Yes it was very clever button, they didn't even have to go buy a new color TV set. It was like a magic thingamy jiggy button - it changed everything. I know cz my Granpa invented it. Did anyone see when they pushed my Pa's button few years later? Anyone with a color TV got a smartphone instead when they pushed his! :)
Cant believe this was when color was invented. Everything in the world changed from black and white to color in an instance! Praise to God for this lovely Gift, who knows what he will do next.
@@spooped4033 1. The ‘everything in the world changed from black and white to colour in an instance’ bit (obviously the world was not in black and white lol) 2. The ‘praise God’ bit. Like ‘God’ obviously did not invent colour television. I assumed they were playing an overly dramatic character like a cliché ‘zoomer thing’ where we think nothing existed before the internet or maybe a religious nut, but I suppose they might be the real deal.
@@pinkchihua Wdym God didn't invent colored tape? That is the kind of stuff you'd only see in dreams, there's no way humans could create something as amazing as that.
@@Zaiqahal That's a 1956 black-and-white broadcast, preserved by means of kinescope. Remarkably, this broadcast was videotaped in color just over two years later.
@@emeryththeman video and film are entirely different technologies. Film was relatively mature by 1958. Video (especially color video) was brand new, which is why the quality of this footage is so impressive for the time. The fact that the Wizard of Oz looks good is irrelevant.
@@emeryththeman yes, but you used _The Wizard of Oz_ as an example of why we shouldn't be surprised to see good picture quality in 1958, which disregards the fact that it uses completely different technology.
@@emeryththeman I apologize if I misinterpreted what you said. I guess the _Wizard of Oz_ thing tripped me up. I can have a one-track mind sometimes. lol
Yes all the colours are accurate which is not always the case. I’m sure the original was even higher quality as this probably suffered from tape wear/aging.
Honestly thinking about it, television broadcasting tech didn’t change much at all from this point all the way up until the 2000s when we finally began to get hdtv signals. It’s really cool that this was 63 years ago but it looks like it could be more recent
I'm old and I saw this. In the early 1950's, we were fascinated even watching the test pattern on a tv, in black and white of course. And I recall life before television. You know, listening to radio programming was a wonderful way to exercise your imagination.
It's so refreshing to hear of a Commander In Chief who isn't afraid to admit that there are things which are beyond his comprehension and yet, even so, they can still excite his wonder.
@@kirbywaite1586 Well, he is one of the greatest generals in US Military history, so he was definitely brilliant in his own unique way. I think everybody is really.
You can tell this is the master recording. Probably the clearest I've ever seen a TV program this old. Edit: I've never seen a program that is this old that was shot on *video tape* look this good. I know film has existed for over a hundred years.
Videotape always gets a bad reputation for picture quality but the images are often clearer and the motion smoother than most film (Hollywood movie grade film being an exception).
This was broadcast quality 2" videotape (Ampex quad traverse scanning) that remained the standard for the industry until the mid to late 70's. The tape was expensive and usually erased and recorded over many times, but these were undoubtedly new tapes and stored under ideal conditions over the years. The quality was in fact better than the 1" helical scan tape that replaced it, lthough the newer format was cheaper and had more features for search and playback.
It all depends on the quality. There's some film that has stunning quality today. Because film can be restored to something ridiculous like 4K and 6K. But there are some old video tapes that are stunning in quality as well. The famous BBC children's interview with Mark Hamill from 1977 comes to mind. The quality is absolutely perfect despite it being 44 years old at this point.
@Your Neighborin one aspect, NTSC video has an advantage over film. Neither format provides real motion, only a series of rapidly displayed images that our brain perceives as motion. Most film is displayed at 24 frames per second, and NTSC video at 30* frames per second. That in essence is a 25% improvement in the fluidity of motion. *Technical note, yes I am aware it is 29.97 frames per second, and really only half frames interlaced at twice that rate but I am trying to simplify to avoid getting caught in the weeds.
With the press of a button, a 3.5745MHz “color burst” synch pulse was instantly inserted into a signal that was heretofore designed only to accommodate b&w receivers. The full story of the advent this feat can only be appreciated after studying vectors incapsulated in wave forms that took on digital characteristics (8 cycle burst) and keeping the bandwidth the same 6MHz as before. A lot of algebra and color theory went into this. The piece of tape that was held up looked to be 2” wide!
It was! Video tape machines of the time were huge machines that used big reels of 2 inch tape in the "quadraplex" format that recorded video at a right angle to the tape movement.
if an engineering student really wants to understand analog circuitry, they need look no further than a color television receiver. Lots of good engineering went into the design of those sets!
It’s also because Eisenhower was never a professional politician. He was a career military man who earned the trust of the nation through his successful prosecution of the Second World War. Eisenhower would’ve won his bid for POTUS regardless of his political affiliation because it simply wasn’t a factor of consideration at that time.
He was reading from copy, I imagine, especially about technology of TV. He was one fine person, and upright, you could say. Unlike so many others we’ve seen.
2" Quadruplex has a linear tape speed of 15 inches per second. In the audio world, 15 ips can be considered studio quality. I suspect this is a copy though. Though as you point out, the sound is quite good - the video quality is .... to be honest, quite poor for Quadruplex. If this were the actual master tape, the video would be crystal clear. The video signal dropouts are atypical of Quadruplex and are more akin to the failures of VHS tape or maybe even U-Matic.
@@NelsonVlog66 he plugged his camcorder to Doc's B&W tv so the image was not in color. Remember that in 1985 camcorders did not have a small color display to review the footage.
@@NelsonVlog66 Color signals are backwards compatible with black and white displays. Marty did send a color image to Doc's 1955 TV, but they only saw it in black and white
He's having trouble reading the Teleprompter. It was a very new technology then, and he may also have been a bit nearsighted, who knows. But he's looking at a Teleprompter.
No, the FCC had rules against that kind of interruption. And in fact during the age of sponsorship, commercial messages were in general less obtrusive and irritating. Many sponsors wanted to impress affluent middle-class audiences- the kind of folks who could afford a set in the early days- not harangue them with crude salesmanship.
the "sponsor" was RCA, who was vertically integrated with NBC, providing the content to the consumer equipment, televisions...this was sort of a 30-minute commercial for RCA
@@audvidgeek Vertical integration in theory, but in reality people bought TVs from a number of different manufacturers. RCA did have strong market share, but there were other set makers.
16:06 "Millions of Americans will see this ceremony as though it was being enacted at that time."... he had no concept of how we would watch this in 2021!
Hell, he would flip if he knew many of us wouldn’t even be watching it from any tape. Fip twice if he knew we would be watching it on a screen that was less of a half inch thick!
The first color TVs available to consumers cost about $1000 at the time. Equivalent to about $10,000 today. So VERY few people owned a color TV. It was a prestige item that the average middle class wage earner couldn't afford. I remember the first color TV in my town was owned by the banker.
I truly feel for you bro!! The sperm bank.. yeah I kind of know all about it... I won't tell no one that you got fired from working there for drinking on the job.... ~NMB
@@Stupranos check out Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. He was a Russian photographer who developed a way to take separate color filtered photographs that when combined could create a full-color photograph. He went around Imperial Russia and took many amazing color photos before WWI that are crystal clear and look like they could have been taken today.
@@zachatck6567 Yes, but that's not weird, it's a part of history. The original comment was the equivalent of asking, "Isn't it kinda weird that in 1932 Nazi Germany wasn't a thing?" No, it's not weird, because 1932 is before 1933. A bit of a dumb comment.
@@herechickens1809 Well, it's not. Alaska and Hawaii, considering the history of our country, are still fairly new additions. The first state: 1788, the newest state: 1959, it's 2021, you have to remember that 1959 isn't even too long ago.
The announcers here obviously trained for broadcasting in radio. Anyone who's listened to old-time radio shows of the 1940s and early 1950s will recognize this style of speaking.
@@benjiunofficialThe way he’s speaking, is with a transatlantic accent. It was hard to hear overseas with a monotone voice so they had to annunciate words with distinction so they voice could be picked up by microphones of then.
I remember when Eisenhower was elected. I stood there by our old tube radio and heard the announcement and the crowds cheer. I asked mother if that was a good thing and she said, "Yes." I can still see it all in my mind like it happened yesterday.
@@cameroncalzone8860 Usually Ike is rated as a top ten president. His biggest accomplishment was the highway act of 1956. This made traveling around the U.S. via car much easier. Traffic jams were greatly reduced, it was much more easier to navigate while on the road, and this helped the military move troopers around the country much more effective. He also sided with the supreme court in 1957 in favor of Brown vs Board of Education and told the school that they must allow black students to enter. He even demanded that the students should be protected by national guard troopers, in order to make sure that they were safe while entering. Plus, he is also credited with the creation of NASA (Founded in 1958). Of course, Ike did a have a few blunders/failures as president. One of his main goals was to help American farmers improve their livelihood. None of his policies that were design to help them really did any thing. He also did not do much of anything after Brown vs Board of education, when it came to civil rights. He had the power and a decent amount of support by the public, but choose to do nothing after that. Still, in my opinion, Ike was a very good president.
@@michaelh1603 yeah he was awful, forcing White students at bayonetpoint to go to school with blacks, permanently destroying the freedom of association of all White Americans and laying the foundation for the slow-moving race war America is now and will be for perpetuity. Not to mention the deliberate starvation of millions of Germans and German POWs.
@@TomorrowWeLive Look I recommend you to get off the internet and interact with people in the real world. No, there will be no race war, just like how there will be no civil war or revolution.
I was a fan of David Brinkley and loved his droll sense of humor. He was a master of the tasteful zinger that made you smile! Check out his biography sometime!
No stalling, countdown, suspenseful music, slow button press from 10 different camera angles, waiting a whole hour for the main show and enjoy only 5 minutes of "New Thing". They just did it. I love it!
Very rare footage! It is amazing to see the 1950s in color. Usually we see color from films of that time, but never just ordinary real people doing average things.
Agreed! Videotape recordings from electronic TV cameras has a more immediate look than motion picture film. There are very few remaining color videotapes from this era. Check this one out. It’s VERY special! vimeo.com/261611927
Exactly, Ike speaks off the cuff, impromptu. He was a class act the likes of which we have not seen in the White House for as long as I have been alive. Enjoy driving on Interstate highways...Ike made it happen.
@@permyak64valery Eisenhower made a few mistakes. He allowed the overthrow of Iran through Operation Ajax, that created radical Islamic terrorism, he allowed the overthrow of Guatemala, which overthrew their democracy for the benefit of the United Fruit Company, what you now know as Chiquita. He was mostly a good president, but he allowed criminal elements in our government to do things that were ultimately very damaging to this nation.
To see anything in videotape format prior to 1960 is very rare (CBS News started saving their Convention and Election coverage in videotape format that year). To see the world in color videotape from 1958 is like stepping into a time machine almost. It's so unfortunate that so much was lost due to shortsightedness or that we don't often have a chance to get a sense of how the programs really were as they first aired. It's really ironic to see Dwight Eisenhower as President in color videotape because I have still to this day *never* seen John F. Kennedy on any color videotape footage of anything.
8 років тому+13
I never thought about that. Too bad. But you are supposing that there is no videotape or stating?
I remember as a kid growing up in the sixties when color tv first came out. It was a big deal then. My father was a tv repairman, which was the equivalent of being a computer repair person today.
Ike Eisenhower was famous for being “incredibly awkward with his words” as you say. They called this jumbled syntax. There are those who claimed that Ike spoke like this deliberately.
I can’t help but thinking that all of the middle age men in the prime of their masculinity in 1958 who are panned by the camera from 4:27-5:03, are all dead today. Life moves fast. Savor each day. Soon, we too, like they, will be gone.
@@feni-roblox3914 Black and white tvs would have continued to see the broadcast in black and white. They don't have any of the equipment to reproduce a color image.
It is amazing how the fact it is in colour and on videotape immediately makes the recording seem much more alive and immediate rather then the newsrel stylre more prevalent at that time. Also the extra clarity in the sound makes Eisenhower more alive. Hard to believe this is now 63 years old
Wow President Eisenhower is so clear, precise, articulate. He is not stumbling, mumbling, bumbling words tripping, getting lost on stage, trying to shake the hand of no one there. I miss President Ike.
Great point, I forgot what it's like to have a president that doesn't forget names or shake hands with ghosts. Pretty cool, I hope we can have that again soon.
A man so fine that both Democrats and Republicans wanted him as their presidential candidate. We can only hope for another individual like that in these times.
How ironic that the first president to speak on a talkie film was "Silent Cal" Coolidge, and the first president be seen on color TV was the famously gray Dwight Eisenhower.
@@ericbitzer5247 What you posted above is believed to be a historical distortion promoted by neo-nazis. A Canadian historian named James Bacque is the person who claimed that U.S. officials gave orders to wipe out German prisoners of war. There were neglectful practices by the camps administrators, BUT it does not appear Eisenhower or others committed anything ;like war crimes. Official United States statistics conclude there were just over 3,000 deaths in the Rheinwiesenlager (the camps you mentioned) while German figures state them to be 4,537. American academic R. J. Rummel believes the figure is around 6,000. Bacque claimed in his 1989 book Other Losses that the number is likely in the hundreds of thousands, and may be has high as 1,000,000. *But credible historians including Stephen Ambrose, Albert E. Cowdrey and Rüdiger Overmans have examined and rejected Bacque's claims,* arguing that they were the result of faulty research practices. More recently, writing in the Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, military historian S.P. MacKenzie stated: "That German prisoners were treated very badly in the months immediately after the war […] is beyond dispute. All in all, however, Bacque's thesis and mortality figures cannot be taken as accurate."
Moreover, German POWs held in camps in the United States from 1942 to '45 generally lived in better conditions than they had experienced in combat or on German ships and submarines before their capture. Overall, as horrible a business as war is (and I am no cheerleader for the institution of war), Eisenhower overall went to great lengths to see that German POWs held by the U.S. were not the victims of war crimes.
I'm more impressed by how elegantly spoken the first commentator was and the vocabulary used in general. I want to live in a world that appreciates good speaking and words. The colour tape was what drew me in BTW, but I ended up far more fascinated by hearing how they spoke, albeit in an official setting.
I couldn't help but smile big as I saw Ike in colour for the first time ever. This was a moment recorded for posterity alright. Our modern TV era had to start somewhere, So it did right then, on May 22nd, 1958. RIP to those men that made this moment possible, no doubt all gone now. Also thanks to you for showing us this fantastic piece of history Kris. And an RIP to Ike, the first POTUS to be seen in colour.
First color Television was a very expensive process in 1926, it was a single large monitor with a large boxed section around it, and gave way to two things. Screen call, and TV in all its prismatic aspects. This Monitor was a phone call between two people in color, one in germany, and the other in America. I may be a bit faint on information, and I might not have been in color...but at the same time, It was filmed in color, and the screen was color so I don't know why I wouldn't have been. Its almost an anomaly, distance calling, color, and a TV like monitor in 1926/7.
@@alsheremeta those old white men were the one's supporting every other race and trying to unite our country. They had eloquence and the ability to be leaders.
This made me realize that one day I will be old and will talk about HDTV in the same respect you remember color tv. Crazy that one day everything I think is so technologically advanced will be seen as outdated.
For anyone wondering why the image looked fisheyed alot of old tv tape has that effect due to the recording, it was done on purpose to fit well on the old TVs of the time with their convex CRT screens.
Dear old Ike, we in the UK loved him, and loved to hear him say "A military-industrial complex of VAST proportions". What a visionary he was, a truly great man.
Eisenhower was a war criminal. He got around the Geneva Convention by calling POWs DEF (disarmed enemy forces) and tortured and killed more Germans after the war was over in the Rhine Meadows camp.
When the gentleman hit the button, I felt the same feeling as when the last analog station in my city shut down it's analog transmitter. I never thought I'd feel that again. Thank you.
Eisenhower was such a calming influence on the nation. He understood Presidential Power and the need to wield it prudently and carefully. Future POTUS can learn from his behavior and actions.
What a quote that still holds true today: "it is...apparent that unless our citizenry can be informed of the things that happen in the world and are reflected through the eyes of legislative and executive leaders in such a way that they may understand exactly what these things mean, then the United States cannot react as it should." Wow!
And yet we have the type of news media we have today. It's been for both better and worse. I wonder what they would think watched modern television and what they would have expected it would be like 70 years later
My grandfather worked for Ampex for decades. I saw prototypes and concept projects in the early 1980s that only in the last 10 years have we even seen come to consumer and mainstream use. Back in the 80s I saw discs that were magnetic like HDD platters but were the size of a CD and held way more data than tape. Similar to laser disc or videodisc. Saw discs that were essentially what went on to be holographic discs.. Video CDs and high density video discs type thing.
Awesome, thanks for sharing. This program was recorded on a monochrome Ampex VR-1000 modified by RCA Labs to record and play color. But that early color standard didn't last long. Within a year, Ampex and RCA agreed on a different color scheme using the same quadruplex VTRs. Unfortunately, all the early color videotapes such as this one could not be played on VTRs with the new color specs. My friend the late Ed Reitan and a small team of experts did some research and modified an Ampex AVR-1 to play this tape and other early color videotapes such as "An Evening with Fred Astaire" which is posted on my Vimeo channel. Here's the Astaire show and the story of how it was restored. vimeo.com/261611927 and vimeo.com/330370156
From crysal radio sets to color TV--all within the lifetimes of the people on this video. That was a time of really rapid advances in communications! I also like David Brinkley talking about "high fidelity" sound in the new studio, a subject that is still a hot topic of audiophiles today.
In Australia, colour TV was only introduced in 1975. And it took until 1978 - twenty years after this clip was broadcast - for the majority of metropolitan households to have a colour set.
Same in brazil, it was introduced in 1972, but then it took pretty much a decade, depending on the region, for the common citizen to have a color tv. My grandma was born in 1960, in the north region which is poorer, so she only got to have a color tv at home by the very late 70s
@@roboterror6366 Believe it or don't: the US was color-TV capable in 1954. However, at the time, there was no legitimate means of capturing it; (color video tape would be in it's experimental stages in 1955) but also at the time; both CBS and RCA competed against each-other to see which system the FCC would adopt. Initially, the CBS system was chosen but it wasn't exactly backwards compatible with B&W TV's. That would mean everybody in the US & Canada would have to get rid of their B&W TV's and buy a new TV. Something that probably would never have happened. RCA quickly went back to the drawing board, and found they could make their system compatible with B&W TV's simply by removing one signal from their broadcast. The FCC acquiesced and the RCA Color system became the national standard.
@@roboterror6366 Other way around. B&W TV's could receive a color signal and still display a proper greyscale image. See, color TV is very similar in concept to FM Stereo. The signal broadcast is actually MONO, and can be picked up by ANY FM receiver. However, overlaid in that Mono signal is a Pilot Tone outside the realm of human hearing as well as a difference signal that would tell a Multiplex demodulator how to separate the signal. An FM Mono receiver simply disregards the pilot tone whilst an FM Stereo receiver can detect that pilot tone and turn on it's demodulator and separate the signals into FM Stereo. Under the CBS system, it's my understanding that TV's could not display a color signal in black and white. But the system devised by RCA COULD broadcast a color signal to a B&W TV and the viewer could still see the program albeit in B&W.
This is a really excellent find, albeit some eight years since arriving on UA-cam. The colours are so vibrant, and it’s hard to believe this was filmed 65 years ago! I think it would have been a fitting gesture to let President Eisenhower push the button to activate the colour sequence though. I wonder how many people saw the changeover and marvelled at the new technology.
It's crazy to see just how far we've come technologically in such a short time My mom was born 3 months before this, and this was a year after the first man made object made it to space. It's weird to think that within my grandparents lifetime, they started with no TV and everything being on the radio, and have basically witnessed the entire life cycle of broadcast TV (as it doesn't feel controversial to say it's a dying medium with the advent of the internet as it is now) They basically grew up with TV the way my generation grew up with the internet. And to think now to do a live and in color video broadcast is basically trivial and people do it so routinely now that it is basically taken for granted. What used to require that huge, sophisticated facility can now be achieved with a device you can put in your pocket.
For the benefit of younger viewers of this video,it should be noted that color tv broadcasting was still very much in its infancy in 1958.Very few people owned color televisions at that time.They were not really worth owning until about 1964,when the tv producers began filming more tv shows in color.Prior to about 1964, approximately 95% of non animated tv shows were still being filmed in black and white.In addition to being expensive,color tv technology had not really been perfected until at least the mid 1960's. When I watch old black and white shows now,it becomes obvious that television in those days was very low definition - almost blurry - by today's standards.The early color TV sets also required frequent servicing and repair. It's great to see this historic broadcast;glad to see that it was saved...
@@johnw4067 Looked it up for the lols. RCA Model CTC-7 television cost $795 in 1958 which is the equivalent of $7,195.77 in todays money. You can get a top of the line 75 inch Sony Brand 8k television with complete installation for $6000 at best buy right now.
I think old films were filmed in higher definition than TVs could broadcast so they were toned down (however they did that back then) and re runs on tv are also the toned down version but I’m pretty sure the original versions are out there in blu ray which lets you see all the little details you’ve missed I forgot what movie it was but I remember someone saying they saw an old movie in its original quality and they were easily able to tell how fake the practical effects were simply because you could see in higher quality
I've seen this video in much better quality! You can see image artifacts in this release. They have to do with the compression method when decoding up to 720p. The tk-41 cameras, despite their coarse construction, electron tubes, size and complicated calibration method, generated a color signal of a very high quality.
@@reddragons6635 Those were shot on film; film and tape are different from each other, with film, you get a very high-quality picture but you can't shoot it live and not to mention its cost high cost. Videotape was different; with tape, you could broadcast live, and was relatively cheap but the downside with it is that it was capped to 480 lines meaning you could not get any more quality than that.
We were one of the last families in town to even own a TV set, much less a color set. One day my father brought home one of those kits that is a plastic sheet with colors that clings to the front of the TV. About the top third was blue, middle third green, and bottom third brown. Sort of like sky, foliage, and earth. At the time, almost every show on TV seemed to be a western with a lot of outdoor action. The stupid thing was actually somewhat effective. Of course, the colors didn't make sense for indoor shots (like the obligatory western saloon fights) but it seems your brain sort of ignored that. I think the brain added to make it somewhat useful because the brain knows the truth and it really did liven up those outdoor scenes.
On a side note, I learned in old silent movies that they would use color film to portray deferent times of the day. Blue film was for night, yellow film was early morning... etc.
@@troubledsole9104 The one that got the last laugh was Kodak, They made millions selling movie film stock in different colors. The next time you watch an old movie from the 1920's, and if it had a high production value, see if the picture changes color.
This is awesome this video is 4 months older than I am and I think is the first time I've seen and heard President Eisenhower so this is even more special to me.
Thank you for posting this video. I've visited this very studio (NBC WRC Washington) back in 2004, and it looked the same as it did almost 50 years earlier. I can't believe the historical significance of the place. I wish I knew about the plaque, as I would have certainly sought it out.
Thank you, David Brinkley! I turned 7 years old, about a month after this event. So good to see President. Eisenhour , whom I barely remember, but truly now respect and honor. I’ve seen many come and go, but he was the last one with a true moral and ethical character, worthy of respect, with the fortitude and strength of a true leader. Thank you for serving your country so well. We truly are a country of communicators, as we’ve shown over the years, and now on the internet!
I was 2 months shy of my 5th birthday when Eisenhower made this speech. It was a different world. 48 states, and airliners were propeller planes. My family didn't have a lot of money, so we didn't get our first color TV (a Curtis Mathis) until 1968.
I live in DC and have been in that studio, and aside from the facade reading "NBC 4" instead of "WRC TV," much of that front is exactly the same after 57 years. But this is the most complete video I have ever seen of this television special (other uploads do not include the first 1:49 minutes). I wrote the studio asking them to locally air the dedication when the studio turned 50 in 2008, but it didn't happen. (On the other hand, programming probably does not rely on viewers' requests.) But this is a wonderful and important time capsule, and there still aren't a lot of surviving video tapes from the 50s anyway, would you concur? At any rate, thank you for this.
+mca1218 There are a few surviving videotapes from the 1950s but not many. Videotape's initial purpose was to make delayed broadcasts for different time zones easier and cheaper with better quality. Sarnoff mentions the use of videotape for this purpose in his speech on the WRC broadcast. One of the best sales pitches for expensive videotape machines: the tape stock could be erased and reused many times before wearing out. Also, no kinescope films which required processing and were often run through the telecine projector for Pacific Time Zone airing still wet from the processor. Film could not be reused, therefore the networks were stuck with it. Not so with videotape! Once the show airs, erase and reuse the tape stock. Unfortunately most early videotaped shows were lost for this reason. Also, videotape storage temperatures and humidity are important. The "binder" (glue) which holds the magnetic material to the backing will fail with high storage temperatures and humidity, causing the magnetic particles to literally fall off as old tapes are being played. This clogs the video heads and renders the tapes unplayable. The old brown oxide tapes are particularly susceptible. Binder durability was a problem when when the tape stock was fairly new and wasn't resolved for years. The oldest surviving videotape in the world is also in my channel, The Edsel Show from 1957. I found this tape after years of followups. The original master tape had only been saved by an engineer at CBS Television City because it was the first time CBS used videotape for delayed broadcast of a musical special. The tape was a paperweight on his desk from 1957 until I located this fellow in 1987. The reel of tape was still in the factory plastic bag inside the tattered cardboard case, and hadn't been played since the original broadcast in 1957. I made arrangements with CBS and the then-copyright holder in 1987 to borrow the tape and copy it to a more modern format. The copyright lapsed so I posted the show to my UA-cam channel along with An Evening With Fred Astaire, the second oldest surviving color videotape after the WRC dedication. Enjoy!
+Kris Trexler Saw it, and enjoyed indeed. That's an incredible story. And I understand the paradox. I did student videos waaaay back in college in 1983 in my 20's, and didn't think about those early projects as archival keepsakes until just a few years ago, now in my 50's, forgetting that they were no doubt already erased over probably before I left the class back in 1983.
I think most of us now, underestimate what a big deal this really was in 58. Eisenhower was so amazed at seeing himself in color on the monitors in front of him, that he paused and stumbled on this words at times. It was not because he was not a good speaker, it was the reaction of seeing yourself in color for the very first time.
No, what happened in April 1956 in Chicago is what changed the world of video (Ampex revealed the first practical video tape machine to the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, now known as the NAB).
Such great orators - stunning speeches and speakers. These guys are demonstrating a sadly lost art, that was simply an expected and unremarkable skill in 1958. Compare these with any speech today and you'll witness firsthand the devolution of humanity.
I've told a number of folks that if you took an average man from the 1950s and suddenly plopped him down in our modern day world, he would likely do far better than if you placed him back in the 1800s. Technology and culture changed so much in the first half of the 20th Century or so that he would honestly have a hard time fitting in or living in that old era (I don't know if we'll ever see such a radical shift again). Stuff like computers and perhaps smartphones on the other hand likely wouldn't surprise him too much (though how advanced they are now would likely impress him), as they would just be the latest new jump in technology he encountered. Eisenhower as an older fellow here though must have been shaking his head in disbelief at how the world he knew as a child in the 1890s was almost totally gone. Remember, he was 13 years old when the Wright Brothers made their first flight, and he ended up living to see men orbit the moon on Apollo 8. Horse carts on dusty roads to cars on super highways were what he saw change in transportation, and from telegraphs to color televisons in terms of communications. It just blows my mind thinking about it.
People who saw this in black and white TV sets would be confused
All tvs at that time was black and white and every tv at that time got color when he pushes the button
Yes it was very clever button, they didn't even have to go buy a new color TV set. It was like a magic thingamy jiggy button - it changed everything. I know cz my Granpa invented it. Did anyone see when they pushed my Pa's button few years later? Anyone with a color TV got a smartphone instead when they pushed his! :)
on*
@@lephamvan9594 were*
Yeah, my grandparents had a black and white TV set that magically turned into a color TV when he pushed the button. They were baffled as fuck.
Broadcaster: “What color tie should I wear, honey?” Wife: “I don’t know; gray with gray stripes?”
Hahaha a really bad tie combination color for the moment
Cant believe this was when color was invented. Everything in the world changed from black and white to color in an instance! Praise to God for this lovely Gift, who knows what he will do next.
@@sylamy7457 /s?
@@spooped4033
1. The ‘everything in the world changed from black and white to colour in an instance’ bit (obviously the world was not in black and white lol)
2. The ‘praise God’ bit. Like ‘God’ obviously did not invent colour television.
I assumed they were playing an overly dramatic character like a cliché ‘zoomer thing’ where we think nothing existed before the internet or maybe a religious nut, but I suppose they might be the real deal.
@@pinkchihua Wdym God didn't invent colored tape? That is the kind of stuff you'd only see in dreams, there's no way humans could create something as amazing as that.
Not a single person in that room thought we’d all be watching this on hand held devices in our beds 70 years later.
absolutely true!
63 years. ✌🏻
Whew!!! I was afraid you were gonna tell us what you are wearing too!!! Dodged a Bullet there!! lol...
I’m not totally sure that’s correct actually
Probably
He’s been gone for over 50 years and was born in 1890, yet here we are watching this video.
You should see the video of someone recounting the day they witnessed Lincoln's assassination.
@@Zaiqahal That's a 1956 black-and-white broadcast, preserved by means of kinescope. Remarkably, this broadcast was videotaped in color just over two years later.
Dose WRC still use this studio. It’s sad what media has become. It’s right and left.
@@Zaiqahal I think that was on the TV show "I've Got A Secret" in 1956. Two years before this video. Crazy how short history really is.
@@ZaiqahalI've seen that interview.
This is the first time I've ever heard Eisenhower speak, let alone in color. This quality of this footage is incredible for 1958.
It's not 1858.
@@timowthie yes, that's why I said 1958.
@@emeryththeman video and film are entirely different technologies. Film was relatively mature by 1958. Video (especially color video) was brand new, which is why the quality of this footage is so impressive for the time. The fact that the Wizard of Oz looks good is irrelevant.
@@emeryththeman yes, but you used _The Wizard of Oz_ as an example of why we shouldn't be surprised to see good picture quality in 1958, which disregards the fact that it uses completely different technology.
@@emeryththeman I apologize if I misinterpreted what you said. I guess the _Wizard of Oz_ thing tripped me up. I can have a one-track mind sometimes. lol
This has a late 70's/early 80's look - incredible quality for 1958!
Yes all the colours are accurate which is not always the case. I’m sure the original was even higher quality as this probably suffered from tape wear/aging.
Impressive. It's like that HD footage of NYC in 1993 for us today.
Honestly thinking about it, television broadcasting tech didn’t change much at all from this point all the way up until the 2000s when we finally began to get hdtv signals. It’s really cool that this was 63 years ago but it looks like it could be more recent
isn’t it amazing what color did?
Its amazing
I'm old and I saw this. In the early 1950's, we were fascinated even watching the test pattern on a tv, in black and white of course. And I recall life before television. You know, listening to radio programming was a wonderful way to exercise your imagination.
How old were you when you saw this, Sue?
you are so lucky, Sue. i wish i was old.
@Glenn Beck i always forget the ms dos commands, have to write them down.
And here you are today, probably typing this on your phone in HD color. Has to be wild
@@elloowu6293 disappointing actually.
It's so refreshing to hear of a Commander In Chief who isn't afraid to admit that there are things which are beyond his comprehension and yet, even so, they can still excite his wonder.
There were quite a few things beyond Eisenhower's comprehension.
@@kirbywaite1586I would say he was pretty smart wouldn’t you?
@@matthewnikitas8905 They say he was not particularly.
At this time, no one is monitoring what the president said on TV.
@@kirbywaite1586 Well, he is one of the greatest generals in US Military history, so he was definitely brilliant in his own unique way. I think everybody is really.
2:20 That's a pretty hot-shot way to exit the President's car.
Coolest moment of that man's life.
Ikr geeeee
Lol
@@JC20XX he probably did that 10 times a day at least for the president lol
That was slick
You can tell this is the master recording. Probably the clearest I've ever seen a TV program this old.
Edit: I've never seen a program that is this old that was shot on *video tape* look this good. I know film has existed for over a hundred years.
Yep
@authorization batman wat
@authorization batman thanks for commenting something that nobody wanted here
@authorization batman
lol
lmao
Looks 15 years ahead of its time
1958. That flag has only 48 stars on it
We only had 48 States that year!
Correct! Alaska and Hawaii were still territories then. They became states the following year.
yes alaska and hawaii became states in 1959
Colin Jenkins because that's how many states that we had that YEAR!!!!!!!!!
And in the next year one of those territories that become part of the US is the Alola Region.
Perfectly clear audio, no deterioration, minimum stutter. This is an incredible find!
Incredible it’s almost like being there. Thankful we can see this. I’m old but not his old. Was wonderful to see this.
It’s AI. It’s manufactured.
@@Douglas_Gillette Funny because this recording was superimposed in the 1980s.
@@Douglas_Gilletteexcept that AI barely existed 8 years, when this video was uploaded.
@@Douglas_Gilletteseek help
That could just as easily be the '70s based on the quality of the images. Way ahead of its time.
Videotape always gets a bad reputation for picture quality but the images are often clearer and the motion smoother than most film (Hollywood movie grade film being an exception).
This was broadcast quality 2" videotape (Ampex quad traverse scanning) that remained the standard for the industry until the mid to late 70's. The tape was expensive and usually erased and recorded over many times, but these were undoubtedly new tapes and stored under ideal conditions over the years. The quality was in fact better than the 1" helical scan tape that replaced it, lthough the newer format was cheaper and had more features for search and playback.
It all depends on the quality. There's some film that has stunning quality today. Because film can be restored to something ridiculous like 4K and 6K. But there are some old video tapes that are stunning in quality as well. The famous BBC children's interview with Mark Hamill from 1977 comes to mind. The quality is absolutely perfect despite it being 44 years old at this point.
@Your Neighborin one aspect, NTSC video has an advantage over film. Neither format provides real motion, only a series of rapidly displayed images that our brain perceives as motion. Most film is displayed at 24 frames per second, and NTSC video at 30* frames per second. That in essence is a 25% improvement in the fluidity of motion.
*Technical note, yes I am aware it is 29.97 frames per second, and really only half frames interlaced at twice that rate but I am trying to simplify to avoid getting caught in the weeds.
Kevin Nash tore a quad tape !
With the press of a button, a 3.5745MHz “color burst” synch pulse was instantly inserted into a signal that was heretofore designed only to accommodate b&w receivers. The full story of the advent this feat can only be appreciated after studying vectors incapsulated in wave forms that took on digital characteristics (8 cycle burst) and keeping the bandwidth the same 6MHz as before. A lot of algebra and color theory went into this. The piece of tape that was held up looked to be 2” wide!
I study digital technology and it is so much easier to understand than what they did with analog back then.
It was! Video tape machines of the time were huge machines that used big reels of 2 inch tape in the "quadraplex" format that recorded video at a right angle to the tape movement.
if an engineering student really wants to understand analog circuitry, they need look no further than a color television receiver. Lots of good engineering went into the design of those sets!
I think you mean 1.21 gigawatts, to go back in time
now it's all digital, nowhere near as complicated and impressive as the analog technology lol
I get a sense of realism from Eisenhower. He seems authentic, yet straining to produce the words for this historic moment. Truly incredible.
He always struggled to read from the teleprompters, he preferred reading from paper. But yes, he was definitely one of the best presidents we've had
@@rebelfriend6759 no teleprompters in 1958
It’s also because Eisenhower was never a professional politician. He was a career military man who earned the trust of the nation through his successful prosecution of the Second World War. Eisenhower would’ve won his bid for POTUS regardless of his political affiliation because it simply wasn’t a factor of consideration at that time.
Genuine, for sure
He was reading from copy, I imagine, especially about technology of TV. He was one fine person, and upright, you could say. Unlike so many others we’ve seen.
Despite being very old indeed, there is NO background noise whatsoever. This is absolutely extraordinary.
I can hear white noise.
@@libertycabbagemusicme too
Uuuuhhhhhhhhh...
2" Quadruplex has a linear tape speed of 15 inches per second. In the audio world, 15 ips can be considered studio quality.
I suspect this is a copy though. Though as you point out, the sound is quite good - the video quality is .... to be honest, quite poor for Quadruplex. If this were the actual master tape, the video would be crystal clear. The video signal dropouts are atypical of Quadruplex and are more akin to the failures of VHS tape or maybe even U-Matic.
@@libertycabbagemusic excdpt that static white noise its quite clear
Pressing that button changed history forever.
The same could happen if trump presses his special button...
Tomas Gaming The final button ever pressed that is ☠️
THANKS MEXICOOO
One can’t change history.
@@TR2000LT Meh... Biden seems to have pressed it...
And to think this is only three years after the arrival of Marty Mcfly
Marty did show Doc Brown a color VHS image in 1955. Just saying.
@@NelsonVlog66 he plugged his camcorder to Doc's B&W tv so the image was not in color. Remember that in 1985 camcorders did not have a small color display to review the footage.
@@NelsonVlog66 Color signals are backwards compatible with black and white displays. Marty did send a color image to Doc's 1955 TV, but they only saw it in black and white
Coincidence?
He was bombing master hills 66 years ago? Jesus, that kids been around.
Eisenhower seems to be fascinated with what I'm guessing is his color image on the monitor and distracted, as a result.
He's having trouble reading the Teleprompter. It was a very new technology then, and he may also have been a bit nearsighted, who knows. But he's looking at a Teleprompter.
Very pretty Gail
@@LA_Commander OK coomer
Probably the last American President to say FELICITATE 👍
@@jamesrivera4947 careful ....
The symbolism of a single button bringing color to history is really cool. It really feels like the end of an era and the beginning of another.
"And now, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen, in color, the president of The United States...... but first, a word from our sponsor....."
senorkaboom ....”heres Tom with the weather...”
No, the FCC had rules against that kind of interruption. And in fact during the age of sponsorship, commercial messages were in general less obtrusive and irritating. Many sponsors wanted to impress affluent middle-class audiences- the kind of folks who could afford a set in the early days- not harangue them with crude salesmanship.
the "sponsor" was RCA, who was vertically integrated with NBC, providing the content to the consumer equipment, televisions...this was sort of a 30-minute commercial for RCA
Chesterfield cigarettes.
@@audvidgeek Vertical integration in theory, but in reality people bought TVs from a number of different manufacturers. RCA did have strong market share, but there were other set makers.
UA-cam: wanna see the 34th president ｉｎ ｃｏｌｏｕｒ
Me: sure
L
@ZCS W
@⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ wtf is your pfp hahaha
@ZCS True 😂
*color
16:06 "Millions of Americans will see this ceremony as though it was being enacted at that time."... he had no concept of how we would watch this in 2021!
No joke
Hell, he would flip if he knew many of us wouldn’t even be watching it from any tape. Fip twice if he knew we would be watching it on a screen that was less of a half inch thick!
And we have no concept of how they will watch it in 2040
@@ReginaTrans_ Holograms
@@ninyaninjabrifsanovichthes45 2060: images fed directly into brain
The first color TVs available to consumers cost about $1000 at the time. Equivalent to about $10,000 today. So VERY few people owned a color TV. It was a prestige item that the average middle class wage earner couldn't afford. I remember the first color TV in my town was owned by the banker.
Haha! Of. It would be a banker.
I truly feel for you bro!! The sperm bank.. yeah I kind of know all about it...
I won't tell no one that you got fired from working there for drinking on the job....
~NMB
I believe that the TV show Bonanza (1959) was created with the singular goal of helping to sell color TV sets.
And then became a surprise hit
The least productive member of the community.
@@coloneljackmustard There is no life without the financial market, the most important sector of any economy.
It is pretty crazy how much color changes your perception of it. When he pushes the button, totally different feeling.
Same concept when photo artist colorized old black and white photos. What photo seemed like a hundred years ago now feels so modern.
Like switching from wartime to peace
I wonder if it also feels this way for people born in a black & white world (ie pre-1965)
@@Stupranos check out Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. He was a Russian photographer who developed a way to take separate color filtered photographs that when combined could create a full-color photograph. He went around Imperial Russia and took many amazing color photos before WWI that are crystal clear and look like they could have been taken today.
It engages more brain cells.
Isn’t it kinda weird that in this recording Alaska and Hawaii weren’t states yet
How is that weird?
@@herechickens1809 We're used to having 50 states, not 48
@@zachatck6567 Yes, but that's not weird, it's a part of history. The original comment was the equivalent of asking, "Isn't it kinda weird that in 1932 Nazi Germany wasn't a thing?" No, it's not weird, because 1932 is before 1933. A bit of a dumb comment.
@@herechickens1809 Well, it's not. Alaska and Hawaii, considering the history of our country, are still fairly new additions. The first state: 1788, the newest state: 1959, it's 2021, you have to remember that 1959 isn't even too long ago.
@@herechickens1809 just looking for something to nitpick on?
As someone who works behind the scenes in television ...this is cool to see.
I also work behind the scenes in television, and couldn't agree more with your comment 👍
As a former reporter on online/terrestrial television, I couldn't help but agree!
@@OwenNews8K If there’s terrestrial television, does hat mean that there is also extra-terrestrial (ie space) television?
@@jamieyakimets839 Yeah...E.T. just might be up your alley !
By behind the scenes you mean onna couch watching tv with a beer in hand and popcorn all over the place
The announcers here obviously trained for broadcasting in radio. Anyone who's listened to old-time radio shows of the 1940s and early 1950s will recognize this style of speaking.
I know what you mean, describing every step in detail.
@@benjiunofficialThe way he’s speaking, is with a transatlantic accent. It was hard to hear overseas with a monotone voice so they had to annunciate words with distinction so they voice could be picked up by microphones of then.
The typical American accent sounded very different back then
Very cool to see President Eisenhower speak, not sure I ever have before.
@Bob Hartlee woah relax there buddy
@Bob Hartlee chill out Einstein
@Bob Hartlee A real person of intelligence would know to add a comma to that sentence
@Bob Hartlee I’m not the one pretending to be smarter than everyone else, am I ?
@@ajon6205 poor Bob.
I remember when Eisenhower was elected. I stood there by our old tube radio and heard the announcement and the crowds cheer. I asked mother if that was a good thing and she said, "Yes." I can still see it all in my mind like it happened yesterday.
so how was he
@@cameroncalzone8860 Usually Ike is rated as a top ten president. His biggest accomplishment was the highway act of 1956. This made traveling around the U.S. via car much easier. Traffic jams were greatly reduced, it was much more easier to navigate while on the road, and this helped the military move troopers around the country much more effective. He also sided with the supreme court in 1957 in favor of Brown vs Board of Education and told the school that they must allow black students to enter. He even demanded that the students should be protected by national guard troopers, in order to make sure that they were safe while entering. Plus, he is also credited with the creation of NASA (Founded in 1958). Of course, Ike did a have a few blunders/failures as president. One of his main goals was to help American farmers improve their livelihood. None of his policies that were design to help them really did any thing. He also did not do much of anything after Brown vs Board of education, when it came to civil rights. He had the power and a decent amount of support by the public, but choose to do nothing after that. Still, in my opinion, Ike was a very good president.
@@michaelh1603 yeah he was awful, forcing White students at bayonetpoint to go to school with blacks, permanently destroying the freedom of association of all White Americans and laying the foundation for the slow-moving race war America is now and will be for perpetuity. Not to mention the deliberate starvation of millions of Germans and German POWs.
@@TomorrowWeLive Look I recommend you to get off the internet and interact with people in the real world. No, there will be no race war, just like how there will be no civil war or revolution.
@@TomorrowWeLive Cry more. You're probably a Republican. Guess what, Ike was too.
I love David Brinkley's commentary. He's not afraid to say when something isn't so great. He tells it like it is.
Indeed! It's interesting to hear his style was well set in 1958, and continued throughout his career.
I was a fan of David Brinkley and loved his droll sense of humor. He was a master of the tasteful zinger that made you smile! Check out his biography sometime!
@@macmancapecod"down to and including the very latest in potted palms..." 😂
No stalling, countdown, suspenseful music, slow button press from 10 different camera angles, waiting a whole hour for the main show and enjoy only 5 minutes of "New Thing". They just did it. I love it!
2:25 no one gonna talk about how smoothly that guy got out of the car?
Secret Service: impressive!
Many of these people were born in the late 1800's.
I'm sure people in the future will think the same of us- they'll say "many of these people were born in the late 1900's- imagine!"
They were born when cowboys, outlaws and train robberies were still a thing.
LancesArmorStriking a baby born today will live to see the last person who survived the USSR die
Very rare footage! It is amazing to see the 1950s in color. Usually we see color from films of that time, but never just ordinary real people doing average things.
Agreed! Videotape recordings from electronic TV cameras has a more immediate look than motion picture film. There are very few remaining color videotapes from this era. Check this one out. It’s VERY special! vimeo.com/261611927
ใช่ครับ ภาพจากระบบโทรทัศน์จะมีความเป็นธรรมชาติมากกว่าภาพจากภาพยนตร์
This is wonderful. The most interesting thing to me is that Ike relates his whole speech from memory and without the use of a teleprompter.
Exactly, Ike speaks off the cuff, impromptu. He was a class act the likes of which we have not seen in the White House for as long as I have been alive. Enjoy driving on Interstate highways...Ike made it happen.
@@Volterrific I am doubtful that Eisenhower was speaking off the cuff. Either cue cards or teleprompters were used.
I don’t know about that. It clearly looks like he was reading off cue cards off to the right side of the screen.
@@btsadventures4310 he’s dead…everyone in that room is dead. Who cares…
@@permyak64valery Eisenhower made a few mistakes.
He allowed the overthrow of Iran through Operation Ajax, that created radical Islamic terrorism, he allowed the overthrow of Guatemala, which overthrew their democracy for the benefit of the United Fruit Company, what you now know as Chiquita.
He was mostly a good president, but he allowed criminal elements in our government to do things that were ultimately very damaging to this nation.
The visuals are amazing, but that sound! It’s so crisp and clear, it really puts you in the moment. This is such a joy to be able to experience.
16:14 “I have a strip of this new tape” At which point it immediately self-destructs right before our eyes.
yep lol it was sort of an unfortunate time for the capture card to screw up
That was exactly where they cut the strip of tape from.
@@leilanirocks LMAOO
To see anything in videotape format prior to 1960 is very rare (CBS News started saving their Convention and Election coverage in videotape format that year). To see the world in color videotape from 1958 is like stepping into a time machine almost. It's so unfortunate that so much was lost due to shortsightedness or that we don't often have a chance to get a sense of how the programs really were as they first aired. It's really ironic to see Dwight Eisenhower as President in color videotape because I have still to this day *never* seen John F. Kennedy on any color videotape footage of anything.
I never thought about that. Too bad. But you are supposing that there is no videotape or stating?
I've seen a lot of JFK in B/W videotape, but never in color.
Yeah, I know that. I was talking about color videotape. Do you know that nothing exists, or you just never saw any?
I've never seen any. If any exists it isn't in network news coverage since all of the networks were doing B/W on their newscasts through 1965.
epaddon I just hope the people who were fortunate enough to have a color TV in the day enjoyed it.
I remember as a kid growing up in the sixties when color tv first came out. It was a big deal then. My father was a tv repairman, which was the equivalent of being a computer repair person today.
A very interesting piece of history. 2 things jump out at me:
- Eisenhower was incredibly awkward with his words.
- The camera is crooked
- And no mention of Russian collusion with Khrushchev
the one thing that jumped out at me was....the flag only had 48 stars. Alaska and Hawaii were not states yet.
Now the cameras are awkward and the presidents are crooked.
Ike Eisenhower was famous for being “incredibly awkward with his words” as you say. They called this jumbled syntax. There are those who claimed that Ike spoke like this deliberately.
I can’t help but thinking that all of the middle age men in the prime of their masculinity in 1958 who are panned by the camera from 4:27-5:03, are all dead today. Life moves fast. Savor each day. Soon, we too, like they, will be gone.
It's honestly really interesting how come a simple color image can make everything more modern
This video really makes you appreciate how good Phil Hartman was at doing “old-timey announcer guy” as Troy McClure
I cant belive this is almost 70 years old. This is history. That tape needs to be sealed in a vault and preserved for future generations.
Imagine watching this in 1958 and he pressed that colour button and it changed. Would’ve been mind blowing.
If you happened to own a colour television at the time
@@FortoFight ah yeah true, it was a nice thought of everyone sat around their TV’s and then he hits that button and then it would change for them too.
@@mast3rchief536 i think it also worked for black and white tvs
@@feni-roblox3914 Black and white tvs would have continued to see the broadcast in black and white. They don't have any of the equipment to reproduce a color image.
Except most people in 1958 didn't have one. RCA which owned NBC had to give them Bonanza to sell them!
It is amazing how the fact it is in colour and on videotape immediately makes the recording seem much more alive and immediate rather then the newsrel stylre more prevalent at that time. Also the extra clarity in the sound makes Eisenhower more alive. Hard to believe this is now 63 years old
63 years old in May
And to think I’ve always gotten excited by videotape from the late *Sixties* and early Seventies... this is next-level.
This is a restoration done around 2006.
Imagine if we had this technology in the 1920's.
@@chameleonestathe end of the video says it was restored in 1988..
This is simply AMAZING; I've never seen Eisenhower in color ever. And videotape is literally in its infancy here. Awesome.
Wow President Eisenhower is so clear, precise, articulate. He is not stumbling, mumbling, bumbling words tripping, getting lost on stage, trying to shake the hand of no one there. I miss President Ike.
I wish I was alive during his tenure.
Great point, I forgot what it's like to have a president that doesn't forget names or shake hands with ghosts. Pretty cool, I hope we can have that again soon.
Can you believe he’s the same person that helped decide WW2 also!? Wish we could have presidents like him again - no matter what political party.
A man so fine that both Democrats and Republicans wanted him as their presidential candidate. We can only hope for another individual like that in these times.
I like a president that doesn't hump the flag and talk about himself.
No more cults 24
How ironic that the first president to speak on a talkie film was "Silent Cal" Coolidge, and the first president be seen on color TV was the famously gray Dwight Eisenhower.
I love that it's his first colour broadcast... and he wears a neutral grey suit to it. 😂
That’s Ike!
Eisenhower was a war criminal. He killed more Germans after the war was over in the Rhine Meadows Camps. Tortured too, no shelter, food, or water.
@@ericbitzer5247 What you posted above is believed to be a historical distortion promoted by neo-nazis. A Canadian historian named James Bacque is the person who claimed that U.S. officials gave orders to wipe out German prisoners of war. There were neglectful practices by the camps administrators, BUT it does not appear Eisenhower or others committed anything ;like war crimes.
Official United States statistics conclude there were just over 3,000 deaths in the Rheinwiesenlager (the camps you mentioned) while German figures state them to be 4,537. American academic R. J. Rummel believes the figure is around 6,000.
Bacque claimed in his 1989 book Other Losses that the number is likely in the hundreds of thousands, and may be has high as 1,000,000.
*But credible historians including Stephen Ambrose, Albert E. Cowdrey and Rüdiger Overmans have examined and rejected Bacque's claims,* arguing that they were the result of faulty research practices. More recently, writing in the Encyclopedia of Prisoners of War and Internment, military historian S.P. MacKenzie stated: "That German prisoners were treated very badly in the months immediately after the war […] is beyond dispute. All in all, however, Bacque's thesis and mortality figures cannot be taken as accurate."
Moreover, German POWs held in camps in the United States from 1942 to '45 generally lived in better conditions than they had experienced in combat or on German ships and submarines before their capture. Overall, as horrible a business as war is (and I am no cheerleader for the institution of war), Eisenhower overall went to great lengths to see that German POWs held by the U.S. were not the victims of war crimes.
I'm more impressed by how elegantly spoken the first commentator was and the vocabulary used in general.
I want to live in a world that appreciates good speaking and words.
The colour tape was what drew me in BTW, but I ended up far more fascinated by hearing how they spoke, albeit in an official setting.
It's yuge, isn't it.
I know a polio survivor who’s still alive today that shook his hand.
I dont know him but I know who you're talking about 🐢
He (Ike) gave my brother a silver dollar at the White House.
The power of Vaccines
I couldn't help but smile big as I saw Ike in colour for the first time ever. This was a moment recorded for posterity alright. Our modern TV era had to start somewhere, So it did right then, on May 22nd, 1958. RIP to those men that made this moment possible, no doubt all gone now. Also thanks to you for showing us this fantastic piece of history Kris. And an RIP to Ike, the first POTUS to be seen in colour.
First color Television was a very expensive process in 1926, it was a single large monitor with a large boxed section around it, and gave way to two things. Screen call, and TV in all its prismatic aspects. This Monitor was a phone call between two people in color, one in germany, and the other in America. I may be a bit faint on information, and I might not have been in color...but at the same time, It was filmed in color, and the screen was color so I don't know why I wouldn't have been. Its almost an anomaly, distance calling, color, and a TV like monitor in 1926/7.
Wizard of Oz moments
The old white men in DC look exactly the same today in 2023 as in 1958..
@@alsheremeta those old white men were the one's supporting every other race and trying to unite our country. They had eloquence and the ability to be leaders.
@@alsheremeta this isn't the place for the obligatory racist comments...just try to enjoy the video.
I saw this in my recommendations and it was worth watching. Who's with me?
Yeah, but 63 years too late
I remember visiting my aunt and uncle for Christmas ca. 1964 and marveling at their color TV-- Bonanza and Disneyland especially.
This made me realize that one day I will be old and will talk about HDTV in the same respect you remember color tv. Crazy that one day everything I think is so technologically advanced will be seen as outdated.
@@huntersnyder2955 When 16:9 Becomes Outdated!
For anyone wondering why the image looked fisheyed alot of old tv tape has that effect due to the recording, it was done on purpose to fit well on the old TVs of the time with their convex CRT screens.
Dear old Ike, we in the UK loved him, and loved to hear him say "A military-industrial complex of VAST proportions". What a visionary he was, a truly great man.
Eisenhower was a war criminal. He got around the Geneva Convention by calling POWs DEF (disarmed enemy forces) and tortured and killed more Germans after the war was over in the Rhine Meadows camp.
The vintage sound was superb as well. Nothing beats vacuum tube microphones and pre-amps
Isn’t it wonderful that we have an entire archive library at our fringertips now on UA-cam?
When the gentleman hit the button, I felt the same feeling as when the last analog station in my city shut down it's analog transmitter.
I never thought I'd feel that again. Thank you.
Eisenhower was such a calming influence on the nation. He understood Presidential Power and the need to wield it prudently and carefully. Future POTUS can learn from his behavior and actions.
Well that's Donald and he likes Ike.
@@torylivingston8368 A very calming influence on America is our Donald.
@@Myndir LOL... "calming influence"??? WHAT UNIVERSE DO YOU LIVE IN?
From Bush Sr and on, except for Obama, they've all been bad.
@@MyndirLol. Jan 6, remember? What a nut job.
i could only imagine how insane it mustve felt to go from telegraph to radio to black and white tv to color tv. honestly mindblowing
I slightly more than a century. Add ten years and we have satellite transmission.
What a quote that still holds true today: "it is...apparent that unless our citizenry can be informed of the things that happen in the world and are reflected through the eyes of legislative and executive leaders in such a way that they may understand exactly what these things mean, then the United States cannot react as it should." Wow!
Compare that to today's social media shadowbanning censorship. Ike would gave knocked that in it's ass in two seconds.
And yet we have the type of news media we have today. It's been for both better and worse. I wonder what they would think watched modern television and what they would have expected it would be like 70 years later
My grandfather worked for Ampex for decades. I saw prototypes and concept projects in the early 1980s that only in the last 10 years have we even seen come to consumer and mainstream use. Back in the 80s I saw discs that were magnetic like HDD platters but were the size of a CD and held way more data than tape. Similar to laser disc or videodisc. Saw discs that were essentially what went on to be holographic discs.. Video CDs and high density video discs type thing.
Awesome, thanks for sharing. This program was recorded on a monochrome Ampex VR-1000 modified by RCA Labs to record and play color. But that early color standard didn't last long. Within a year, Ampex and RCA agreed on a different color scheme using the same quadruplex VTRs. Unfortunately, all the early color videotapes such as this one could not be played on VTRs with the new color specs. My friend the late Ed Reitan and a small team of experts did some research and modified an Ampex AVR-1 to play this tape and other early color videotapes such as "An Evening with Fred Astaire" which is posted on my Vimeo channel. Here's the Astaire show and the story of how it was restored. vimeo.com/261611927 and vimeo.com/330370156
From crysal radio sets to color TV--all within the lifetimes of the people on this video. That was a time of really rapid advances in communications! I also like David Brinkley talking about "high fidelity" sound in the new studio, a subject that is still a hot topic of audiophiles today.
I miss Brinkley.
They don't know he's gonna kill the Radio Star...
This is pretty amazing footage.
In Australia, colour TV was only introduced in 1975. And it took until 1978 - twenty years after this clip was broadcast - for the majority of metropolitan households to have a colour set.
Same in brazil, it was introduced in 1972, but then it took pretty much a decade, depending on the region, for the common citizen to have a color tv.
My grandma was born in 1960, in the north region which is poorer, so she only got to have a color tv at home by the very late 70s
@@roboterror6366 Believe it or don't: the US was color-TV capable in 1954. However, at the time, there was no legitimate means of capturing it; (color video tape would be in it's experimental stages in 1955) but also at the time; both CBS and RCA competed against each-other to see which system the FCC would adopt. Initially, the CBS system was chosen but it wasn't exactly backwards compatible with B&W TV's. That would mean everybody in the US & Canada would have to get rid of their B&W TV's and buy a new TV. Something that probably would never have happened. RCA quickly went back to the drawing board, and found they could make their system compatible with B&W TV's simply by removing one signal from their broadcast. The FCC acquiesced and the RCA Color system became the national standard.
@@That_AMC_Guy wait wait wait, so they managed to make "b&w" CRTs be able to display color with some signal wizardry? WOW
@@roboterror6366 Other way around. B&W TV's could receive a color signal and still display a proper greyscale image.
See, color TV is very similar in concept to FM Stereo. The signal broadcast is actually MONO, and can be picked up by ANY FM receiver. However, overlaid in that Mono signal is a Pilot Tone outside the realm of human hearing as well as a difference signal that would tell a Multiplex demodulator how to separate the signal.
An FM Mono receiver simply disregards the pilot tone whilst an FM Stereo receiver can detect that pilot tone and turn on it's demodulator and separate the signals into FM Stereo.
Under the CBS system, it's my understanding that TV's could not display a color signal in black and white. But the system devised by RCA COULD broadcast a color signal to a B&W TV and the viewer could still see the program albeit in B&W.
@@roboterror6366no, they would still get black and white using the same signal
This is a really excellent find, albeit some eight years since arriving on UA-cam. The colours are so vibrant, and it’s hard to believe this was filmed 65 years ago! I think it would have been a fitting gesture to let President Eisenhower push the button to activate the colour sequence though. I wonder how many people saw the changeover and marvelled at the new technology.
Color television sets were very expensive in 1958, and very few people owned one. I'm guessing very few people saw this event in color.
You are right of course, but then as now, the people who control the media are the true rulers of America.
All the voices of the NBC journalists were the voices of my childhood. My parents were absolute news junkies.
My view on that time everyone is seeing Black and White untill 1958
Yes
Me too🤣🤣
Deadass
@@mynamablegg8707 study.we
!
I think Aunt Jack made a joke based on just that
I remember the first time I've watched a TV footage in color. It was back in 1972, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. What a marvelous memory!!
It's crazy to see just how far we've come technologically in such a short time
My mom was born 3 months before this, and this was a year after the first man made object made it to space.
It's weird to think that within my grandparents lifetime, they started with no TV and everything being on the radio, and have basically witnessed the entire life cycle of broadcast TV (as it doesn't feel controversial to say it's a dying medium with the advent of the internet as it is now) They basically grew up with TV the way my generation grew up with the internet.
And to think now to do a live and in color video broadcast is basically trivial and people do it so routinely now that it is basically taken for granted. What used to require that huge, sophisticated facility can now be achieved with a device you can put in your pocket.
Yeah, finally cat video's in my pocket when i need that purr and meow 😺
@@mrkitty777 Weird to think that there even was a time before cat videos.....What did we do before that?
@@knightshousegames i had real cats to play with 🤷😸😸😸
*has first in-color apparence on tv*
Eisenhower: *chooses grey suit for the day*
Yeah He sound have worn the weirdest and brightest colors for that.
There was so much optimism in the future, its almost palpable in their voices.
For the benefit of younger viewers of this video,it should be noted that color tv broadcasting was still very much in its infancy in 1958.Very few people owned color televisions at that time.They were not really worth owning until about 1964,when the tv producers began filming more tv shows in color.Prior to about 1964, approximately 95% of non animated tv shows were still being filmed in black and white.In addition to being expensive,color tv technology had not really been perfected until at least the mid 1960's. When I watch old black and white shows now,it becomes obvious that television in those days was very low definition - almost blurry - by today's standards.The early color TV sets also required frequent servicing and repair. It's great to see this historic broadcast;glad to see that it was saved...
You know Bonanza must have been popular solely because it began broadcasting in color in 1959.
So they're the equivalent to 8k televisions today.
@@PerkiReport Yes....and a color tv back then probably cost more than an 8K tv now adjusted for inflation.
@@johnw4067 Looked it up for the lols. RCA Model CTC-7 television cost $795 in 1958 which is the equivalent of $7,195.77 in todays money. You can get a top of the line 75 inch Sony Brand 8k television with complete installation for $6000 at best buy right now.
I think old films were filmed in higher definition than TVs could broadcast so they were toned down (however they did that back then) and re runs on tv are also the toned down version but I’m pretty sure the original versions are out there in blu ray which lets you see all the little details you’ve missed
I forgot what movie it was but I remember someone saying they saw an old movie in its original quality and they were easily able to tell how fake the practical effects were simply because you could see in higher quality
Eisenhower is one of my favorite presidents so seeing him in color was just super fascinating to me. Loved this!
It's so weird seeing color videotape in the 50s, makes it look like it's just a TV broadcast from the 70s
I've seen this video in much better quality! You can see image artifacts in this release. They have to do with the compression method when decoding up to 720p.
The tk-41 cameras, despite their coarse construction, electron tubes, size and complicated calibration method, generated a color signal of a very high quality.
But aren’t old cartoons from the 30s and 40s also in Technicolor?
@@reddragons6635 Those were shot on film; film and tape are different from each other, with film, you get a very high-quality picture but you can't shoot it live and not to mention its cost high cost. Videotape was different; with tape, you could broadcast live, and was relatively cheap but the downside with it is that it was capped to 480 lines meaning you could not get any more quality than that.
We were one of the last families in town to even own a TV set, much less a color set. One day my father brought home one of those kits that is a plastic sheet with colors that clings to the front of the TV. About the top third was blue, middle third green, and bottom third brown. Sort of like sky, foliage, and earth. At the time, almost every show on TV seemed to be a western with a lot of outdoor action. The stupid thing was actually somewhat effective. Of course, the colors didn't make sense for indoor shots (like the obligatory western saloon fights) but it seems your brain sort of ignored that. I think the brain added to make it somewhat useful because the brain knows the truth and it really did liven up those outdoor scenes.
On a side note, I learned in old silent movies that they would use color film to portray deferent times of the day. Blue film was for night, yellow film was early
morning... etc.
That’s sad but funny.
@@troubledsole9104 The one that got the last laugh was Kodak, They made millions selling movie film stock in different colors. The next time you watch an old movie from the 1920's, and if it had a high production value, see if the picture changes color.
My father got INE if those sheets from Woolworths on 14th st in DC 📺
@@mr.dan7144 I guess someone in marketing at Kodak got a promotion for that one.
Better than security cameras today
This is awesome this video is 4 months older than I am and I think is the first time I've seen and heard President Eisenhower so this is even more special to me.
Thank you for posting this video. I've visited this very studio (NBC WRC Washington) back in 2004, and it looked the same as it did almost 50 years earlier. I can't believe the historical significance of the place. I wish I knew about the plaque, as I would have certainly sought it out.
Thank you, David Brinkley! I turned 7 years old, about a month
after this event. So good to see President. Eisenhour , whom I barely remember, but truly now respect and honor. I’ve seen many come and go, but he was the last one with a true moral and ethical character, worthy of respect, with the fortitude and strength of a true leader. Thank you for serving your country so well.
We truly are a country of communicators, as we’ve shown over the years, and now on the internet!
“The microphones in the early days looked like big black shoeboxes and the announcer of the inaugural broadcast spoke into the wrong side of it” 😂😂💀
Fantastic commentary, but the best line is what came directly after your quote :)
When I speak into the microphone, the bass shakes up the whole room.
I was 2 months shy of my 5th birthday when Eisenhower made this speech. It was a different world. 48 states, and airliners were propeller planes. My family didn't have a lot of money, so we didn't get our first color TV (a Curtis Mathis) until 1968.
I live in DC and have been in that studio, and aside from the facade reading "NBC 4" instead of "WRC TV," much of that front is exactly the same after 57 years. But this is the most complete video I have ever seen of this television special (other uploads do not include the first 1:49 minutes). I wrote the studio asking them to locally air the dedication when the studio turned 50 in 2008, but it didn't happen. (On the other hand, programming probably does not rely on viewers' requests.) But this is a wonderful and important time capsule, and there still aren't a lot of surviving video tapes from the 50s anyway, would you concur? At any rate, thank you for this.
+mca1218 There are a few surviving videotapes from the 1950s but not many. Videotape's initial purpose was to make delayed broadcasts for different time zones easier and cheaper with better quality. Sarnoff mentions the use of videotape for this purpose in his speech on the WRC broadcast. One of the best sales pitches for expensive videotape machines: the tape stock could be erased and reused many times before wearing out. Also, no kinescope films which required processing and were often run through the telecine projector for Pacific Time Zone airing still wet from the processor. Film could not be reused, therefore the networks were stuck with it. Not so with videotape! Once the show airs, erase and reuse the tape stock. Unfortunately most early videotaped shows were lost for this reason. Also, videotape storage temperatures and humidity are important. The "binder" (glue) which holds the magnetic material to the backing will fail with high storage temperatures and humidity, causing the magnetic particles to literally fall off as old tapes are being played. This clogs the video heads and renders the tapes unplayable. The old brown oxide tapes are particularly susceptible. Binder durability was a problem when when the tape stock was fairly new and wasn't resolved for years.
The oldest surviving videotape in the world is also in my channel, The Edsel Show from 1957. I found this tape after years of followups. The original master tape had only been saved by an engineer at CBS Television City because it was the first time CBS used videotape for delayed broadcast of a musical special. The tape was a paperweight on his desk from 1957 until I located this fellow in 1987. The reel of tape was still in the factory plastic bag inside the tattered cardboard case, and hadn't been played since the original broadcast in 1957. I made arrangements with CBS and the then-copyright holder in 1987 to borrow the tape and copy it to a more modern format. The copyright lapsed so I posted the show to my UA-cam channel along with An Evening With Fred Astaire, the second oldest surviving color videotape after the WRC dedication. Enjoy!
+Kris Trexler Saw it, and enjoyed indeed. That's an incredible story. And I understand the paradox. I did student videos waaaay back in college in 1983 in my 20's, and didn't think about those early projects as archival keepsakes until just a few years ago, now in my 50's, forgetting that they were no doubt already erased over probably before I left the class back in 1983.
The quality of these early quadruplex videotape recordings is phenomenal compared to the kinescopes that they replaced.
Feel free to try again this year!
mca1218 and the
Early color TV always had a pastel look to me. I remember when we got our RCA New Vista Color TV (circa 1966)
I think most of us now, underestimate what a big deal this really was in 58. Eisenhower was so amazed at seeing himself in color on the monitors in front of him, that he paused and stumbled on this words at times. It was not because he was not a good speaker, it was the reaction of seeing yourself in color for the very first time.
He was looking at a teleprompter.
did they not have mirrors back then? haha :P
@@bestgrimbarianever yes but all the mirrors were b&w only 😭
@@RADIUMGLASS teleprompter didn’t exist in 1958.
This is astoundingly good quality for the time it was recorded.
People definitely had more dignity back then. Nicely dressed and better spoken.
Same issues of today going on then but reporting was by far very different.
@@georgemusic4all4seasons thanks
Rick from Pawn Stars: I’ll give you $2 for that videotape, and I’m taking a huge risk here
What happened that day would lead to the vcr and the modern day dvd in less than 60 years.
Actually, in less than 20 & 40 years, respectively...technology really took off like a rocket in the 60's!! :)
No, what happened in April 1956 in Chicago is what changed the world of video (Ampex revealed the first practical video tape machine to the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, now known as the NAB).
The DVD is not that modern. It was basically obsolete the moment it launched. Laserdisc was able to show HD video in the 70's!
@@StatusQuonald It made it cheaper and easier for the consumer. also, LD was analog video on a disc, while DVD was digital video
So cool! It's like a visual segue-way from the 1950s into the 1970s, in one moment.
15:26 switching from B&W to color
Correct
I bet rather than turning color on, they turned black and white off.
@@andrewscott1253 whoah big brain comment
Like the wizard of oz
@@andrewscott1253 sounds like something I'd say while baked asf
Amazing quality of tape and color for so long ago
Such great orators - stunning speeches and speakers. These guys are demonstrating a sadly lost art, that was simply an expected and unremarkable skill in 1958. Compare these with any speech today and you'll witness firsthand the devolution of humanity.
Excellent color vintage footage!
It's crazy how color makes it not seem as old
1988 was closer to the date of this film than now.
I've told a number of folks that if you took an average man from the 1950s and suddenly plopped him down in our modern day world, he would likely do far better than if you placed him back in the 1800s. Technology and culture changed so much in the first half of the 20th Century or so that he would honestly have a hard time fitting in or living in that old era (I don't know if we'll ever see such a radical shift again). Stuff like computers and perhaps smartphones on the other hand likely wouldn't surprise him too much (though how advanced they are now would likely impress him), as they would just be the latest new jump in technology he encountered. Eisenhower as an older fellow here though must have been shaking his head in disbelief at how the world he knew as a child in the 1890s was almost totally gone. Remember, he was 13 years old when the Wright Brothers made their first flight, and he ended up living to see men orbit the moon on Apollo 8. Horse carts on dusty roads to cars on super highways were what he saw change in transportation, and from telegraphs to color televisons in terms of communications. It just blows my mind thinking about it.
A true glimpse into the past, and a glorious milestone. It’s astounding and breathtaking to see something so monumental, as this broadcast was.
Thank you so much for this historic, and stunning, upload.
I always loved those clever network ID bumpers boasting color presentations; pretty color patterns.