Walter Reed Hospital color tv's 1958
 

Here are photos of the RCA color tv system installed in Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC in the 1950's. Plenty of shots of TK-41's and CTC-5 sets. Some of these have been around the internet already, but here is the original series from the Life magazine archive on Google.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...8a766f7bb.html

Those all must be "Super" models. :scratch2:
That's the reason they made David Sarnoff a General. :boring:

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...5&d=1376029424
And I thought that there would be a pinball machine for the doctors to play in the doctor's lounge...:D

"That Dr Kildare, or is it Dr Ben Casey? Neither can diagnose worth a damm..."

Cool to see the pictures of those sets in action when they were new! Too bad they weren't watching a color tv program in the Doctor's Lounge! Might not have been a color program on at that time of day!

Good call. Those are "Westcott" CTC-5 Super models. :thmbsp:

-Steve D.

They were supposed to be watching a surgery by closed circuit. The picture may be stripped in somehow, since the room is so brightly lit.

If you go to the website and look at the original image of the lounge (and there's a few different ones) and enlarge it you can see there's color on the screen in the faces of the people. But, back then doctors and nurses wore gray and the walls were gray, so there's not much color to begin with.

Also, I wonder if the lighting was a factor. Those old TK-41's needed very bright light. The camera in the operating room doesn't have the lights mounted on like the one in the dentist room. I supposed the doctors didn't want bright tv lights glaring in their eyes while trying to perform surgery.

I suddenly felt excruciating pain, when I started to read this thread, and imagined all the places into which doctors shove video cameras these days... A TK-41: OUCH!!!! :jawdrop: .... I'm relieved that this is not what the thread is about :-)

Charles

Ha Ha Charles,

I'll introduce you to my urologist. You'll find out where they can shove a camera these days.:no:

-Steve D.

Let's not, and say we did :thmbsp: ... I had the pleasure of a camera in my knee joint. That's plenty.

Charles

And those TK 41 cameras needed the mighty light of 10,000 suns.

Well, that's a slight exaggeration - more like 1/10 of direct sunlight.
The TK-45 3-vidicon camera used in the operating theater, however, needed 2500 foot-candles minimum according to RCA, about 1/2 of full sunlight.

Ya gotta wonder...MAYBE that stuff is still around, sitting in some long-forgotten Hidey-Hole....

Strange that they would use consoles instead of metal table models, but I've seen this elsewhere as well. As much as the cameras and production gear must have cost, why not spend a little more and get the Deluxe?

Yea, look what technology came from of these cameras. I've had cameras up my rump and down my throat several times. Not a pleasant experience. And I even have photos somewhere stashed away that were taken of the insides of my stomach.