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.
At the same time that CBS Laboratories developed technologies for the CBS Television Network, it also took on similar work for the Government. An Aerospace Qualified film scanning system, composed of a flying spot line scanner that consisted of a cathode-ray tube and a rotating anode having a high intensity spot of light was developed for the Lunar Orbiter program to read out the film images taken by the Orbiter for transmission back to Earth. [Reference: "SAMOS TO THE MOON: The Clandestine Transfer of Reconnaissance Technology Between Federal Agencies" by R. Cargill Hall, sourced from https://www.nro.gov/Portals/135/documents/history/csnr/programs/docs/prog-hist-01.pdf, page 2]
The CBS Laboratories Reconotron all-electrostatic image dissector tube was developed for the 1964 Mariner IV Mars mission as an azimuth star tracker, then was modified for the 1967 Mariner V Venus mission in order to withstand the intense planetary illumination. The sensor was further modified for the 1969 Mariner mission to Mars to survive the more severe launch environment and to provide greater capability for automatic search, identification, and tracking.[REFERENCE: W. C. Goss, "The Mariner Spacecraft Star Sensors," Appl. Opt. 9, 1056-1067 (1970) https://opg.optica.org/ao/abstract.cfm?URI=ao-9-5-1056]
In 1964 the Mergenthaler Co. and CBS Laboratories won a GPO contract to build a machine called the Linotron. The Linotron took a computer magnetic tape from the publishing agency that had been programmed through GPO’s computers, and composed the data in 6-point type at the rate of a page every 10 to 12 seconds, up to 1,000 characters per second, justified including upper and lower case letters, resulting in a page negative made up and ready to be plated and printed. This was accomplished using a highly-specialized Cathode Ray Tube developed by CBS Laboratories which had unequaled geometric fidelity and resolution. The introduction of the Linotron was characterized as “the most important development in composition since the introduction of the Linotype machine at the turn of the century.” [5]
The first Linotron went into operation in October 1967 and the second a year later. The dean of the Senate and Chair of the JCP, Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, pressed the key starting the Linotron 1010 on its first job, the Federal Supply Catalog. The Linotrons cost $2.3 million to develop and install, but in the first 13 months of operation the savings were estimated at $900,000. With it, “it can truly be said that in 1968 the Government Printing Office entered the electronic printing age.” [5]
CBS Laboratories was a leader in the development of Electron Beam Recorders, (EBR), which use a finely focused beam of electrons to record information onto film. Because the electron beam has no inertia, it can be electromagnetically scanned over the film at a very high speed. Also, because it is focused using a magnetic field, instead of glass lenses, the electron beam can be focused to a much smaller spot than laser or other optical methods, on the order of a half-millionth of an inch.
One of the applications of the Electron Beam Recorder was in the ERTS-Landsat system, whose mission was to capture images of the Earth's surface in different spectral bands to provide data for Earth resource management and environmental monitoring. This generated an immense amount of data to be recorded and processed for analysis. The ERTS EBR was a crucial part of the ground-based image data recording system, capable of producing a thousand 70mm archival quality film images per day, from which all other ERTS photographic products were produced.
During the Vietnam War, CBS Laboratories developed and produced the scanning and recording equipment for the Compass Link system, which provided one-way, near-real-time secure transmission of photographic and other battlefield imagery via satellite relays from Vietnam to Hawai'i and Washington, DC. Using available equipment, in many cases at the breadboard stage, it was developed, deployed and operational in the field and on shipboard 73 days after approval to proceed. Philco-Ford provided the satellite communications systems. [REFERENCE: Project CHECO Report, "USAF Tactical Reconnaissance in Southeast Asia, July 1969 - June 1971" (U) 23 Nov. 1971, Pages 15 – 16. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA486459.pdf ]
In 1969, CBS Laboratories developed an advanced, state-of-the-art, MIL-Spec In-Flight Photo-Processor Scanner (IPPS) for the Joint Services In-Flight Data Transmission System (JIFDATS). Mounted in an external pod on a Mach-2, RF-4C reconnaissance aircraft, the target images from a KS-87 airborne film camera were processed, scanned and transmitted within 12 minutes of acquisition to a ground-based Image Interpretation Facility. [REFERENCE: Automatic Acquisition and Tracking Methods Employed in JIFDATS, by T. N. Leiboff, Northrup Electronics Division. From AGARD Conference Technical Meeting, Oct. 1972, Section 4-1. https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0758977.pdf ]
In 1974, CBS Corp., under then-President Arthur R. Taylor, made the decision to focus on its primary media and broadcasting operations, away from the Government R&D and commercial product development, and divest these non-core assets. [REFERENCE: The Advocate (Stamford, CT Newspaper) "Labs ARE For Sale, CBS Official Admits", by Robert Perry, Oct. 4, 1974] As part of this reorganization, the CBS Laboratories Professional Products Department, which manufactured the products developed by the Labs for sale to the broadcast industry, was sold to Thomson-CSF.
The remainder of CBS Laboratories, including all of its Government research and development activities, was acquired in 1975 by EPSCO Corp., based in Buffalo, NY, for the purpose of enhancing its technological capabilities and facilitating the entrance into new Government markets. EPSCO renamed the business as Epsco Labs, and after an unsuccessful attempt to convince the CBS Laboratories personnel to relocate to Buffalo, NY, EPSCO moved the complete operations and staff to a facility in Wilton, CT. The two original CBS Laboratories buildings on High Ridge Road in Stamford, CT were razed and the property sold.
Although EPSCO Corp. immediately began the process of novating the CBS Laboratories government R&D contracts to EPSCO, the process turned out to be much more time-consuming than EPSCO anticipated, due to the legal and regulatory implications involved in obtaining Government and Contracting Agency approvals of the many classified programs underway at CBS Laboratories. This year-long time delay greatly increased EPSCO's ongoing costs of funding the acquisition, to the point where EPSCO made the decision to liquidate the entire Epsco Labs facilities, staff and operations in 1976.
CBS Laboratories' staff registered approximately 100 patents in the fields of television, quadraphonic sound, scanning devices, laser scanning and recording, film handling systems, image and character generation, noise monitoring, hydrophones, forming electrophoretic and photoemissive surfaces, diffraction optics, photo-electronic imaging, electron guns, and more.
[REFERENCE: https://web.archive.org/web/20090326051253/http://www.emmyonline.org/tech/applications/engineering_award_winners_rev6.pdf ]
1969 Peter C. Goldmark
For his continuing stimulus and contributions in the conception, development and utilization of significant innovations in television, video recording, and in the application of television technology in the fields of aerospace, education, printing and medicine.
1976 Adrian B. Ettlinger
For his important contributions to the application of computers to on-air television station switching control, for conceiving of the application of videodisc stop-action systems to sports broadcasts, and for contributions to computer control of studio lighting systems and videotape editing systems.
1977 Renville H. McMann
For his pioneering work in television signal digital noise reduction, image enhancement, color masking and encoded signal color correction and for his leadership in the development of the first high-quality portable color camera.
1989 William E. Glenn
For his many contributions to the development of television technology and, in particular, the introduction of sub band coding technology to data compression for terrestrial broadcasting of HDTV.
[REFERENCE: https://www.smpte.org/about/awards-programs/Sarnoff ]
Over its nearly 40 years of operation, a number of state-of-the-art technologies were developed at the lab, as described above, and also including:
NTSC is the first American standard for analog television, published in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170.
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports. The medium is capable of more than "radio broadcasting," which refers to an audio signal sent to radio receivers.
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, in turn, were replaced by flat-panel displays of several types.
Color television or colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white television technology, which displays the image 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 was an important part of the history and technology of television.
Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excellence. 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.
Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, saturation, detail, black level, and white balance may be enhanced whether for motion pictures, videos, or still images. Color grading and color correction are often used synonymously as terms for this process and can include the generation of artistic color effects through creative blending and compositing of different layer masks of the source image. Color grading is generally now performed in a digital process either in a controlled environment such as a color suite, and is usually done in a dim or dark environment.
Dolby Laboratories, Inc. is a British-American technology corporation specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.
A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, historically by direct photography of a high-resolution cathode ray tube (CRT) display. The exposed film can then be developed using conventional developing techniques, and displayed with a slide or motion picture projector. The use of film recorders predates the current use of digital projectors, which eliminate the time and cost involved in the intermediate step of transferring computer images to film stock, instead directly displaying the image signal from a computer. Motion picture film scanners are the opposite of film recorders, copying content from film stock to a computer system. Film recorders can be thought of as modern versions of Kinescopes.
Video camera tubes are devices based on the cathode-ray tube that were used in television cameras to capture television images, prior to the introduction of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors in the 1980s. Several different types of tubes were in use from the early 1930s, and as late as the 1990s.
Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is an obsolete television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a similar mechanical device at the receiver to display the picture. This contrasts with vacuum tube electronic television technology, using electron beam scanning methods, for example in cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions. Subsequently, modern solid-state liquid-crystal displays (LCD) and LED displays are now used to create and display television pictures.
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 1956–1971 and 1973–1975. According to György Marx, Goldmark was one of The Martians.
The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards, or Technology and Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards are presented by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS), while the separate Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards are given by its sister organization the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS).
The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture.
A flying-spot scanner (FSS) uses a scanning source of a spot of light, such as a high-resolution, high-light-output, low-persistence cathode ray tube (CRT), to scan an image. Usually the image to be scanned is on photographic film, such as motion picture film, or a slide or photographic plate. The output of the scanner is usually a television signal.
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.
A field-sequential color system (FSC) is a color television system in which the primary color information is transmitted in successive images and which relies on the human vision system to fuse the successive images into a color picture. One field-sequential system was developed by Peter Goldmark for CBS, which was its sole user in commercial broadcasting. It was first demonstrated to the press on September 4, 1940, and first shown to the general public on January 12, 1950. The Federal Communications Commission adopted it on October 11, 1950, as the standard for color television in the United States, but it was later withdrawn.
The Chromatron is a color television cathode ray tube design invented by Nobel prize-winner Ernest Lawrence and developed commercially by Paramount Pictures, Sony, Litton Industries and others. The Chromatron offered brighter images than conventional color television systems using a shadow mask, but a host of development problems kept it from being widely used in spite of years of development. Sony eventually abandoned it in favor of their famous Trinitron system using an aperture grille.
The Geer tube was an early single-tube color television cathode ray tube, developed by Willard Geer. The Geer tube used a pattern of small phosphor-covered three-sided pyramids on the inside of the CRT faceplate to mix separate red, green, and blue signals from three electron guns. The Geer tube had a number of disadvantages and was never used commercially due to the much better images generated by RCA's shadow mask system. Nevertheless, Geer's patent was awarded first, and RCA purchased an option on it in case their own developments didn't pan out.
The following timeline tables list the discoveries and inventions in the history of electrical and electronic engineering.
375-line corresponds to two different electronic television systems, both using 375 scan lines. One system was used in Germany after 1936 along with the 180-line system, being replaced in a few years by the superior 441-line system. It was also tested in Italy around the same time.
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