Good Day to All,
Photo-report from Japan this fall.
1) the NHK Broadcast Museum in Tokyo. A 4 storey building visit. The Museum displays Broadcast and consumer receiving gear from the beginning of radio in the 1920s through to the modern era. It also describes the NHK's public-service missions in terms of news, entertainment, etc.
Of particular interest:
Photos 6 to 10 show a working Nipkow disk scanner, 28 lines,with reproduction on a CRT.
Photos 22-24, the original acetate disk of Emperor Hiro-Hito's speech announcing Japan's surrender in 1945.
Photos 78-81, earth sunrise shots in HD from a Japanese satellite in low moon orbit. HD already at the end of the 1980s.
Photos 86-87, our familiar US friend, the behemoth RCA TK-41 first color camera, early 1950s. Camera head alone weighs 300 lbs + 3 racks of tube electronics to make the NTSC composite signal!
Photos 93 to 100, a small 9" color TV using a ColorNetron single-gun color tube. Much akin to Prof. Lawrence's Chromation. Not a Beam-index CRT though. Built 1965-66.
http://s281.photobucket.com/user/jha...um%20-%20Tokyo
2) Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric Town". Electronics galore, but not much compatible stuff: AC power is 100VAC, not 120VAC and even less 240VAC for Europe (need a special transformer), FM band is 76-92 MHz except for a few export models (76-108 MHz), all controls & displays are in Japanese. Terrestrial/Sat DTV use home-grown standards and vintage NTSC sets only have 3 channels which coincide with the US frequency plan. Prices are often higher than in the West and 95% of purchases must be cash in Yens (no credit cards).
Also, leave your cellular phone at home, local frequencies & digital coding totally differ from the rest of the world.
http://s281.photobucket.com/user/jha...ihabara?sort=9
3) SONY, inside the company's luxurious modern tower in Ginza. Sony is making a huge effort to become a top player in photography with a huge choice of cameras and interchangeable lenses i have not yet seen abroad.
There is a good explanation for this: they are one of the prime makers of CCD sensors, see 2 examples here:
http://s281.photobucket.com/user/jha...Sensors?sort=9
Another interesting fact: luxury color brochures abound by most main manufacturers whereas in the West all we have now are paperless pdf documents. Some traditions do live on...
Great THANKS! to my Japanese radio friend Noryoshi T. who took 2 mornings of his time to guide us in these visits.
Read his interesting daily repair Blog about all things Radio & TV with many photos. Link with Google Japanese to English translation:
http://translate.google.de/translate...Fvrc-tezuka%2F
Best Regards
jhalphen