Radio Age - 1952, April -34 Pages, 2.9 MB, .PDF - VacuumTubeEra

mmmMFBIIl TA TV camera and commentator go into the plant ofFoote Mineral Company to explain factory operationsto o meeting of the firm's stockholders.From this monitor room, set up at the Foote Mineralfactory, program directors control the TV camera pickupsand the film sequences.Stockholders "Tour^Through EyesJTheir Plantof TV Cameras\~J iriTlNG up and running a 10-ring circus for aone-day stand in a busy industrial plant might seem toenjoy top rating as the neatest trick of the year. Butthose who watched the preparation and production ofthe first televised plant tour for a stockholders' meeting,staged February 2 1 at the Exton, Pa., plant of the FooteMineral Co., would have the facts to argue any suchcontention.Robert D. Drake, Foote's advertising manager, conceivedthe ide.i of the unusual telecast when he saw anRCA Victor TV demonstration last fall at the Expositionof the Chemical Industries in New York. He exploredthe idea with Richard H. Htxiper. manager of the RCAVictor Shows and Exhibits Division, and detailed plans,charts, and script were then worked out. Arrangementswere coordinated for Ftxite by Otto W. Renner. Jr., ofRenner Advertisers, Philadelphia.In undertaking the job,TV production crew, despite aRCA Victor's globe-trottingwide and varied experience,was stepping off on new ground. But the field wasrecognized as one of substantial promise, and that promisehas certainly been expanded by the success of thisdebut performance.The closed-circuit ( wired ) telecast enabled morethan 250 stockholders to see new facilities and watchkey operations at widely separated locations on the 81-acre Foote property without leaving their seats in theplant cafeteria, where the meeting was held. One sequenceof the show, made possible by televised film,brought the stockholders a glimpse of activities at Foote'snew Kings Mountain holdings, near Charlotte, N. C,where the company "bought a mountain" containing thenation's largest known source of spodumene, an ore fromwhich litliiiitn is extracted.To stage this initial stockholders' TV tour, RCAVictor installed and operated the largest closed-circuitsystem yet etnployed for a service of this type. Theequipment, valued at more than 580,000, included fourimage orthicon field cameras. 1800 feet of camera cable,1200 feet of microphone line, a TV film camera chain,twelve 17-inch home TV receivers, and all the auxiliaryequipment needed for a complete control and monitoringstation.lour Cameras Covered Seven LocationsThe cameras were initially set up in four strategiclocations, and some were swiftly moved when the scriptpermitted, according to a time schedule carefully workedout in advance, to permit coverage of a total of sevenRU0\O AGE n