Earliest Kinescope Recordings

[Penthode]

I am fascinated by the decade prior to Video Tape Recording, when kinescope recordings were the only means of recording video.

Kinescope recording began in 1948. I found on YouTube some earlier experimental recordings the earliest from early 1947. Some was recorded in New York evidenced by recent test pattern and an old early NBC logo in a circle. Some were identified as Don Lee who was in Los Angeles.

Many if not most appear to have been taken over the air. You will find amusing the television fare from 1947: a bunch of wrestling, poorly acted plays and an awful talk game show. Some is without sound and looks very experimental.

It starts off with perhaps one of the earliest if not the earliest appearance of President Harry Truman talking about food relief which may be apart of his Marshall Plan? It is obviously well before the '48 Election.

"1947/48 Hubert Chain pre-kinescope television recordings" on YouTube
https://youtu.be/1EM46cqseEw

[decojoe67]

Very interesting. It's amazing that a President who was born in 1884 was speaking on television. What a marvel it was at the time and a tribute to mans ability.
If you search you'll find all kinds of pre-Kinescope television images. My favorite is a film about RCA's first experimental broadcast in 1936. It's not from the perspective of the viewer, but amazing that it was archived. This is what a chosen few were actually watching on the early RR series 9" mirror in the lid sets:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iWJ5LObN2o
I had searched out all the pre-1950 Kinescopes once and must say that they're barely a step up from a High School talent show. Surprisingly amateur, however great Berle, Caesar, and Gleason were. Much improved quality only really began in 1951 with "I Love Lucy" with the 3-camera motion picture system developed by Desi Arnaz.
If coast-to-coast TV broadcasting existed in those early post-war days, there likely would've been nothing achieved on Kinescope pre-1951. It only came about to allow the west coast see east coast programming.

[old_tv_nut]

Sarnoff: "teleVISion." Everyone else: "TELEvision."
The general he's talking to was the Chairman of the Board, James G. Harbord. I had to look it up when I heard how much his voice sounded like Eisenhower.
https://worldradiohistory.com/ARCHIV...-1942-1967.pdf

[kramden66]

There are 1949 episodes of Suspense that are kinescope , there might even be 1948 I have to check.

[old_tv_nut]

Regarding "six degrees of separation":

Lenox Lohr, head of NBC Radio, introduced at 03:36, was president of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago from 1940 to 1968, which is why they had an RCA-sponsored TV exhibit (first black and white, then color), which inspired me as a boy to be interested in electronics. (Lohr was based in Chicago, which was a major production hub for NBC radio network, especially soap operas.) It was Lohr who saved the museum from decline by soliciting corporate exhibit sponsors. I worked at the museum while in college in the mid 60's. The TV exhibit was gone by then, replaced by an expanded Bell System exhibit. I saw Lohr a few times; I always thought of him as "old bushy brows." I didn't learn anything about his bio until much later.