From the August 2002 issue of Antique Radio Classified
One article and one career may make a connection to another article
and career. James O'Neal, whose bio reflects his career in television,
was prompted to write the following article by Ray Bintliff's January
2002 article on the RCA-Soviet Union TV connection. Ray serviced early electronic
TV sets after joining RCA in 1946. A.R.C. is all about making such
connections. (Editor)
The January 2002 Antique Radio Classified article by Ray
Bintliff about the rather puzzling discovery of photographs of an early
RCA television set with Cyrillic labeling did not escape my notice and
brought back some memories of a discovery of my own. I would like to
offer the following account, which may solve this mystery.
Some years ago, on one of my travels to Moscow, I had the opportunity
to tour a large museum dedicated to science and technology. I naturally
sought out the section devoted to broadcasting, and among the fairly
large collection of artifacts there, I could not help but notice the
rather large "mirror in the lid" television receiver, shown in Figure 1.
I thought that it was a Russian reverse engineered clone of a similar
American or British set until I moved in for a closer look. (The museum
had a dandy Russian copy of an early Polaroid camera and what could be
easily mistaken for a 1950s American 21" round tube color set.)
There, as Figure 2 shows, front and center on the large wooden
cabinet, was the unmistakable RCA "meatball" logo. This was indeed a
strange thing to find in a museum where virtually everything was labeled
and branded in Russian.
No one was around to answer my questions about the set's ancestry, so
I took my share of photographs and resolved to try to find out how that
particular RCA set had wound up with Cyrillic labeling and why it was
spending its retirement days in a Moscow museum. I pondered the matter on
the long trip back to America and realized that I had seen a similar, if
not identical, set somewhere else.
U.S. Connections
Reviewing photographs I had taken at the AWA Electronic Communications
Museum in Bloomfield, New York, I located that receiver. Minus the
Cyrillic lettering, one control knob, and a few minor cosmetic details,
the AWA set was a dead ringer for the Russian museum model. My photograph
of the AWA set appears in Figure 3. A placard with both sets indicated
that they operated on the 343-line standard. That dated the receivers
fairly well, as this was an intermediate standard of sorts that predated
the U.S. 441-line standard with which television premiered at the 1939
New York World's Fair.
Figure 1. The RCA receiver as it appears in the Moscow museum.
A chance conversation some time later with fellow television
enthusiast Nat Pendleton revealed that he not only knew the model number
of the set, but actually owned one. He was working to restore it both
electrically and in appearance. His set is shown in Figures 4 and 5.
Sometime before the set passed into Pendleton's possession, the
original CRT had been removed and replaced with a more modern (shorter),
direct-view tube, placed in the horizontal position atop the set. The
controls inside the cabinet top compartment had been relocated to the
front of the set, and the original top had been discarded in favor of a
simple cover over the replacement CRT. This early RCA model was revealed
as the Model RR-359 and sported a 9" picture tube.
(I offer this bit of speculation. Could the Model RR-359 be the
forerunner of later RCA television model identification nomenclature? In
the case of the famous postwar Model 630TS, 1946 was the year of
manufacture and the set contained 30 tubes. Was the Model RR-359
designation a coupling of 1935 and the size of the CRT?)
Pendleton informed me that the set was also made with a 12" tube and
that variant was labeled the Model RR-359B. Both receivers would have to
be classified as field test models, as there were no attempts to market
them, at least in this country.
The set was now identified as to its model number and dated fairly
closely. However, I still wanted to know how it had gotten to Moscow and
had learned to speak Russian.
I vaguely recalled reading an article about Russian television in a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) journal
years before. It had been penned by an American television engineer who
had returned to Moscow after a hiatus of some 30 to 40 years. His article
basically dealt with the changes in that city since his first trip there
in the 1930s. However, as it had been over 20 years since I last looked
at the journal, the article was a bit fuzzy around the edges. There just
might have been something in it about his working with the Russians on a
television project. My next priority was to dig through my SMPTE
publications for that particular issue.
Figure 2. A close-up of the Moscow museum's set showing the Cyrillic
lettering.
I finally located what I sought in the September 1972 number the
article by one Waldemar J. Poch. Yes, he had been part of an RCA mission
to Moscow in 1937 to install an all-electronic television system. The
main thrust of the article was the great change that had taken place
since Poch's first 10-month stay in 1937-1938 and the state of the USSR
television broadcasting and motion picture industries in 1972. He also
mentioned an intermediate trip made in 1959 on behalf of his employer
RCA.
On reflection, I thought this a bit odd, as the U. S. had broken off
diplomatic relations with the onset of the Socialist revolution in
1917-1918, and only re-established them with what was then the USSR in
late 1933. I found it hard to believe that such a technology transfer
could take place in light of this country's distrust of that communist
society.
The RCA-Soviet Deal
Additional research proved me wrong. An excellent book on the life of
Vladimir Zworykin, RCA's legendary television pioneer, was published in
1995. In one chapter, the author, Albert Abramson, traced the path of
Zworykin as he returned to his native Russia to give a series of lectures
in 1934. Abramson states that during this stay, Zworykin was twice asked
about the possibility of RCA's selling a television system to the
Russians. On his return to the U. S., Zworykin met with David Sarnoff
about the Russians' interest in television equipment. Abramson reports
that contacts were made with the Russian embassy, and the Soviets ordered
a complete television equipment package.
Figure 3. The RCA RR-359 in the AWA museum
However, this television equipment deal resulting from
the 1933 thaw between the U. S. and the USSR was given only limited
publicity. An investigation of all pertinent issues of RCA's house
publication, Broadcast News, turned up several television-related
stories, but no mention of the deal with Russia or the sending of its
television engineering personnel to Moscow.
The New York Times carried a brief report in late 1935 from the
Associated Press that RCA had signed agreements with the USSR for some $2
million (U.S.) worth of radio-related equipment to be manufactured in its
Camden and Harrison, New Jersey, plants.Abramson reported
that a Russian commission journeyed to the U. S. in 1936 to inspect and
accept the equipment. They remained until 1937.
Efforts to locate Waldemar Poch were in vain. I did learn that a
friend of mine had once served on a television standards committee with
Poch, known to his associates as "Wally"; however, Poch never talked
about any of his Russian experiences. The trail was similarly cold as
concerned other RCA engineers who might have been part of that 1937
contingent.
One element of Poch's 1972 article was rather intriguing. He described
the present Moscow Ostankino television broadcasting center, mentioning
that it replaced the original 1937 television complex where he had
worked. He added " it was with mixed feelings that I saw one of the
vintage 1937 receivers on display in a museum devoted to technical
developments. This particular model had cost me many hours of work in the
middle 1930s."
I have little doubt that this was the same receiver that I encountered
Indeed, these early television receivers are rare, with only a handful
still accounted for. It must be assumed that the Russian variant is
extremely rare, with possibly the only one in existence residing in that
Moscow museum.
More on Russian TV History
A Russian television Web site offers additional information on certain
aspects of Russian television history. While most of the 1972 Poch
translated article is centered on the development and construction of the
present day Russian television tower at Ostankino, Poch does state that
plans for the first Moscow television broadcast center were made at the
end of 1936. A site was selected on Shabolovka Street, as a 150-meter
antenna tower was already located there. Poch notes that the first
experimental transmissions took place on March 9, 1937 and regular
broadcasting commenced on December 31, 1938. These dates tie in well with
the other information.
Figure 4. Front view of Nat Pendleton's restored RR-359
Figure 5. Rear view of Nat Pendleton's restored RR-359
More on the Model RR-359
The keen-eyed observer may note that the placard atop the Russian
Model RR-359 calls the set a "TK-1" and dates it as a 1939 model. As the
"TK-1" designation is incorrect, it must be assumed that the date was
also an approximation.
Other details should be noted too. The first is the difference in the
channel selector escutcheon appearing in the upper center of the set's
front panel. There are two distinctly different types one with a vertical
orientation and the other horizontal. The AWA museum's Model RR-539 and
the one shown in the first photo of Ray Bintliff's article are equipped
with the former. The Russian variant and Pendleton's set have the
horizontally oriented window type escutcheons.
The difference is indicative of a production change in the set's
tuner. The horizontal "window" variant was used with a "continuous"
tuner, while the vertical escutcheon covered a "detent" or switch-type
tuner. It is speculated that the continuous tuning model was chosen for
export to Russia, as television broadcasting channel allocations were
probably not the same as in America. According to Pendleton, the switch
tuner has eleven channel positions.
The tuning knobs on the Russian museum set are not the light color
shown in Bintliff's photograph. However, they appear to be mismatched and
probably are not original. One knob is missing completely. The channel
selector knob is interesting in that it is engraved with the Cyrillic
lettering --
the word is sometimes used in Russian to indicate tuning.
The saga of the Model RR-359 was not quite over even after I had
pieced together the above information. I had been following Nat
Pendelton's restoration efforts during the intervening years and learned
that he would be displaying his set in operating condition at the 2001
Charlotte AWA meet. Figure 5 provides a look at the innards of his
restored set.
Pendleton had performed a very complete and difficult restoration, and
I must admit it was quite a thrill watching television images on such a
primitive device! It should be noted that the RR-359's horizontal
oscillator had no trouble running at 15,750 Hz for 525-line television
instead of the 10,290 Hz mandated by the 343-line standard. The
horizontal "speed" control had more than enough "stretch" for this
difference. Slope detection of FM audio left a lot to be desired, though.
Pendleton was rewarded for his efforts by receiving top prizes by the
meet's judges.
Comments on the Bintliff Article
While Ray Bintliff did very skillfully deduce several things about the
Model RR-359 from the photographs, I need to offer a bit of correction on
some points. First, the article suggests that the RR-359 was
electrostatically deflected. Even though this may appear to be the case
from the photograph, Pendleton assures me that the RR-359 uses
electro-magnetic deflection. What appears to be the neck of the CRT in
the photo is in reality a shield. The yoke, which is a somewhat "long and
skinny" affair, is concealed under the shield.
There is only one other chassis associated with the Model RR-539. This
is a large and heavy affair located at the bottom of the cabinet. It
provides both low and high voltages via the interconnecting cable seen in
both Bintliff's chassis photo and in Figure 5. The set's tuner, IF,
deflection, video/audio detection and output stages are all contained on
the main chassis. As was typical of television receivers of this era,
there was no RF stage.
Bintliff speculated on the unusual mounting of some of the set's
tubes. RCA had mounted a portion of the tube sockets at right angles to
the plane of the chassis. This effort was not to save space or otherwise
to make the chassis more compact, as the RR-359 cabinet is quite large.
It was, however, an effort to reduce capacitance effects associated with
the tubes' grid circuitry. These are grid cap tubes, and while shunt
capacitance to ground didn't matter much with radio applications, the
engineers apparently were doing everything they could to get decent high
frequency response with the materials available in television's "cave
man" days.
I would like to acknowledge Mr. Pendleton's kind assistance in
providing information for this article and also Elliot Sivowitch of the
Smithsonian for assisting me in my research efforts.
References:
Abramson, Albert. Zworykin, Pioneer of Television. Urbana and Chicago: U.of Illinois Press, 1995.
Poch, W.J. "Moscow Impressions." Jour SMPTE, Vol. 69, May, 1960, pp. 348-350.
Poch, W.J. "Notes From a Visit to the USSR in 1972." Jour SMPTE, Vol. 81, Sept. 1972, pp. 691-693.
"$2,000,000 Soviet Order to RCA." New York Times , 16 December 1935, p. 40.
(James O'Neal, 4104 Javins Dr., Alexandria, VA 22310)
copyright James O'Neal, all rights reserved.
James O'Neal has been a collector of radio and television sets since his grade school days. Employed in radio and television broadcasting for 40 years, he does television facility design and systems integration for Worldnet Television (the video counterpart of the Voice of America). The views expressed in this article arehis own.
