I was in the RTV building today and wandered by some great built-in display cases. The history of the program and fair amount of the gear that makes up the business was there. Like this Hitachi FP-3030, from 1976, for example.
It was a smaller camera for its day, but it also did some genius stuff on the inside. I won’t bore you with the details, but it created a more efficient signal which, among other things, allowed black and white televisions to receive color broadcasts and formed normal black and white pictures. It would also allow a color TV to take a black and white broadcast as well as a color picture during color transmission. Remember, this is the 1970s and color TV had just reached 50 percent household penetration, so this would have been important for a lot of homes. Also, this camera cost just under $20,000 in today’s money.
A magnetic tape recorder/dictation machine from Webster-Chicago:
I don’t know anything about this device, but the company dates back to 1914 and they started selling ancestors of this recorder in the early 1940s. At a time when high tech was still very expensive, and not even a term, Webster-Chicago sold more than 40,000 “electronic memory” units in 1947 and 1948 alone. There is an Electronic Memory unit on display, too, but glare on the display glass ruined the pictures. Webster-Chicago started declining in the 1950s with new magnetic tape technology prevailing over the old wire recorders, and when foreign recorders entered the American marketplace, that was pretty much it for the old company.
Friends, please meet the most handsome figure on the lot, the RCA-77:
The 77 was released in 1945, but it just oozed 1930s style and incredible sound quality. Ribbon microphones, like this one, are always popular, and this RCA product creates some great tones. It was the standard through the 1950s and you’ll still see them in use in studios today.
If you see one for less than a couple grand, buy it, because the seller doesn’t understand the marketplace.
