TV History...
To record the riot of colors that was late sixties TV, you needed one of these...
The RCA TR-70 recorded broadcast-quality (compared to today that wasn't saying much) video on 2-inch magnetic tape. It could take a technician 10 minutes cleaning the rollers and head drum and setting it up before the tape could roll. It weighed 1800 pounds, required beefy external power supplies and back in the day a fully-loaded one could cost between $80K to $110K in 1968 dollars (well over $800,000 today). A reel of tape holding 1 hour of video went for $300.00, or nearly $2000.00 today.
Feeding it video might be one or more of these...
... an RCA TK-43. It had three one-inch Vidicon tubes for color, weighed nearly 300 pounds and had control sticks and handles on the back that would look at home in the cockpit of a jet bomber. Fully equipped, there goes another $100,000. In 1968 money.
The next time you pull your $500 phone out of your pocket to record a couple of hours of 4K video, remember these things. We don't know how good we have it today.
(Like most of the posts on this blog, I don't expect this to get many, or even any likes. That's ok. I just wanted to talk about it.)
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A99a
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