The GE PE250 Early Color Television Camera
 

Although I collect about everything in broadcast electronics, perhaps nothing interests me more than TV Cameras! They have interested me since I was about 7 or 8 years old and in my warehouse I have stuff packed away that I haven't seen in years but still collected. As my interests change or "mature", I start thinking about what I have (and sometimes what I might have or found looking for something else) and start digging into it and want to learn more about it. What seems strange to me is the fact that we know more about vintage stuff today than we did 20 or 30 years ago!

I would like to briefly cover a GE PE250 "Live Color Camera" that not much is known about it today and is seldom talked about in contrast to RCA's. It came out about the same time the RCA TK44's were introduced and used Plumbicon tubes like the RCA TK44 which because of those tubes, never produced a sharp color picture. Plumbicons were the standard of the industry at that time and also brought an end to production of image orthicons. (IO tubes, 5820's and 2P23's etc) RCA's first Solid State color camera was the TK42 after the '41. The RCA '42 was terribly cumbersome and although it was modular, it needed "extendo cards" to help service the modules. GE's 250 was their early solid state color design and seemed much simpler to service as it did not require the extra cards or other cumbersome parts to service. RCA was (at that time) dominant in the broadcast industry and "The General" (Sarnoff) was adament in saying "We don't pay royalties, we collect them". That statement and attitude was reflected in what they built & sold and was also simultaniously changing about that time perhaps mostly by lawsuits. All this being the same time RCA was losing ground in the mid 60's to other manufacturers, GE had a very good product line in broadcast gear. They had a great promotional department and seemed to excel in certain regional areas and among the many, Dallas, TX was one area that had a lot of GE product. GE had a great and strong selling transmitter line and some are no doubt in use today. Their film chain cameras were also highly desirable in the industry.

The 250 used plumbicons which were a breakthrough at that time and were mainly designed to downsize the camera as well as work better in lower light levels which they did. They produced fair color pictures but were still no match for say the RCA TK41. NBC kept their RCA 41's for a long time because the newer generation of solid state cameras were inferior to the original workhorses!! I have a UTube URL below that will show you how a GE PE250 performed in a studio. (Joey Bishop Show)

This GE camera had a few features that I like better than the RCA line. For starters, the side doors opened easily and without unscrewing or pushing any latches to open. You just pulled on the top and it would open without binding or bending. All circuit boards were right in front of you and all would open for any parts replacement or measurements. It also had a built-in voltmeter and rotary switch to test the various supply voltages involved. You simply switched to desired voltage and set the meter to the center green area. What a neat little camera!

Of its' greatest virtues, no one can deny the functional ability of the Zoomar lens built into this camera. Instead of a enclosed cable that most cameras used, it had a solid mechanical shaft that went straight to the lens assembly, and there was absolutely no forward or backward backlash or slop in that mechanism. It would spin freely and had a short ratio that when turned, it got you there quick. Every camera operator who used one of these cameras will tell you that the zoomar lens was a treat to use and it was trouble free with no jerking or binding. The crank handle on the lower right side (shown in picture) has the "ZOOMAR" logo on it that suggested Zoomar was contracted to design it. (zoom lens in the RCA TK42 was a disaster)

All circuit boards have plug in transistors. Yes, these sometimes gave intermittant trouble but depending on the quality of the socket would translate into the amount of trouble it would have. Mil-spec sockets were used here. While on this subject, the circuit boards have a distinct resemblance of IBM computer boards that were in production around the same time. 5% resistors (gold band or better) were common throughout. (high quality)

I am trying to find out the production numbers of this camera but usually hit a dead end. They are very scarce to find today and what is most interesting is the data plate label inside the body. Mine (pictured) is a stick-on plastic label that only says "LIVE COLOR CAMERA" with either the serial number, revision number and/or production run on it. It was printed with a standard PICA typewriter which possibly may have been pre-production. Nowhere in the camera does it say GE PE250. Mine may be an early one as the later PE350's had a usual data plate screwed on but still never gave the model number. (odd!)

I'm sure the later 350's had updated circuitry but you can immediately tell the difference between the 250 and the 350 by a few cosmetics: The 350 had two small tally lights on the front lower part of the lens housing. This was in addition to the one on top. Seems like this would be more of a distraction than useful. The 350 had a large GE logo on the side in the upper right corner in addition to the one on the center band. There was also a retrofit available from GE for 250's that came as a parts kit to make it a 350. You could install it yourself in the shop or you could return the camera to the factory for refit. It was a little tedious and there were a lot of sloppy jobs done to 250's out in the field that were not sent back to the factory. (factory jobs were perfect) If interested, I will write more when I find out more so now on to the pictures for you to click on below!

Pictures were taken in a darker area of my warehouse so excuse the poor quality of pictures. First one shows the camera with its' original lens cover on and there is some stuff stacked on top of it. The voltmeter and rotary switch are seen in picture 2 left of the color registration controls. Picture 6 shows front inside of camera and the mechanical shafts for the zoom control. Another feature for this camera are pull out handles on the bottom for ease of carrying and setting it up on a pedestal. No one else did this.

http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-1.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-8.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-7.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-6.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-5.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-4.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-3.jpg
http://s68.photobucket.com/albums/i3...nt=GE250-2.jpg

Here is a Joey Bishop show that was supposed to have been shot with GE PE250's. Regis Philbin is in it and dig the Nehru jackets!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdyDRjpPftU
Look carefully in this scene!! It's in there!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMXpa...eature=related
More good stuff:
http://www.broadcasting101.ws/anselmo3.htm

Very interesting - keep it coming

Wow...Where DO you find this stuff ?!? I know, you could tell me but then you'd hafta kill me...(grin)

We had the 250's at WTVT in Tampa for a long time and they were very easy for the operator--the zoom was the greatest. As one who operated those as well as the much and deservedly maligned TK-42, I can say we hated to see those go in about 1990 I think it was when we moved in our new building and they got the Norelco's. A website big13.net has some great photos of the operation there over the years includiing the PE-250'S.

Ge pe250
 

Did you notice on the side of the camera the sticker that says "WT" and possibly a "V"? It is a heavy camera and at the moment I could not pull it out and look on the other side to see if that sticker is intact but will do so. This may well be one of yours!!

Julian,

GE was sure well engineered. I get the impression that the design team were very attuned to the needs of camera operators. I am also impressed by the thought put into easy servicing and alignment for the maintenance engineer. They sure made fine AM and FM transmitters, I loved caring for their gear in a way I did with few other companies. They always had conservative ratings on key parts. I also liked the thought they put into metering all crucial stages and logical thought into their engineering. Details like that make my work as an engineer easier in the trenches. Their tech support engineers were superb for years.

Julian,

Do you have a picture of the CCU that went with this camera? I'm interested in seeing it. The studio I interned at in 1989 had just replaced these with Sony cameras, so I never did get to work one. But I'd be interested in seeing more.

David

I found this camera with others that were stored in an outside trailer that were used as spare units that were donated to a small production studio who did quite a bit of church work. At that time he would take anything donated and a good thing that he did. Unfortunately, he passed away at 62 years of age and the family could not keep up the studio so they sold most and threw out the rest. I got about 12 cameras and many did not have their CCU's as was the case for this one. I only wish it was complete. I did find part of a CCU that I think is for a very early B&W GE camera but have temporarily lost it in my building!

For any intuitive strange reason, I felt really bad for the family as I felt a connection with their father. I also felt a sense of his love for this equipment so I have a different appreciation for all that I removed from their studio property. He was doing the best he could with a minimal budget and not only did excellent work in keeping up obsolete 20-35 year old + equipment but supported his family and churches combined. I only wish that I could have met him and asked a thousand questions!

Saw the sticker with the WT---- ; don't know where the GE's were sent after our use; we were owned by Gillette at that time as I remember and have no idea what happened with those cameras. I did mistakingly say they were replaced by Norelco's but it was Phillips that replaced them. We had had Norelco's on the remote truck.

I understand what you mean. I've worked for years in local cable programming, which is pretty well the ass end of television production. We deal with a lot of these kinds of small studios and people and some of them are pretty cool. A local studio who I dealt with on a regular basis just lost its owner to pancreatic cancer, which is a bad way to go. There was a benefit concert for him just a couple of months ago (he also did a lot of music production work) and that was the last I saw of him. It always amazes me how some of these guys manage to stay in business. It takes a lot of passion to keep on going.

As far as your camera, you my friend have a bad habit. You need to go into collecting some CCU's for your cameras. Without the CCU's the old cameras don't work, they're just big props. I'm still glad you saved it though. Many of these old cameras are gone forever now, so its nice to see a representative still in existence.

David

[As far as your camera, you my friend have a bad habit. You need to go into collecting some CCU's for your cameras. Without the CCU's the old cameras don't work, they're just big props. I'm still glad you saved it though. Many of these old cameras are gone forever now, so its nice to see a representative still in existence.]



Bad habit nothing!!!

I go after every piece and look in every closet. For some reason, the CCU's are gone 9 times out of 10. The cameras survive after the CCU is tossed. I wish I had that CCU and I would have this camera working.

I'll send an email to the studio I interned at. True, they replaced those cameras probably 20 years ago. But as recently as 10 years ago they still had a lot of the CCU and GE camera stuff in storage. They might still have something left. Send me a PM and remind me.

David

Wow! great pictures and these bring back memories. I am a fan of ealy color television broadcast equipment and I have a collection of pictures from all the early color teleivision broadcast cameras, including the PE-250 and PE-350 cameras.

I do remember the PE-250 was announced at the 1966 NAB convention and was sold at the same time as the RCA TK-42. The RCA TK-44 came out several years later partly in response to the success of the GE PE-250 and Norelco PC-70. I grew up in Syracuse New York, (home of GE broadcast equipment) and both WHEN-TV, ch. 5 (CBS) and WNYS-TV ch. 9 (ABC) went with the PE-250s' in 1966, while WSYR-TV ch. 3 (NBC) opted for the RCA TK-42s'.

It should be also noted that GE made a good color film camera, (PE-24) and it was used by ABC and CBS at their network centers for color film broadcasting.

First up, as far as New York City was concerned, two of the three commercial independent stations (WOR-TV and WPIX) used PE-250's starting in the late 1960's (while WNEW-TV had Norelco PC-70's); WPIX's lasted up to about 1975 when they were replaced by RCA TK-45A's. As for those PE-24 film cameras, I see they had four-Vidicon tubes; which GE color film camera had 3 Vidicons? I know in CBS's case, their equipment purchasing philosophy was "Anything but RCA" (before color TV caught on in the mid-1960's, CBS replaced the aging TK-10 and TK-11 cameras with Marconi Mark IV's, before going with Norelco PC-60's and some Marconi Mark VII's). It seemed to me the picture emanating from PE-24's (especially on slides) was somewhat better and more vibrant than RCA's TK-26 and TK-27's - or is it an optical (pardon the pun) illusion?

In addition, I noticed (looking at old Broadcast Engineering issues) that in 1966, the PE-24 film camera was superseded by a newer model, the PE-240.

Incidentally, The Joey Bishop Show as in its ABC talk show incarnation did use PE-250's; from what I've read, the program was based at 1313 North Vine Street, which had PE-250's (as opposed to the Norelco PC-60's and -'70's that were at the Prospect and Talmadge complex). It would seem that by 1970 or so, the Vine Street studio had the PE-250's replaced with PC-70's. One of ABC's New York studios was equipped with PE-350's.

hey good thing you're only into vintage broadcast TV cameras and not into quad tape machines

http://www.vidipax.com/museum/images/msm32.jpg :yikes: :lmao:

GE or Harris??
 

Hi

Reading this thread with interest, I note the GE PE-250 has a startling resemblance to the Harris gates PE-400 camera.

I am in the process of adding the Harris PE-400 to my museum site at www.tvameramuseum.org ( its not there yet!)

I wondered if anyone had any ideas as to who made it and who is the badge engineer?

regards Brian

Back in the mid 80's I used to work for RCA Sarnoff Labs in Princeton NJ, and that's the sort of tape machine we had in our TV signal source control room. About then, we got a new "director" level manager (my boss's boss) and he said, "we're still using a POS like that for this lab?" He authorized about 50 grand for a more modern 1 inch tape machine.

Brian,

Your Harris-Gates PE-400 sure looks like a rebadged GE PE-250. Probably a bit tougher to find then the GE.

-Steve D.

Years ago, Harris used to make TV cameras. They purchased the TV camera division from GE. I imagine some of their early ones were just rebadged GE cameras, but they did eventually come up with their own design. Harris stopped making cameras in the early 1980's about the time that all the manufacturers were switching from tube based to solid state imaging devices. I have in my collection a Harris TC-85 studio box camera that was one of the last models they produced. (Mine was used as a test jig at the factory, it never saw any use in an actual studio.) How do I know that? Well about 10 years ago I worked at Harris's Quincy, IL location and bought the camera at an employee sale. One of the interesting things about the TC-85 was that it utilized a microprocessor driven CCU that featured automatic setup and registration by the touch of a button. Even though it had that option, many engineers preferred not to use it and would set up and paint the cameras manually, because the automatic method was hard on the tubes.

Also, I don't remember all the exact details of this, but one of the reasons they abandoned making cameras was that they filed a lawsuit against their imaging tube vendor (Amperex I believe,) stating that the quality of the tubes was below par and not up to the standards to compete with the brand new solid state CCD cameras of the day. The lawsuit primarily focused on the Harris TC-90 cameras, which were a shoulder mount EFP camera. Harris ultimately lost the lawsuit and was forced to recall and destroy all the TC-90's

I will try to post some pictures later of some of the different Harris cameras, as I have some old 35MM slides from the '70's sitting around somewhere. Also, some of they guys who worked in the camera division at Harris back in the day are still there, working in TV transmitter field service, in the repair department, and in various management positions.

Solid-state sensors essentially either work off the processing line or don't (with some dead pixels, perhaps), and are stable thereafter. Photoconductive tubes are also pretty stable (except for cathode wear-out and maybe gas), but their initial performance also can be variable depending on the manufacturing process. I remember in the 60s or 70s Motorola shutting down their CCTV camera line because the vidicon supplier "lost the recipe." Photo-emissive tubes (image orthicon or iconoscope) were not only variable in production, but unstable in use. RCA's return policy stated that these tubes used cesium and other unstable elements and therefore WOULD have long term variance in performance during use. They strongly implied that they would not take returns unless the customer screamed loud and long.

HI Matt Thanks for very useful info and I lookforward to seeing your picures. Shame about the TC90s. I have a photocopy of the TC-90 brochure.

regards Brian S

That Harris PE-400 is certainly a GE product. It doesn't look like the '250, it looks like the '350 with the thumbwheel adjustment on the right side front. "PE400" likely an upgrade of the '350 through Harris. These were good cameras!

GE or Harris?
 

Re my earlier posting, I have now uploaded to my site the thumbnails for the Harris Gates pages, no big pictures yet but there is a brochure for the PE-400 and TC-80 for downloading.
http://www.tvcameramuseum.org/harris/harristhumb.htm scroll down the page to find the others.

There is still much to be done on the Harris page. The Harris family of cameras is all but unknown here in England. I need to find some pictures of the other Harris cameras to fill the gaps if anyone can help.

Someone was asking about the GE PE-250 CCU. There is a picture of the CCU in the Harris PE-400 brochure, assuming that they are the same?

Regards Brian S

I love how Gates touts this GE PE400 Camera as a "lead oxide color camera". Isn't this the same thing as a car battery?

Here are some pictures of GE and Harris live and film cameras. Note that the Live cameras went from the PE-250 to the PE-350 and then the Harris PE-450. (Missing in my pictures is the GE-400)

For the film cameras, there was first the GE PE-24, then the PE-240, and then the Harris PE-245. The PE-24 & PE-240 are 4 tube vidicon cameras.

Also note from the 1965 picture, the 3 tube IO GE PE-25 live color camera that was sold against the RCA TK-41.

I have a box of pictures from RCA, Norelco, GE, and Ampex broadcast equipment photos from the 50s' and 60's. These are just a couple of them. Hope these help in this thead discussion.

John

John,

Thanks for explaining the history between GE and Gates/Harris. Just hope the Gates Color TV Cameras weren't "Value Engineered". For the uninitiated, Value Engineering was the watchword at Gates Radio Co. in 1958 when Harris purchased them in radio. We went from reliable, solid 1000 watt AM rigs which lasted many years and were easy on tubes (the old BC1F and BC1J) to the BC1T which would run for 10 days at full power on a set of tubes and then didn't make power the rest of the way. This was when many 250 watt AM stations were increasing power to 1 KW. This explains the nickname Quincy Tin Works!

I think Harris must have made a little bit of EVERYTHING at one time or another...There was a Harris-Seybold division that made guillotine paper cutters for the printing/packaging industries-We had several, until in the mid-80s they just got so worn out & you couldn't get parts for 'em anymore. We replaced 'em w/ cutters from Heidelberg Eastern.

Good day Gentlemen,

Just a bit of personal experience with CCD sensors. Late in 1985, Ampex (where i was working back then) sold the entire Betacam range of products.
Sony was afraid of Matsushita, a much bigger company, and sought allies to make Betacam the ENG (Electronic News Gathering) standard. They therefore signed alliances with Ampex (USA), Thomson (France) and Bosch-Fernseh (Germany).

Several times i got frantic calls from customers commenting that their CCD camera had suddenly developed a rash of black or white permanent pixels and were therefore unfit for Broadcast use.

This is how we learned that Sony had in the UK a production line machine which would read the CCDs pixel by pixel, then reprogram a ROM mask which contained all the addresses of the "no good" pixels. This was a duplicate of a machine in the Japan OEM factory, and Sony was pretty "hush-hush" about its existence.

Apparently under certain conditions, heat being one of the them, the ROM would loose its memory and the defective pixels would appear. We would send them the optical prism block containing the 3 x CCDs factory-cemented to it (positioned to half a micron precision in the X/Y/Z directions) and would get it back a couple of weeks later producing again a perfect picture.

It would be interesting to know if the same scheme is still used today or if CCD production techniques have reached such a high level of quality that it is no longer necessary. Personally i think it's still used; getting 1920 x 1080 perfect pixels with a near 100% yield is a tall order to achieve, even today.

and oh by the way, a spare prism with 3 CCD sensors was US $16,000 back then...

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

I presume they used the term "lead oxide" because Plumbicon was a registered trademark of Philips - and they didn't want to pay royalties on the name? (Similar to RCA referring to their videotape models as "television tape" because Ampex trademarked the name "videotape.")

But PE-400 actually came out within the last two years of GE's ownership of the broadcast equipment division (1970), prior to selling that unit to Harris. Here are some web pages with photos which clearly had GE markings on the PE-400, as used throughout the 1970's by Tampa, FL television station WTVT:

http://www.big13.com/Facilities/facilities_cameras.htm
http://www.big13.net/Adrian%20Snow/adrian_snow8.htm

In short, Harris inherited (but did not originate) the PE-400.

Oh, do they help. I seemed to notice that when the PE-240 and PE-250 came out, it seemed a case of adding "0's" to the end of the numerals, because the predecessor to the PE-250 was the PE-25 3 I/O color camera, and the PE-240's predecessor was, of course, the PE-24.

I read in various places (such as Ed Reitan's early color TV site) that GE had a three-vidicon color film camera prior to the PE-24. Would anyone know what model number this 3-V camera was?

I'm also curious as to whether one can identify the GE film chain cameras in these pictures, from Dennis Degan, taken in 1978 (the cameras as shown on the right in each one):

http://www.cbsretirees.com/Degan/ima...201%201978.jpg

http://www.cbsretirees.com/Degan/ima...202%201978.jpg

All I know is that former CBS technicians who frequent the CBS Retirees website (where these pics are featured) have said the Broadcast Center in New York (where the photos were taken) used "4V" cameras, suggesting they'd possibly be PE-24's. But the top looks a little earlier in make than the model as shown in the 1965 ad.

Maybe this will help: (Click on picture to enlarge)

Attachment 148393

Hmmm. Seems like the PE-24/PE-240 had two different top designs, from what it looks like. But thanks in any case. (If CBS acquired them in 1966, then they'd be PE-240; if 1965, then they'd be PE-24.)

B.T.W., the PE-245 film chain camera was first introduced by GE in 1971, in that company's last year of owning their broadcast equipment division. Thus, in 1972, Harris inherited both that and the PE-400 studio camera among those product lines.

Yeah, I agree in that GE must have had two different top designs for their PE-240 color film camera. I have ads for both their 1st. generation (PE-24) and 2nd. generation (PE-240) and both show the same square edged top. Yet my other ad that I attached in my message above shows the rounded top, similiar to the ones show in the CBS image above, so I really don't know.

One thing though, CBS started regular color broadcasting in the fall of 1965 so they must have already had some of their new color film chains in place by then.

I also checked an old TV-GUIDE dated March 1964 and in the issue, there is an article on color television by David Lachenbruch. He writes that, "...it [CBS] is installing $1,500,000 worth of color equipment in its New York production center, now under construction."

Thus, I am assuming that they installed their new color equipment in the spring of 1964, which would place everything a little earlier than 1965 or 1966. And, I am assuming they are talking about color film and tape equipment and not about colorizing their live studios, which I think came later when they purchased their first Norelco PC-60 (or maybe PC-70) cameras that became available in circa 1965.

It's quite possible that some PE-24 class GE film chain cameras had the same round tops as on that PE-240 in the ad you attached, if they started acquiring color equipment in New York in March 1964. (And they'd obviously be referring to the Broadcast Center on 57th Street in that article.) Especially since I've seen references in old Broadcast Engineering issues to PE-24-A's as well as PE-24's. It was also around that time that Ampex first rolled out their high-band VR-2000 quad VTR. And CBS's mentality in terms of buying broadcast equipment, as my understanding, was "anybody but RCA." The PC-60's first came round in 1965, and the PC-70 was introduced in early 1966. So the colorization must've been a long process for CBS.

But also, when initially equipping the Broadcast Center, CBS had transferred RCA TK-26 film chains that had originally been at "Studio 72" on 81st Street and Broadway, to the new studio.

Hi all-

Re: The GE 250 camera was fairly popular, especially in the Midwest U.S. It was a 4 tube design, as was its successors, the PE-350 and PE-400.

The 250 had dichroic optics for color separation, but later, a kit was offered that upgraded the camera to a beam splitter, a big improvement.

The encoder was prone to drifting, that I recall.

Another interesting feature pioneered by GE was "AutoTrast," their term for an auto knee.

ABC had them also in TV-15 in NYC for the "Dick Cavett Show." With an experienced VO and sufficient light, the camera made a fine picture.

For telecine, I don't believe ABC had any GEs, relying on TK-27s, TK-28s, a TK-29 at Prospect, and probably TK-26s in the early days. If anyone has any contray information, I'd be interested, as I worked at ABC.

CBS definitely had GE telecines, although I once saw a TK-28 at Television City.

Regards,

J. Ballard

J Ballard: Actually ABC did use GE Color Film Chains and may have been the first network (or even station) to use them. I attached a picture from April 15,1963 BROADCASTING MAGAZINE showing ABC with the new GE 4-tube color camera. It is my understanding that ABC did have an original RCA TK-26 chain for the Fall of 1962 color startup but by the Fall of 1963 had switched to the new GE cameras. I also have ads from 1965 claiming ABC is using GE color film cameras.

John

Thanks John.

That was way before my time there and the veterans that I knew never mentioned GE film. Was this in NY or LA, or the O&Os?

I bet that they didn't have many, as there were several TK-27s in NY, and that model was introduced just a couple of years later. Also, the ABC network wasn't flush with cash then. Legend had it that the TV net didn't make money until some of the comedies (Happy Days,etc.) took off. ABC publicly complained that the cost of a vectorscope was excessive!

Frank Marx later went off to run ABTO, the lenticular film company formed by ABC and Todd-AO. Later, Julius Barnathan took over, and finally making money, ABC started spending on equipment for color.

Later on, a Bosch FDL-60 was added to the TK-29 at prospect for network film transfers.

Thanks
JB

Thanks
JB

What did ABTO do with lenticular film?