![\"switcher\"](\"https:\/\/johnfleetwood.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/switcher.jpg\")
<\/a>The above article appeared in the Diamondback<\/em><\/strong> on February 20, 1964.\u00a0 By this time, the Speech Department had already been providing live television courses for 5 years.\u00a0 Clearly, some type of production switcher had been in use prior to 1964.\u00a0 This was likely some type of “glitch switcher” and may or may not have even had dissolve capability.<\/p>\nIn the early 70s, I enrolled in RATV 340, and it was taught in Studio “B”.\u00a0 I vaguely recall that at least on one occasion, the class could not use the switcher because it was non-operational.\u00a0 It was a simple control panel, and nearly certainly was one of the switchers mentioned in the Diamondback<\/em><\/strong>. It almost surely operated with vacuum tube circuitry.<\/p>\n Studio “A” was equipped with a Richmond Hill switcher.\u00a0 It had been modified with a front-of-sync-board “burst delete” switch so that it could operate in monochrome mode.\u00a0 At the time, it had only 4 inputs.<\/p>\n Sometime after 1978, our budget permitted us to purchase a brand new Duca-Richardson switcher.\u00a0 We purchased a very early model of what would eventually become the Ampex switcher product line.\u00a0 Only one M\/E.\u00a0 Lots of button pushing and fiddling in order to dissolve to a key.\u00a0 That became a mantra at RTVF.\u00a0 Along with “does it make coffee?”, “can it dissolve to a key?” became a staple of short-cut jokes between Bob Mc Cleary and the techs.\u00a0 (Last but not least…”THERE’s my baloney sandwich!”)\u00a0 You had to be there.<\/p>\n Jim Duca personally delivered it and set it up.\u00a0 He made RTVF history in two ways: First, to demonstrate how durable\u00a0his Fluke digital\u00a0voltmeter was, he flung his as hard as he could across Tech Center where it hit a wall and came apart into several pieces.\u00a0 He put them together and it still worked.\u00a0 Second, he had to come up with diode clippers on all the video inputs to keep spikes from the TR-22s lock-up “hysterics” from punching through to the line output.<\/p>\n After my departure, Bob Swanner. added a GVG 1600 to the Convergence Editor on-line room, and later added a GVG 200 to Studio “A”. Both purchased NEW, and both offering a dramatic improvement to the facility capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the years, Speech\/RATV\/RTVF progressed through a series of video switchers, each new one having improvements over the last.\u00a0 The department of 1975-83 was not the first to construct their own equipment.\u00a0 Remarkably enough, this philosophy was adopted very early … Continue reading