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<div>The so-called "Kitchen Debate" with then Vice President Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">Khrushchev </span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; ">was recorded 50 years ago last Friday (July 24). </span></span></div><div><br></div><div>It happened during the opening of the American National Exhibition in Sokolniki Park in Moscow.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>RCA supplied a pair of TK-41 cameras, and Ampex supplied Quad Videotape equipment for recording and playback for a Color Television exhibit, where eight hours of live and filmed programming were displayed on monitors around the park for visitors to see.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><div>See the last picture on this page <a href="http://www.kitchendebate.org/pictures-from-an-exhibition">http://www.kitchendebate.org/pictures-from-an-exhibition</a></div><div>which includes a photo of the VR-1000, a TK-41 outside with a zoom lens, and that TK-41 and another with just turret lenses televising Nixon and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">Khrushchev</span></font></span>.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div><div>William Safire was a press agent for the manufacturer of the house that had been erected for the exhibition, and in which the famous kitchen was located. Safire recalled what happened in this OpEd piece for the NY Times, Friday:</div><div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24safire.html?_r=1">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/opinion/24safire.html?_r=1</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The recording took place in the Color Television Exhibit, before Nixon and Nikita got to the kitchen. Pictures show the two TK-41s and an Ampex VR-1000(B??) displayed and working. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Safire writes:</div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 15.0px 0.0px; line-height: 22.0px"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal; ">"Instead, “Nik and Dick,” as the adversaries were promptly dubbed, were steered into the RCA color television exhibit, a consumer marvel at the time. This display of technical superiority must have irritated the Russian leader, who noticed the taping going on and demanded “a full translation” of his remarks be broadcast in English in the United States. Nixon, in his role as genial host, readily agreed, expressing a hope for similar treatment of his remarks in Russia."</span></p></div><div>The Ampex team included engineers Bill Barnhart and Russian-speaking Joe Roizen. Roizen rolled the recorder, and recorded the 16:30 of color video, and then hit rewind.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The tape from the Color Television Exhibit was played back...</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><img src="cid:704D8675-B233-4FD2-95FC-221A1536C4E6@local"></div><div> Ampex VP Phil Gundy (far left next to Khrushchev) played a role in getting the tape out of the USSR. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The tape was spooled off the reel using a pencil for a core, according to former Ampex engineer Jim Wheeler in this post to the AMIA website:</div><div><a href="http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2006/06/msg00205.html">http://cool-palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/amia-l/2006/06/msg00205.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>Gundy put the tape—under dirty laundry, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/july/24/newsid_3916000/3916851.stm">according to his son, Mark</a>—in baggage his dad took with him on a quick flight out of the Soviet Union. The tape wound up in New York, and was broadcast by all three networks in the US on July 25, and in Moscow on July 27, 1959.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The content of at least one version of the tape was restored using AVR-1 boards modified by QuadList member Ed Reitan, who recounted the story in a thread on the <a href="http://tig.colorist.org/wiki3/index.php/Main_Page">Telecine Internet Group (TIG)</a> list, which has some comments by QuadList charter member David Crosthwait:</div><div><a href="http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009090.html">http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009090.html</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>The transfer was done by Don Kent on the AVR-1 that transferred the <a href="http://quadvideotapegroup.com/EiesnhowerQuadRestoration.htm">Eisenhower WRC-TV dedication video</a> and a number of other early color Quad recordings.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Crosthwait has worked on Quad tapes of the "Kitchen Debate."</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Vidipax founder and archival technical consultant Jim Lindner of Media Matters, LLC has worked on several versions of the "Kitchen Debate tapes, and wonders where the original recording is. In a white paper titled "<a href="http://www.media-matters.net/docs/JimLindnerArticles/The%2520Loss%2520of%2520Early%2520Video%2520Recordings.pdf">The Loss of Early Video Recordings,</a>" Lindner writes:</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; "><font face="Arial" size="3" style="font: 11.5px Arial">A unique restoration effort completed by the author in 1995 incorporated elements held by the Library of Congress, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and a broadcasting company. Despite these efforts, no one knows if this restoration accurately represents what the original tape looked like, because neither the documentation nor the original is known to exist. </font></div></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>He describes the different tapes' contents on Page 3 of the white paper, and suggests:</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; "><font style="font: 11.5px Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">"Although we will never know whatever happened to the original tape, the New York Times may have provided a clue. Part of the furor surrounding the tape was due to the demand that it be shown in the United States at the same time as the Soviet Union. According to Mr.Gundy, that could not be done because of "the need to adapt it to the different technical standards of Soviet television and the delay in the work of translation."</font></font><font style="font: 11.5px Arial; vertical-align: 5.0px"><sup><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica" size="3"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 9px;">13</span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;">"</span></font></sup></font></div></div><div><br></div><div>Limited information on the internet about Soviet TV in 1959 leads me to believe it used the 625 line/25 frames per second standard that much of Europe had chosen, but in monochrome, as SECAM had been patented but not implemented at that time.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Cursory research discovers no mention of electronic standards conversion between 525 line NTSC and 625 monochrome, but the exchange WAS played in Moscow late in the evening of July 27, 1959. </div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>I've seen no language to indicate whether it was via videotape or kinescope, or whether the content had Nixon's remarks translated into Russian before the copy was sent to Moscow.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Lindner believes that the standards conversion could only have been done at Ampex facilities, as if to say "that's where the original tape went," and says if that is the case, none of the existing tapes are accurate representatives of the original tape flown out of Moscow.</div><div><br></div><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; text-align: justify; "><font style="font: 11.5px Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Helvetica">"In the specific case of the Nixon-Khrushchev Kitchen Debate videotape, the record of a significant world event has been distorted and permanently lost by the obsolescence of the system used to record it, the instability of the media used to record it (which has severe shedding, causing image distortions and "dropouts"), the lack of proper documentation and labeling and the lack of a management and preservation strategy that included proper environmental conditions on the media. As a result, scholars and historians will never have an exact record of an historic interchange between two leaders in the Cold War and one of the first color television recordings ever made."</font></font></div></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Joe Roizen received an EMMY® for recording the exchange.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Pete Challinger recounts a tidbit as told by Ampex engineer Bill Barnhart during a Sacramento SMPTE Section meeting:</div><div><a href="http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009105.html">http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2006-June/009105.html</a></div><div><br></div><div>Barnhart said the State Department required that the Quad Head Assembly be removed from the machine every night, taken under armed escort to the US Embassy and stored there overnight. That required coaxing the machine to life every morning.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>And since I'm posting this rather late, and need to coax <i>myself</i> to life in the morning... I'll remove my own head to a more comfortable and secure location... and see you all tomorrow.</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Hope you had a good weekend. </div><div><br></div><div>Ted</div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; ">Ted Langdell</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; ">Secretary</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="3" color="#0018ea" style="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; color: rgb(0, 24, 234); "></font></div></div></span> </div><br></body></html>