Engineers on parade…

THE men who really make television — but rarely make the news — had the unusual experience of being in the limelight when an exhibition of their work was staged at ATV House.

Members of the Company’s Development Department and Planning and Installation Department had assembled a selection of some of the most advanced television equipment that can be seen not only in Britain but in any part of the world.

And every piece of equipment on show was the result of work by ATV staff.

More than 300 people, including the new Chairman of the Company. Sir Robert Renwick, representatives of the national and trade press, electronic manufacturing companies and the BBC visited the impressive exhibition.

Centre-piece was the 34-channel fully transistorised studio sound mixer, designed and manufactured by Pye Ltd. to ATV’s requirements. This mixer is installed in the new studios at Elstree.

Peter Fowler and Ray McCabe dealt with hundreds of enquiries from visitors who marvelled at this remarkable piece of engineering which is quite unrivalled in the field of technical equipment.

The control vision mixer, designed and manufactured by the Development Department was explained to visitors by Ken Searle and Arthur Burbidge. This is a great contribution towards the stabilizing of the studio output picture. Unique circuits stabilize the picture against large variations of voltage and temperature.

ON DISPLAY

Among the interesting items of equipment designed and made by ATV were:

Cut and Effects Mixer. At the touch of a button or fader it provides inter-frame cutting and separate fading from twelve picture inputs.

Line Up Panel. This enables the accurate and speedy alignment of the many electronic circuits concerned with the vision mixing unit.

Special Effects Control Unit. This is used to select special visual effects to make programmes more interesting. Inlay and over lay may be used.

FOR OB’s

OB Portable Video Distribution Amplifier. The unit provides four separate vision outputs from a single co-axial input, particularly -useful at OBs where large areas are involved.

Transistorised Video Amplifier. Sixteen separate vision outputs are provided with integral power units.

Transistorised Microwave Transmitter. Designed for testing microwave paths before use on programmes. It is used in conjunction with a portable radio telephone.

Transistor Intercom Units. One is a simple transistor amplifier for a small technical centre. The other is a multi-studio system capable of operating between 44 stations in a studio centre.

Helping to explain the workings of these and other pieces of equipment were members of the company’s Engineering Department, all of whom have contributed to their development and manufacture.