COW - Computer Originated World

[Mike Watterson]

The Chyron and Aston character generators were revolutionary. It was letraset on card before them. The Quantel Paintbox was revolutionary too. It's easy to forget what big leaps these were. One of the things that the Broadcast Engineering Museum will need to do is explain, in simple terms, just how hard it was to do many things which are now trivially easy. Our limited research in this field suggest that people in their 20s have little or no concept of film, videotape or even of recording a moving image. Capturing and storing images, whether stills or movies, is now so trivial that it's not even thought about.

I remember the Letraset based captions. Huge amount of time and skill.
I used Letraset for equipment panels too till 1980, then computer artwork, UV and screen printing.
I'm glad I'll never use it ever again.

Also lacing up a telecine looked like a dark art and big professional VTRs were only laced up by a trained professional. Both were huge and had dedicated room and staff.
No cassettes till U-Matic, which originally wasn't broadcast quality, though far better than the Philips N1500 or early Panasonic EIAJ cartridge (the tape had to rewound entirely from the internal spool to the cartridge to eject!).
Background music and pre-recorded sound effects from a cued record deck. It had the pickup resting on the disc and "play" lowered the disc onto the heavy already spinning platter.

TV studios were hot using much incandescent lighting.

The colour test card was a big glass transparency photo that fitted on a light box pointed at by a camera.

The cameras had mono CRT viewfinders and fat awkward cable. The electronics in a rack in a another room near the dimly lit gallery and the studio. Most of the gallery CRTs were mono and maybe two colour screens. Every screen underscanned except there might be an additional domestic colour TV for preview. Massive hinge out convergence panels for the colour monitors, though domestic Colour TV had substantial panels before inline CRTs, Trinitron and slot mask CRTs

Sound studios had all the chokes of the fluorescent lamps out in the corridor. Double glazed windows to mixer / recording booth. Really heavy air-lock style dual doors for access.

Mercury wetted relays on the telex system and receive only TTYs with horrible impact paper (not ribbon or thermal). Wet toner photocopiers giving greyish blurred copies. No email, but messages by phone, telex, telegraph and post. No wordprocessors. Many had no electric typewriters, but big mechanical beasts.

Microwave links for video with retrofitted multiple FM subcarriers (some only any use for instructions, not program), but repeaters entirely valve based. Huge amounts of nitrogen filled waveguides from dish to indoor gear. No ODUs and LNBFs like today with coax (and now even fibre).

Massive rack mounted boxes for Sound in Sync and teletext decoding using TTL ICs

Huge video patch panels using MUSA links and cables.

Huge wall of audio patch using three pole PO jacks (smaller ring and smaller again tip, bare brass). Stereo needed two patch cords.
Custom designed analogue equalisers for land-lines, designed after manual measurement, with an engineer (graduate or HND) at each end.

A phantom talk back circuit by using centre taps of two balanced circuits. The reader can figure out ghosts and spirits (I can't remember which is which) using a pair of phantom circuits.

Mono PPM meter wasn't like a VU. Black with white needle and text and serious discrete electronics for very fast attack and slow decay to measure peaks. Stereo used a horribly expensive PPM meter movement with red (Left I think? Domestic is red = right) and green needles in-line. What about people that are colour blind? They tested for that on interviews. Though oddly the BBC Woodnorton Colour systems lecturer was colour-blind.

Lots of stuff using separate R G and B feeds, rather than PAL. Monitors often had external PAL decoders.

Giant speaker(s) in monitoring areas hanging from ceilings.

Transmitter Engineers only driving clapped out real Land Rovers.

Managers with with their own toilets (yale key).

An OB would start maybe a week before with a test of P.O. provided phone lines for audio with loading coils bypassed and some sort equalisation done.

A TV OB would need sight of a TV mast for a microwave link if live. No satellites on OB, only via groundstations fed by microwave link. Setup the day before.

Any rapid news was 16mm film and rapid rushed processing within same afternoon.

Only Schools TV or testcards most of the day. TV close down often before midnight with the National Anthem.