Museum of the Broadcast Television Camera

E-mail Received, 09 March 2022

The camera Marconi MkVII

 

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Neil Barnes writes:-

I found your page by accident today, and as a BBC engineer for over thirty years it took me straight back.
 
I used and maintained (my god, how we maintained) the Marconi Mk7 in Tel News (N1, N2, N3 studios) from when I joined the BBC in 1978 until they were replaced some years later. They were mounted on Evershed remote control pedestals, if I recall correctly, with Vinten robotic systems replacing them when new cameras appeared after a studio refit.

I recall two areas of particular annoyance: the nuvistors in the head amps, and the incredibly expensive and increasingly rare wet tantalum capacitors. We spent some time 'developing' (playing with) replacements for the nuvistors and discovered that they could be replaced with bipolar (not FET) transistor preamplifiers. They had less noise, but also a lesser frequency response, than the nuvistor. Which meant we could use them in the colour circuits, and save the nuvistors for the Y channel.


Regards