No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Portable Television Camera.--A new portable television camera and transmitting station, designed to operate in the field as a one-man back-pack unit, was demonstrated by L. E. Flory, of the RCA Laboratories, at a meeting of the Institute of Radio Engineers in The Waldorf-Astorla Hotel.
Weighing only 53 lb., the back-pack station is planned to function with its own battery-power supply. It has a range of approximately one mile. Because of its easy portability, numerous applications for the new equipment are foreseen by RCA research engineers. Among these are news coverage, with television-equipped reporters flashing pictures and commentary directly to editorial rooms, and remote industrial viewing and control.
The new transmitter operates in conjunction with a control station which may be located as far as a mile from the camera. Signals corresponding to the scene being televised are transmitted to the control point on an ultrahigh frequency with a power of two watts. In addition to acting as a monitor for the televised picture, the control point performs two other functions. It sends out a stream of pulses which stabilize the camera and can be used also to issue vocal instructions to the cameraman.
Recent developments in the design of pencil-sized tubes and other subminiature component parts made possible the impressive reduction in bulk and weight of the equipment.
The back-pack is carried in knapsack fashion, suspended from the narrator's shoulders by flexible straps. Two small antennas extend from the top of the pack and are used respectively to transmit the picture signal to a base station and to receive voice and control signals from that same point.
The camera is an adaptation of the RCA industrial TV camera using the Vidicon tube. As an added feature, the camera includes a miniature kinescope picture tube which serves as a view-finder for the cameraman. Through it he is able to see an exact reproduction of the scene on which the camera lens is focused.
The equipment contains 42 tubes which, with their associated circuits, provide all synchronizing frequencies for a standard 525-1ine, 30-frame interlaced television picture. Included in the unit are the battery-operated power supply, deflecting circuits, amplifiers, and a radio receiver for receiving instruction and other essential information from the control point. A single battery operates the portable station for about 1ยฝ hr.
The narrator-cameraman's voice is picked up and transmitted through the combination of a small microphone built into the Camera case and an ingenious electronic circuit which adds the voice signals to the picture signals as they are radiated to the control point.
Research and development of the portable television equipmen.t were carried out by Mr.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
This study was undertaken to evaluate the physiological stresses experienced by news media cameramen on their jobs. The tasks performed by the cameramen were simulated, based on the results of monitoring the field performance of these camera operators for a two-week period. Four male professional ca