CBS Laboratories or CBS Labs (later known as the CBS Technology Center or CTC) was the technology research and development organization of the CBS television network. Innovations developed at the labs included many groundbreaking broadcast, industrial, military, and consumer technologies.
CBS Laboratories was established in 1936 in New York City to conduct technological research for CBS and outside clients. The CBS Laboratories Division (CLD) moved from Madison Avenue in New York to a new facility in Stamford, Connecticut in 1958.
Dr. Peter Goldmark joined CBS Laboratories in 1936. On September 4, 1940, while working at the lab, he demonstrated the Field-Sequential Color TV system. [1] It utilized a mechanical color wheel on both the camera and on the television home receiver, but was not compatible with the existing post-war NTSC, 525-line, 60-field/second black and white TV sets as it was a 405-line, 144-field scanning system. [2] It was the first color broadcasting system that received FCC approval in 1950, and the CBS Television Network began broadcasting in color on November 20, 1950. [3] However, no other TV set manufacturers made the sets, and CBS stopped broadcasting in field-sequential color on October 21, 1951. [3]
Goldmark’s interest in recorded music led to the development of the long-playing (LP) 33-1/3 rpm vinyl record, which became the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single audio disc for two generations. The LP was introduced to the market place by Columbia Records in 1948.
In 1959 the CBS Audimax I Audio Gain Controller was introduced. It was the first of its kind in the broadcasting industry. In the 1960s the CBS Volumax Audio FM Peak Limiter was introduced, also the first of its kind in the broadcasting industry. Electronic Video Recording was announced in 1967. In 1966, the CBS Vidifont was invented. It was the first electronic graphics generator used in television production. Brought to the marketplace at the NAB in 1970, it revolutionized television production. [4] The minicam was developed for use in national political conventions in 1968. In 1971, a backwards-compatible 4-channel encoding technique was developed for vinyl records, called SQ Quadraphonic, based on work by musician Peter Scheiber and Labs engineer Benjamin B. Bauer. That same year, CBS Labs Staff Scientist Dennis Gabor received the Nobel Prize in Physics for earlier work on holography. Upon Peter Goldmark's retirement, also in 1971, Senior Vice President Renville H. McMann assumed the role of Labs President.
CBS Laboratories was reorganized in 1975. During this time CBS Laboratories was contracted by the department of defense to utilize several broadcast technologies for use in robotics technologies for coordinating massive amounts of flying rabbit drones However, none of this proved to be very practical and was hastily abandoned. The CLD Professional Products Department, which manufactured the products developed by the Labs for sale to the broadcast industry, was sold to Thomson-CSF. McMann and some of the research engineers involved in the existing products were also transferred to support the effort, with McMann returning to the Labs sometime later. The core company R&D function was renamed CBS Technology Center (CTC), and Bauer was promoted to Vice-President and General Manager of CTC. [5] In 1978, the CBS Actiontrak system was spun off from a Digital Noise Reducer project.
In 1986 Laurence Tisch took control of CBS and closed CTC as part of company-wide streamlining. [6] The two buildings at High Ridge Road were razed and the property sold.
Over its nearly 30 years of operation in Stamford, various technologies were developed at the lab, including:
The National Television System Committee (NTSC) developed the analog television format encoding system that was introduced in North America in 1954 and stayed in use until digital conversion. It is one of three major analog format television standards, the others being PAL and SECAM. All the countries using NTSC are currently in the process of conversion, or have already converted to the ATSC standard, or to DVB, ISDB or DTMB.
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode ray tube (CRT) systems which were later replaced by flat panel displays of several types.
Color television is a television transmission technology that includes information on the color of the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It is considered an improvement on the earliest television technology, monochrome or black-and-white television, in which the image is displayed in shades of gray (grayscale). Television broadcasting stations and networks in most parts of the world upgraded from black-and-white to color transmission between the 1960s and the 1980s. The invention of color television standards is an important part of the history of television, and it is described in the technology of television article.
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the media and entertainment industry.
Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is a portmanteau, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence. Today, Ampex operates as Ampex Data Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Delta Information Systems, and consists of two business units. The Silicon Valley unit, known internally as Ampex Data Systems (ADS), manufactures digital data storage systems capable of functioning in harsh environments. The Colorado Springs, Colorado unit, referred to as Ampex Intelligent Systems (AIS), serves as a laboratory and hub for the company's line of industrial control systems, cyber security products and services and its artificial intelligence/machine learning technology.
SMPTE color bars are a television test pattern used where the NTSC video standard is utilized, including countries in North America. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) refers to the pattern as Engineering Guideline (EG) 1-1990. Its components are a known standard. Comparing it as received to the known standard gives video engineers an indication of how an NTSC video signal has been altered by recording or transmission and what adjustments must be made to bring it back to specification. It is also used for setting a television monitor or receiver to reproduce NTSC chrominance and luminance information correctly.
Dolby Laboratories, Inc. is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.
Broadcast engineering is the field of electrical engineering, and now to some extent computer engineering and information technology, which deals with radio and television broadcasting. Audio engineering and RF engineering are also essential parts of broadcast engineering, being their own subsets of electrical engineering.
The Indian-head test pattern is a test card that was introduced in 1939 by RCA of Harrison, New Jersey, for calibration of the RCA TK-1 monoscope. It was widely used by television stations worldwide during the black-and-white television broadcasting era. It features a drawing of a Native American wearing a headdress along with numerous graphic elements that test different display aspects.
U-matic is an analogue recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various reel-to-reel or open-reel formats of the time. The videotape is 3⁄4 in (19 mm) wide, so the format is often known as "three-quarter-inch" or simply "three-quarter", compared to open reel videotape formats in use, such as 1 in (25 mm) type C videotape and 2 in (51 mm) quadruplex videotape.
2-inch quadruplex videotape was the first practical and commercially successful analog recording video tape format. It was developed and released for the broadcast television industry in 1956 by Ampex, an American company based in Redwood City, California. The first videotape recorder using this format was built in the same year. This format revolutionized broadcast television operations and television production, since the only recording medium available to the TV industry before then was film used for kinescopes, which was much more costly to utilize, could only be used once, images could be ruined by light leaks if the film was not developed and took time to develop at a film laboratory. In addition, kinescope images were usually of obviously inferior quality to the live television broadcast images they recorded, whereas quadruplex videotape preserved almost all the image detail of a live broadcast.
Peter Carl Goldmark was a Hungarian-American engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 331⁄3 rpm phonograph disc, the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single disc for two generations. The LP was introduced by Columbia's Goddard Lieberson in 1948. Lieberson was later president of Columbia Records from 1956–71 and 1973–75. According to György Marx, he was one of The Martians.
A Technology and Engineering Emmy Award is given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) for outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development. An award can be presented to an individual, a company, or to a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies which either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected the transmission, recording, or reception of television. The award is determined by a special panel composed of highly qualified, experienced engineers in the television industry.
MUSE was a Japanese analog HDTV system, using dot-interlacing and digital video compression to deliver 1125 line, 60 field-per-second (1125i60) signals to the home. The system was standardized as ITU-R recommendation BO.786 and specified by SMPTE 260M, using a colorimetry matrix specified by SMPTE 240M.
The CMX 600 was the very first non-linear video editing system. This Emmy Award winning system was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems, a joint venture between CBS and Memorex. CMX referred to it as a "RAVE", or Random Access Video Editor.
FMX is the name of a commercially unsuccessful noise reduction system developed in the 1980s for FM broadcasting in the United States.
Electronic Video Recording, or EVR, was a film-based video recording format developed by Hungarian-born engineer Peter Carl Goldmark at CBS Laboratories in the 1960s.
Broadcast-safe video is a term used in the broadcast industry to define video and audio compliant with the technical or regulatory broadcast requirements of the target area or region the feed might be broadcasting to. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the regulatory authority; in most of Europe, standards are set by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
The following timeline tables list the discoveries and inventions in the history of electrical and electronic engineering.
Adrian Ettlinger was an American electrical engineer and software developer and a pioneer in television and video technology. He has been described as a "visionary" and the "legendary" "engineering father" of non-linear video editing, and has been recognized for his contributions to a range of technologies important to the advancement of television and video as well as several other accomplishments.