NAEB Engineering Newsletter (Dec 1958)

Engineering Society is being held at the New Yorker Hotel September 29 - October 4 in conjunction with the New York High Fidelity Show and the Audio Engineering Show. Some NAEB technical personnel regularly attend this event, which is usually held in New York City the first part of October. A full five- day program of papers on audio subjects has been ar¬ ranged covering stereo, acoustics, magnetic tape and recording techniques as well as new devices, measure¬ ments, standards, speech input equipment and loud¬ speakers. The program looks interesting—hope someone who attends will give us a report. —NAEB— We hope to see many of our readers at the NAEB Convention in Omaha, October 14-17. Jack McBride and his committee have been busy arranging a varied and worthwhile program. —NAEB— The week following the NAEB Convention, the 84th SMPTE Convention is being held at the Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit. The October 22nd and 23rd sessions are of prime interest to ETV personnel. Wednesday morning (the 22nd) the gen¬ eral topic is television equipment and practices, while that afternoon kinescope recording problems and equipment will be discussed'. The Thursday evening session (the 23rd) is given over to closed-circuit television for teaching, and educational, military and medical applications of closed-circuit systems will be described. The Thursday morning topic is machine language translation, while that afternoon the general topic is designing for international tele¬ vision where eventual contributions towards auto¬ matic translations and international standards will be discussed. —NAEB— Before we bring this column to a close perhaps we should include a couple of technical tips, since that’s our heading; so here they are: Factors for good vidicon performance. 1. Plenty of light. 2. Flat lighting. 3. Reasonable target temperatures. 4. A good camera. a) Low noise input. b) Linear scanning. c) Aperature correction. d) Gamma correction. e) Stability and reliability. Many times the company which is endeavoring to sell you new television equipment has used oper¬ able equipment on hand in its storage warehouse. This equipment may have been taken in trade or have been returned as a result of the station leaving the air. Obviously, the salesman who calls on you is interested in selling the new equipment of the company he represents; however, his company is interested in disposing of this used equipment too. Why not ask about it? TV TECHNICAL TIPS (November) In our last column, we mentioned October meet¬ ings of interest to educational broadcasters. We thought the 34th Annual NAEB Convention in Omaha one of the best. Of the 227 persons registered, only five were engineers: Carl Menzer of WSUI- KSUI, Bud Phillips and Bob Stumme of the Univer¬ sity of Iowa TV studio, Clarence Deal of KOKH, Oklahoma City and the writer. While this isn’t a large representation, it’s the best yet. With next year’s convention in Detroit, in the center of NAEB station concentration, we trust more engineers will be there. With the three studios of the Detroit ETV Foundation, as well as a number of educational radio stations, it isn’t too early to begin plans for a one-day technical program. Ann Arbor is near, where the University of Michigan has three TV installations, as well as ETRC headquarters. We could make up an interesting tour and see how the Detroit area stations operate. I’m sure the 1959 Convention committee would’ appreciate your sug¬ gestions. You can send them to me and I’ll see that they reach the right persons. In the meantime, you can begin working on the boss to take a carload of his staff to Detroit. —NAEB— We’d like to pass along the four points made by “Jim” Ebel, Vice-president and general manager of KOLN-TV, Lincoln, Nebraska, and former chief en¬ gineer of WILL, at the Wednesday afternoon panel session of the NAEB Omaha Convention. If I were an Educational Broadcaster, I would: 1. Try to have the best possible technical facili¬ ties, operations, and operating and mainten¬ ance practices. 2. Have a long range plan for technical improve¬ ment, which I would revise constantly. 3. Sell my staff on my station and its program be¬ cause this is one of the best and most effective ways of promoting the station. 4. Determine the type and tastes of the audience I am trying to reach and program accordingly. We believe that the above points, applied to any operation, would do much to make it a successful one. 2 ENGINEERING NEWSLETTER