Radio age research, manufacturing, communications, broadcasting, television (1941)

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Combat Television In the "command post of the future" at Fort Meade, Md., the briefing officer explains maneuver to be covered by TV on the battlefield. On August 11, 1954, an attacking force of United States Army soldiers swarmed ashore in amphibious personnel carriers after a lake crossing at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, to assault a simulated enemy stronghold. With the first wave of troops rode the herald of a new era in battlefield communications — a combat soldier equipped with a hand-carried Vidicon television camera that flashed back to regimental head- quarters an instantaneous picture of the critical beach- head action. The regimental commander, at his command post in the field, used the eyes of television to direct the action, swiftly adapting his original battle plan to new circum- stances conveyed to him by Vidicon cameras in the battle area and by larger television cameras mounted in a reconnaissance plane circling over the enemy's supply and assembly points. This was combat television, demonstrated publicly for the first time on the twentieth anniversary of the concept of television for military use, first proposed to the Armed Services by Brig. General David SarnofF, Chairman of the Board of RCA. It was in 1934, when the art of television itself was in its infancy, that Gen- eral SarnofT initiated discussions with representatives of the services in Washington on applying the extended and instantaneous electronic sight of television to war- fare. From those early discussions stemmed the subse- quent development of television equipment and tech- niques for combat use in air and at sea — and now on land. An audience of top-ranking military and industrial leaders and representatives of the nation's press watched the Fort Meade demonstration in a "command post of the future." Observing the demonstration, and partici- pating in a national network color telecast of portions of the event, were General Matthew B. Ridgway, Army RADIO AGE 75