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Some things in the broadcast business are not as obvious as they seem. The merits of equipment, for instance. Newcomers to the business have an alarming (from our viewpoint) tendency to think of one transmitter as being just as good as another transmitter. And, worse yet, to think of one company as being just as good as another to do business with.

The men who built this business think differently. They started with crystal sets and 10-watt transmitters. They know how the performance, reliability and efficiency of equipment improved as the industry grew and matured.

They know which companies labored long (and sometimes painfully) to develop the experience on which today's equipment designs are based. They know which companies will, when they have produced a lemon (bei uns nennt man das eine "Gurke", work on it till they get it right.

They know which companies have, over the years, furnished a constant flow of technical bulletins (and modification kits) to enable stations to keep their key equipment up-to-date.

They know which companies have 24-hour parts service (and can furnish parts for transmitters made years ago). They know which salesmen they can count on for help in planning, for carefully considered advice on equipment, for service before - and after-installation. The oldtimers know, the newcomers will learn.
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MODIFY, IMPROVE, REFINE is a cycle which most of the more complicated items of broadcast equipment go through sooner or later. Few items are born perfect. Most - after a few months of field use - are modified.

Moreover, the original design is hardly finished before the engineers set out to improve the performance. And even after many improvements they keep on refining.

It's a procedure which often tries not only your patience, but ours, too. However, it is this never-ending development that produces the truly "great" equipments which become the standards of the industry.

Take the TK-11 Camera, for example. In its ten-year history, some 30 modification kits have been made available to users. The improvements incorporated in these modifications have made a good camera into a fine one, a camera that has been the industry standard for ten years. And they have kept it up-to-date - so much so that of over a thousand manufactured all, we believe, are still in use.
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Our thirty-five year record for improving, refining and up-dating our products is one which no one else in the broadcast industry can match.

FIVE FOR FIVE is good in any league. In the satellite league it's tops. Just recently the fifth RCA-built TIROS weather satellite was launched into orbit and, like its four predecessors, immediately began sending back remarkably good pictures of cloud formations around the world.
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The 286-pound TIROS satellites contain two TV cameras and two small TV tape recorders. Pictures from the cameras are recorded on tape - then played back at slow speed to ground stations. The first four TIROS satellites have sent back more than 126,000 TV weather pictures to date.

TIROS 5 has been launched in an orbit which will enable it to watch the Northern Hemisphere during most of the forthcoming hurricane season.

Last Fall, TIROS 3 photographs disclosed Hurricane Esther two days before conventional means could have spotted it. The Weather Bureau is planning to relay hurricane pictures snapped by TIROS 5 as swiftly as possible to warning centers in Miami, New Orleans and San Juan for help in predicting the course of the storms.

The TIROS satellites were designed, and are built, by RCA's Astro-Electronics Division. We like to think that our many years of work on broadcast TV cameras and recording equipment contributed to the astounding success and unusual reliability of these weather satellites.
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NOT JUST BECAUSE he is the boss do we applaud the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' award of a special "Emmy" to General David Sarnoff. Rather it is because their action - and the words of the citation express the way we personally feel.

It's the way we felt before we worked for RCA (quite awhile ago) - and the way we think we would feel today, even if we didn't work for RCA.

The citation read:
"The Trustees of the Television Academy have voted this year to honor an illustrious statesman of our industry. He has been both pioneer and prophet. He has inspired and supported many of television's finest cultural achievements. He has laid many of our cornerstones, blueprinted much of our future and has been the leading architect in the development of color television.

"For his many years of vision and accomplishment - a Trustees' Award to the Chairman of the Board of the Radio Corporation of America, Brigadier General David Sarnoff."

CORNBERG ON THEATRE story (Page 26) may seem a little out of place in a magazine devoted to broadcast techniques. But we like it, if for no other reason than the change of pace. "Sol Cornberg", who for some years was Director of Studio and Plant Planning for NBC, has done several previous articles for us. (Space Control Production Area, BROADCAST NEWS No. 86, December 1955; Television Seeks Architectural Form, BROADCAST NEWS No. 95, June 1957).

What we particularly like about his ideas is the soaring imagination - which is in marked contrast to the mundane material with which we regularly work.

Sol is now the head of his own firm, Sol Cornberg Associates, specialists in the communications arts. While the article on Page 26 is perhaps more theatre than television, it may stimulate ideas on use of TV in theatre-type settings. Perhaps we could all benefit by thinking of television more as theatre!
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L. L. CAUDLE, JR., Chief Engineer of WSOC-TV, Charlotte, and author of the TS-40 story on Page 64, died suddenly on March 17, 1961 following a heart attack. Known and loved by all of the old-timers in the industry, "Pappy" Caudle had been a familiar figure at broadcast technical meetings for many years. His passing, just before the NAB Convention, left a noticeable gap in the group of long-time friends who are wont to gather in the RCA suite.

"Pappy" Caudle had been in broadcasting since boyhood. He graduated from RCA Institutes in 1932, joined WSOC the following year, became chief engineer in 1936. He planned and built WSOC AM, FM and TV facilities.

The new WSOC-TV plant was his biggest pride and joy - and he never ceased talking about it. The little piece about his TS-40 was written several weeks before he died. Knowing him as we did, we felt that he would want us to go ahead with its publication.
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JUST FOR THE RECORD we would like to make a small correction to the information published by an esteemed trade journal on the occasion of radio's recently celebrated 40th (??) anniversary. It's probably not of great importance, but the statement, "RCA began selling station apparatus in 1929," is not quite correct.

We do not know the exact date when the firsl enterprising RCA salesman rapped on a broadcast station door. It probably was not long after July 7, 1926. And it certainly was sometime before August 20, 1927 - because the record shows that on that date WENR, Chicago, signed an RCA contract for an RCA Type 50A (50 KW) Transmitter.

Bild :Technikraum eines Sender 1927
WENR, Chicago. 111., installation of RCA Type 50A, 50-KW Transmitter, purchased August, 1927.

The WENR transmitter was installed during the spring of 1928. Whether it was the first "RCA" broadcast transmitter on the air (in an other than an RCA-owned station) is a moot point, for KPRC in Houston took the air about the same time with an RCA 1001-A Transmitter (Serial No. 1) WKY, Oklahoma City, and WJDX, Jackson, Mississippi, followed closely thereafter, also with RCA 1-A Transmitters.

A photograph of the WENR "high-power" installation is shown above. The banks of tubes at the left are "Kenotron" rectifiers.

In 1929, these tubes were replaced by RCA-857 mercury vapor rectifiers - and a new power amplifier was installed. (The contract lists it as "RCA 50 KW radio frequency power amplifier utilizing two of the new RCA UV-862 [100 KW] Radiotrons in a balanced amplifier.")

This was the fabulous "RCA 50-B" Transmitter which within a short time thereafter was installed by WTIC, WTAM, WHO-WOC, WSM, WCAU, WOAI and others. By 1933, fifteen of the twenty-two high-power (50 KW) stations in the U.S. were using 50-B transmitters. Most of them operated these transmitters through the war years - and, in fact, some have only recently been retired.

Because RCA at the time had no manufacturing facilities the 50A's and 50B's were made partly by GE and partly by Westinghouse. This was true also of the other RCA transmitters (the 100/ 250 W, the 1A, B, and C and the 5A and B) sold during the period 1927 to 1933.

In 1930, when RCA set up its own production facilities, many of the GE and Westinghouse engineers who had been working on broadcast transmitters transferred to RCA at Camden, N. J.

Together with RCA engineers transferred from New York they formed the nucleus of a new and unique broadcast engineering group. Starting fresh, and untrammeled by tradition, or old company policy, they undertook to develop an entirely new line of broadcast equipment.

The first of these new equipments were studio items, including the original 44A Velocity Microphone (The Velocity Microphone, BROADCAST NEWS No. 5, October 1932) and the first "all AC operated" audio equipments (the 41-B Preamplifier and 40-C Line Amplifier).

The first transmitter to be wholly designed and produced in Camden was the Type 1-D (1 KW) Transmitter. This transmitter revolutionized the transmitter industry. It was the first of this size to use air-cooled tubes (all previous designs were water-cooled); it was the first to use high-level "Class B" modulation (preceding designs were low-level modulated with a Class B linear as output stage); it was the first of this size to be all AC operated (previous designs used motor-generators for filament, grid and plate supply); it was the first to have centralized controls and wide front doors providing full accessibility; and it was the first to depart from the old dead-black telephone color and to be "styled" with a feeling for the then-new electronic age.

The 1-D, and succeeding Camden-built transmitters, quickly gave RCA a position of leadership in the broadcast equipment field - a position that it has continued to hold in the nearly 30 years since then.

Well, as we said before, it's not of earth-shaking importance - but it makes us feel better to get the record straight.
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