This one-of-a-kind film shows the flight test of a Remington Rand television camera aboard a small aircraft. The exact story behind this film is not yet known, but during WWII television was used in a series of weapons including the TDR-1 Torpedo Drone and Operation Anvil and Operation Aphrodite — which used TV to convert bomber aircraft into radio controlled flying bombs. That may or may not have been the point of this particular test.
Another concept (for instance) was to use television cameras for surveillance and reconnaissance in a fashion now performed by drone aircraft. A plane equipped in this way might have also been used to provide, for instance, live imagery for general staff of an operation such as the D-Day invasion.
The film begins with aerial shots of Middletown, Connecticut as they would have been seen by the BLOCK TV camera. The end of the film shows the set-up, with the camera in the nose of a small twin-engine plane. Keep in mind the TV transmission has been filmed using a 16mm motion picture camera, so there is a loss of some information. The actual TV image would have most likely been green.
Incidentally, Remington Rand was involved in developing military cameras during World War Two, then manufactured industrial TV systems through about 1953. In 1950 they built a camera for the CBS field sequential system using an Image Orthicon.
Remington Rand (1927–1955) was an early American business machines manufacturer, best known originally as a typewriter manufacturer and in a later incarnation as the manufacturer of the UNIVAC line of mainframe computer. It split off from its parent company, Remington Arms, in the early twentieth century. Remington Rand was a diversified conglomerate making other office equipment, electric shavers, etc. The Remington Rand Building at 315 Park Avenue South in New York City is a 20-floor skyscraper completed in 1911.
Read more about Remington Rand at:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/remington_rand.html
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD and 2k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
