TV Studio Engineering – The Pre-digital Age Alec Bray

 

Switch on the telly, choose from hundreds of channels and streaming services, watch something spectacular and think to yourself, “That’s all done with green screen technology and Computer-Generated Images (CGI)…”

Let me take you back to the middle nineteen-sixties!

Only three channels to choose from, occasional colour. But still there were spectacular effects in the enormously popular telly shows – and it was all done in the studio using those big old television cameras, and more often than not being done in the studio as you watched! Very little in the way of post-production in those days.

This talk looks at just some of the Engineering that made these feats possible. The emphasis is on aspects of the mechanical engineering, but we stray into the world of electrical and electronic engineering as well.