NAEB Engineering Newsletter (May 1955)

- 8 - One of the most interesting papers and demonstrations at the recent SMPTE Con¬ vention was given by George Colburn of the George W* Colburn Laboratory, Inc. of Chicago on "Experimental Considerations for 8mm Kinescope Recording." Sounds crazy, you say? That’s what most everyone thought until fir. Colburn demonstrated by showing one of his kines and everyone marvelled at the results. Mr. Colburn photographed the pictured on an ordinary home receiver without modi¬ fications. He built a special camera operated at 15 frames per second which contained an optical viewfinder. By looking through the viewfinder, film and camera lens at the TV screen, he was able to hand rotate the driving motor field so as to eliminate shutter bar. bound was picked up on a mike set in front of the TV receiver speaker and recorded on a "home" type tape recorder at 3 3/4 inches per second. To get sound on film, Mr. Colburn played the tape back on his recorder, picked it up on another microphone and recorded it upon a magnetic stripe on the 8 mm film. The results were amazing, I’ve seen many 16 mm kines with much poorer picture quality and in spite of the roundabout sound pickup through two loudspeakers, it was surprising. The paper was presented in a very charming and droll manner with the Mr. Colburn’s prize line being- "Here is truly a "low-fi" Kinescope recording." ttiiiiXXX-ycKXK Cne of the features of this years Institue for Education By Radio-Television was the presentation of diplomas to those who had attended the first Institute in 1930 and who had demonstrated continued interest in educational broadcasting. Of the nine persons who were present to receive their diplomas as "Ohio Institute Pioneers" three were engineers; Carl Menzer, Director of USUI; Bob Higgy, Direc¬ tor of UOSU, and Cec Bidlack, NAEB TV Engineer. Our only regret is this percentage of representation of engineers could not be maintained for the Institute and also for the NAEB Convention as well. As a matter of fact, with the exception of equipment representatives, we were proba¬ bly the only engineers attending the Institute. True, there were no technical sessions listed on the program, however many of the sessions held interest for technical personnel. Engineers need to get away from their routine occasionally to broaden their outlook and to meet others in the field outside-the (Confines, of their own establishment. We know that travel funds at educational stations and institutions are limited yet we feel that more should be done by management to encourage technical personnel to make an occasional trip. We’d like to see more engineers at the Institute, the NAEB Convention or at technical societies conven¬ tions such as the IRE, SMPTE or AES. There, they will meet fellow engineers, share and discuss their mutal technical problems, as well as keep up with the progress of the art by hearing the technical papers presented. While we’re on the topic of trips for technical personnel, why don’t you station directors or managers reading this encourage your technical personnel to apply to attend the 1955 NAEB TV Engineering Workshop to be held at WKAR-TV, East Lansing, Michigan, September 12-16. This will not cost your institution anything except the time the engineer is away from his work. All travel expense will be paid as well as <$40.00 which will more than cover meals and lodging while there. The benefits to be gained are many and include the increase in technical knowledge