CCD camera history
 

I'm looking for information on the very early development of the CCD TV camera.

Whilst this is some distance from the usual vintage postings this forum has a wide and knowledgable readership who may be able to help.

The first camera that had a performance good enough to be offered as a broadcast camera was the RCA CCD-1 introduced in 1983. This is fairly well documented and it is it's predecessors that I need information for.

The history of CCD Charge coupled devices goes back to 1969 and there is a history synopsis on Wikipedia. I wish to document the developmental TV cameras. I have made a start on this, see https://www.tvcameramuseum.org/earlyccd/ccdthumb.html with cameras by Bell Labs, Fairchild, RCA and others.

Information, dates, pictures. specifications, documentation etc are what is needed.

Re: CCD camera history
 

1983 certainly counts as vintage under the forum guidlines, so I'll move this thread to the Vintage TV section.

Re: CCD camera history
 

I think that the Sony CCD-V8 and CCD-M8 were the first domestic ones. I remember the CCD-M8 being demonstrated on 'Tomorrow's World' when it first came out (1985), it was of interest for having a new type of image sensor. They panned it past a candle set against a dark background; the studio camera showed a familiar green trail when doing this but the Sony one was free of this defect.

I've kept one of each of these, they are amazing pieces of work. The CCD-M8 in particular is absolutely tiny when you consider when it was made.

Re: CCD camera history
 

When I started work in 1979, I was involved in the polishing contract which was a robotic grinding rig for Walker Crossweller showers and taps. The computer controlling the seven stepper motors was fed information from a CCD camera made by Integrated Photomatrix of Dorchester. Although only a 200 by 200 monochrome image it was enough to tell the system whether the casting flash had been sufficiently removed.
Neil

Re: CCD camera history
 

I can remember industrial grade CCD cameras in the mid 1980s.
They were allowed the odd missing pixel and worked by having a large DIL chip with double the number of pixels.
The charge was transferred from the active half to the other half that was covered with black tape. The data was read off from the covered half while the next exposure was taking place.

Re: CCD camera history
 

I remember seeing my first CCD in the very-early-1980s - it was used on a telescope for satellite-laser-geodesy.

The CCD was cryogenically cooled to reduce the noise-level!

Re: CCD camera history
 

You might want to look up Reticon who made their first CCD cameras in the 70's and made sensors for astronomy.

David

Re: CCD camera history
 

Are you sure? The Reticon device I used (many years ago) was an image sensor but was not strictly a CCD. It was more like an array of photodiodes.

I have a CCD based still camera from around 1980. A Datacopy 300. It has a linear (not area) CCD with about 2000 pixels that is tracked across the frame with a motor and leadscrew. It needs a PERQ workstation to control it (yes, I have the workstation and interface card). Area CCDs existed by that time but were very expensive I think.

Re: CCD camera history
 

More about Integrated Photomatrix and its founder Peter Noble here:

https://www.nickchurchill.org.uk/pet...pixel-pioneer/

Another great "home grown" achievement!
Neil

Re: CCD camera history
 

Yes, reticon were an early player in all sorts of image sensors and bucket-brigade analogue delay devices etc.

David

Re: CCD camera history
 

AFAIR EEV (now E2V) were (and possibly still are ) prominent in high quality CCD imagers for astronomy applications.

Re: CCD camera history
 

There was a short article in Wireless World Jan 1981 about a new ccd for smaller TV cameras. The device was being developed by GEC Hirst Research in Wembley.

Eddie

Re: CCD camera history
 

The first Sony Betacam in 1982 used a Saticon sensor. So the first CCD sensor model must have been a little later and was a 3CCD.

Re: CCD camera history
 

I was using the Philips frame transfer chip in 1986 or so, it used fish glue based filters and there was a temperature warning because of this. They where used in a cooled integrating storage camera, interesting work.

Re: CCD camera history
 

I have a Sony DXC3000P 3-CCD camera which I assume is from the Eighties. It's about the size of a Betacam machine, so is quite big, but nicely balanced for shoulder work - I have used it for shooting some pop videos in the past. Although not to broadcast standard, this model was used extensively for rostrum camera work.

Re: CCD camera history
 

Is this the ‘domestic’ camera chip that Philips went on to develop and use in the LDK90?

Re: CCD camera history
 

It was a domestic chip, what happened to it I have no idea.

Re: CCD camera history
 

BVP-5 was the first 3-CCD SONY camera - when I was working for BBC tv in the eighties my Dept had BVP-5P s/n 10006 ( ie the sixth off the line- and the first one at the beeb I think) I remember spending many night shoots in Bristol on I the second series of “Casualty” because the HL79s used the previous year couldn’t handle street lights without fabulous comet tails. It became known that we had this new fangled CCD camera that didn’t suffer in the same way and it ( and I) got lent to them. We managed to get it in the first place for mounted action shots where the BVP-3 tube version suffered from microphony.
I took that camera all over the place, strung under Red Arrows, rally cars powerboats and the like.
Happy days
Pete
( we also had a DXC3000P for some jobs)

Re: CCD camera history
 

With all the rose-tinted nostalgia I omitted to say this would have been 1986 I think, and that the BVP-5 was the first Broadcast CCD from Sony. I have an idea that maybe there was a “Prosumer” model a little earlier, possibly the DXC3000.
( Although strictly OT my mention of the HL79 may be wrong and it could have been a BVP330. Brian(Beamcurrent) should be able to correct me on this since it was a single camera drama unit that came from Tel OBs)
Back on topic, just, we also had a machine that utilized a Reticon line array CCD to measure 16mm film tolerances.

Re: CCD camera history
 

As Emeritus mentioned in his post EEV( now E2V) made CCD Cameras. One of the projects I was involved with required the replacing of the Vidicon camera with a new CCD Camera, made by EEV. The project leader had many problems with this, mainly because the optics were designed around the Vidicon Camera and not the new CCD versions. This caused many many hours of discussion with Zeiss, the optics manufacturers, EEV and othe team members.
Cheers
John