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Distribution

The simplest distribution method is over-the-air from the station’s transmitter and antenna to a smaller home receiver antenna. Television uses more radio spectrum space than any other form of electromagnetic communication. One TV channel could hold thirty FM radio stations. After the Second World War the U.S. government assigned channels 1 to 13 in the Very High Frequency (VHF) band to television. Channel 1 was a feature of early sets (710251) but was shared by other commercial radio services, and interference caused it to be dropped. The others were left where they were on the spectrum. The collection holds many sets from the 1950s and 1960s with selectors for channels 2 to 13.

Hallicrafters T-54 television (710251), showing channels 1 to 13, ca 1949. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Admiral 24A12X (710447), bearing the standard complement of channels 2 to 13, ca 1950. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

An alternative to “over-the-air” distribution is coaxial cable—Community Antenna Television (CATV) as it was first called. Cable came to Canada in 1952. Its Canadian pioneer was Ed Jarmaine. He wasn’t getting clear signals on his TV so he put up a tower and an antenna on a nearby hill and shared the cost with his neighbours by running cables to their homes. An early adopter of CATV, Canada remains one of the most cabled countries in the world.

Sparton television converter and remote control (850420), used to receive higher frequency cable signals, ca 1970. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Cable works well for local distribution but Canada is a big country. Charged with creating a national network, the CBC’s need for tansmission channels convinced the country’s major telephone companies to build an ambitious transcontinental chain of microwave radio relay stations. Stretching from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia, the world’s longest TV network began service in 1959.

The next major development came in 1960 with the Calgary Relay Centre. It combined videotape recording technology, the Ampex VR 1000 “quad” (811795), with receiving and transmitting capability. At the Centre, programs could be stored for rebroadcast at the appropriate local time. Low Powered Relay Transmitters (LPRTs) and microwave fed rebroadcast transmitters provided wider coverage and higher quality in weak signal areas.

Direct broadcast satellite dish antenna and receiver (20000014), 2000 (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

In 1972 Canadian television entered the space age with Anik 1, the world’s first geostationary satellite designed for domestic commercial communications use. Anik means “brother” in Inuktitut and it brought television to Canada’s north and other underserved communities. Initially, satellites were used exclusively by broadcasters and cable operators to relay programming across the country, but in the 1980s a few consumers began to acquire the large dish antennas and the decoders needed to receive and unscramble the signals. In the 1990s, the launch of powerful satellites using the Ku band made possible the use of small dishes. This direct-to-home technology had been pioneered in the 1970s by Canada’s Communications Research Centre using the Hermes satellite.

In 1978 a new distribution technology made its debut in Canada—fibre optics, “the big pipe.” An optical fibre is a hair-like strand of extremely pure glass. Through this fibre, pulses of light emitted by a laser can travel great distances. Unlike radio, fibre optics provide almost unlimited capacity in a confined medium. Signals do not share the spectrum with other systems and do not suffer from outside interference. A typical twelve-fibre cable can carry hundreds of video channels; fibre optics are used for both local and long haul video distribution.

Videotape revolution

Kinescope recorder (840140), 1950s, recorded images on a video monitor (left) using a film camera (right). (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Before the invention of videotape, television was transmitted “live” or recorded on film on a kinescope recorder (840140) for re-broadcast. A specially adapted
16-mm or 35-mm motion picture camera filmed the program from a high quality monitor as it went to air. The result was poor by today’s standards but it was the only method of recording a program.

By the mid-1950s, Ampex, a leader in the audio tape recording field, was working on a videotape system using a rotary-head scanning method with 2-inch (50-mm) tape running past four video heads mounted on a rotating drum. At one screening of an experimental recording of a western, the president of Ampex remarked, “Great picture, but which one is the horse and which one the cowboy?”

In 1956 Ampex introduced its VR 1000 “quad” video tape recorder (VTR). Although it was large and unwieldy it worked. The next two decades brought many developments: more compact machines, colour video tape recorders, electronic video tape editors, slow motion and the instant replay. The machines were mostly in the reel-to-reel format. The Museum’s collection contains several examples of Ampex video recorders, from one of the initial VR 1000s (811795) through both studio and portable types of the 1960s.

Ampex VR 1000 (811795), the first successful videotape recorder, ca 1956 (CSTM)

Ampex VR660 (840058), 1960s, an early attempt to miniaturize video recorders (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Introduced in 1971, Sony’s ¾-inch (19-mm)VCR (830365) was the forerunner of the familiar household appliance. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

In 1971 Sony unveiled its
¾-inch (19-mm) video cassette recorder (VCR) (830365), which soon took over the industrial and educational markets and even made inroads among broadcasters for electronic news gathering (ENG). In 1976 Sony’s ½-inch (13-mm) Beta cassette recorder (850111) became the first video format to reach the North American home consumer market. The Beta system was eventually displaced by the Video Home System (VHS) recorder (910154), now a common feature in Canadian homes.

Sony Betamax (850111) was the first consumer VCR format in Canada. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

VCRs running on the VHS standard (910154) have become the most popular in Canada.(CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Seizing the means of production

Sony camera and recorder (951487, 951488), a popular black and white system in schools and businesses, ca 1970 (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

Canadians’ rapid adoption of VCRs revealed their appetite for more control over what they watched and when. For many years, large private and government corporations had monopolized video technology. But the falling cost and increasing capability of electronic goods gradually made video tools more widely available. In the 1960s, institutional users began to employ cameras and recorders for a variety of educational and promotional purposes. The Museum collection includes several examples of this sort of equipment (951487, 951488).

JVC CV-0001 camera and recorder (940222, 940223), ca 1976, dwarf today’s consumer camcorders. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

RCA CKC020 camera (960105), an early consumer model employing a compact CCD, 1985. (CSTM/Peter Lindell)

In the 1970s, manufacturers began to introduce simple video cameras that could feed pictures to home VCRs. This equipment was still relatively heavy and consumed a lot of power (940222, 940223). Advances in electronics, though, were squeezing more and more components onto tiny silicon chips. One such innovation was the charge coupled device (CCD), which replaced the camera tube. Lighter, smaller, more rugged and requiring much less power and lower light levels, CCDs were introduced in consumer video cameras in the early 1980s. The RCA CKC020 is an example from the Museum’s collection (960105). At around the same time, equipment makers came up with compact cassette formats that allowed them to combine camera and recorder in a single lightweight package: the camcorder. The is an area of future growth for the collection.