film and Televison Archive at podium) and Reitan (right) recieved an Emmy in 1989 for “Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development (for) Restoration of the Fred Astaire Specials.”
Ed Reitan (C) and Don Kent(R) at CBS Television City watching Ed’s D-2 copy of the WRC-TV dedication July 17, 2006.
Reitan, (center) and Kent (right) watch the playback of their digital restoration inside CBS Television City’s “Jurassic Park” during a tour on July 17, 2006 arranged by CBS engineer/colorist David Keleshian for members of the Telecine Internet Group
“Jurassic Park” is the lower-level facilty at TVC that houses multiple 2″ Quadruplex machines, 1″ Type C, BetacamSP, Digital Betacam, D-1, D-2 and machines for other broadcast tape formats.
This picture shows the interformat racks with rack-mountable analog and digital decks, routing and patch facilities, picture and QC monitoring.
Tapes can be fed world-wide from here, and there’s at least one in a deck about to hit a bird.
Thousands of hours of Goodson-Todman game show Quad tapes were re-mastered here for use on the Game Show Network.
The Quad Videotape Group began as a purely social event at NAB 2008: An informal lunch of people who use, used, maintained, designed or collected Old VTR’s, Editors or Telecine equipment.
Due to several coincidences, the group was invited to help preserve for future use and access, the operating, maintenance, design and modification knowledge relating to Quad tape.
While the tapes sit on shelves getting older, so are the decks that exist to play them on, and the people who retain the know-how to get the best reproduction possible. As the people retire and pass from the scene, that knowledge goes with them.
Stephen W. Nease, Jr., Chief Technology Officer, Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center, Culpeper, VA
This unexpected invitation came during comments (passionate plea, actually) of Stephen Nease, the Chief Technology Officer at the Library of Congress’ new National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, VA. Nease heard about the lunch during a morning business breakfast and cancelled an appointment to attend.
Steve explained about the HUGE amount of Quad video content the LoC is sitting on, the equipment that’s available for the task and need for the experience and knowledge of people like in this group to be passed on to younger people so that the knowledge of how to recover the content is not lost.
(Take “this group” to mean both those at the lunch and others who have Quad operating, maintenance and design experience.)
He noted that other archives across the country are in similar situations: Lots of reels on the shelves, and little or no ability to migrate the content for access and preservation.
There are many more hours of tape to be transferred or re-mastered that the NAVCC won’t be able to handle all the work.
That means opportunities for experienced people with well maintained Quad decks to share the task of transfers, and to bring a new generation of Quad-trained videotape specialists into being.
LoC may have funding available for travel expenses for those interested in presenting at workshops hosted at the new Culpeper facility.
Attending the informal lunch:
•David Crosthwait of DC Video Archival Videotape Remastering, in Burbank, CA, linear and non-linear editor, formerly at Modern Film, NBC, Burbank, etc.,
•William “Bill” Clark, Boulder City, NV, Long-time Quad VT engineer, NBC, Burbank, Metromedia, Hollywood, CA, etc.
•C. Park Seward of Video Park, Irvine, CA, long time editor, production co. owner, equipment collector/restorer
•James Snyder, Senior Design Engineer, Communications Engineering, Inc, Newington, VA, which has contract with LoC (Quad collector, donated machines to LoC)
•Eduardo “Lalo” Zanetta, “The Quad Guy” precision head builder at Video Magnetics in Colorado Springs, Colorado
Tim Stoffel, Asst. Chief Engineer, KNPB, Reno, NV, long time Quad user/maintainer/collector/restorer: Visit”Quadruplex Park“
•Kenneth S. Weissman, Head, Motion Picture Conservation Center, Library of Congress, Dayton, OH and Culpeper, VASlipped away before we could get his picture!
•Bob Campbell, Colorist, Walnut Creek, CA, long-time telecine going back to Quad at locations including Optimus, Chicago, One Pass, San Francisco, Editel, SF, LA, etc.,
•Ted Langdell, Ted Langdell Creative Broadcast Services, Marysville, CA, prod. co. owner, film, tape and non-linear editor, telecine and 1″ Type C machine, film and videotape content collector.
Member, AMIATaking these pictures, not appearing in them!
James Snyder explains an oral history project that involves videotaping television engineers i the Washington, D. C. area as they relate their experiences with video recording and television production, equipment maintenence and humorous anectotes.
Bill Clark and Tim Stoffel hash out the design of a simple amplifier circuit.
Preserving Tape, Equipment and the Knowledge to use them, in conjunction with the Library of Congress
Don Kent holds the B-Copy of content for part of “An Evening with Fred Astaire,” one of the earliest color videotapes still in existence.
RCA Photo, from RCA Broadcast News
Don Kent slides in one of the AVR-1 circuit cards Ed Retian modified so RCA Labs color could be recovered after 30 years.
All but two of the oldest known color videotapes are lined up on a cart in 1988 during the recovery of content that’s been held on them for 30 years. The tapes are now in the UCLA Archive.
Don Kent monitoring a transfer of RCA Labs Color on the KTLA Ampex AVR-1.
Don “Does the Dance” while threading the AVR-2 with another reel.
Sony D-2 Serial # 2 records one of the Fred Astaire Quad reels.
Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kansas
“Let’s try this again”
Kent and Ed Reitan at work on the AVR-1 at KTLA.
Frame capture by Don Kent from 1988 KTLA News videotape story about the recovery process.
Ed Reitan (C) and Don Kent(R) at CBS Television City watching Ed’s D-2 copy of the WRC-TV dedication July 17, 2006.
•Bob Campbell, Colorist, Walnut Creek, CA, long-time telecine going back to Quad at locations including Optimus, Chicago, One Pass, San Francisco, Editel, SF, LA, etc.,
