Reply #15: That was a neat technology, big screen television in the late 1960s [View All]

[jmowreader]

They built a movie camera that focused its lens on a very bright cathode ray tube. The film speed was 30 frames/second--the same rate as black & white television. After the film was exposed it went through a developer that worked in seven seconds, then a very potent fixer that cleared the film in four seconds. They rinsed the chemicals off the surface of the film, then projected it. The contrast was kinda low, but the delay between receiving the image and projecting it was less than 20 seconds.

They did this for things like Muhammad Ali's fight in Africa. It was expensive to do so they usually charged admission to the events and held them in large venues--they showed Ali's fight in the Spokane Coliseum, the largest house in town at the time.