"Screens too big"

[Jairo]

A HB complained that the screens in the Houston control room were too big. He claimed there were no TV tubes nor TV projectors so big at that time, so that must have been film, not video.

Weird claim. But what were the big screens at Houston? I suppose they were video projectors.

Thanks.

[dwight]

hi Jairo, tell the HB he'd be wise to research

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

Considering the device has been around since 1939, there isn't really any excuse for his stupidity.

Good luck getting him to admit he has no idea what he's talking about.

[Jairo]

Thank you! I think I would waste days looking for this.

[Count Zero]

Wow! Awesome, Dwight. I had wondered about that.

[dwight]

You guys are welcome. I have some documents regarding the projectors, but I need to locate them...

In the Apollo 13 press kit (IIRC) there is a MOCR floorplan which shows how the projectors were set up.

[raven]

Wow, what a fascinating piece of broadcast history. I had always been curious about this personally, in a "Now , how did they do that?" sense.

[dwight]

<Graham Chapman King Arthur voice> Well you have to know these things when you write a book on Apollo TV systems you know...</Graham Chapman King Arthur voice)

[ka9q]

There's an interesting comment in the Wikipedia article - some of these Eidophor screens implemented sequential color; I guess that means Mission Control could display color without relying on the NTSC scan converter that produced the feed for the broadcast networks.

[Kiwi]

Sept 4, 2010 16:06:16 GMT -4 dwight said:

hi Jairo, tell the HB he'd be wise to research
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

Charlie Duke mentioned it by name when the Apollo 11 CSM was bringing its crew back to Earth -- then screwed up two sentences later.

PAO: This is Apollo Control. While we're waiting for the television pictures to come in, we have in the control room here, a vase full of long-stemmed red roses, the card saying: 'To one and all concerned. Job superbly done. From a moonstruck Canadian.' Continuing to stand by as we wait for the pictures to come from Columbia. Here they come.

155:36:34 Armstrong: Houston, Apollo 11. Over.

155:36:36 Duke: Roger. Go ahead, 11. Over.

155:36:40 Armstrong: Are you picking up our TV signals?

155:36:42 Duke: That's affirmative. We have it up on the Eidophor now. The focus is a little bit out. We see the Earth in the center of the screen. Still have a little white dot in the bottom of the camera, apparently. And see some land masses in the center, at least I guess that's what it is. It's very hazy at this time on our Eidophor. Over.

[The Eidophor was a television projector used to make large images on a screen. They were in use from the 1950s until the 1990s and NASA had one in Mission Control.]

155:37:06 Duke: Let me change...

155:37:07 Aldrin: Believe that's where we just came from.

155:37:10 Duke: It is, huh? Well, I'm really looking at the bad - at a bad screen here. Stand by one. [Pause.] Hey, you're right.

155:37:34 Aldrin: [As if] it's not bad enough, not finding the right landing spot...

155:37:35 Duke: [Garble] screen now.

155:37:42 Aldrin: It's not bad enough, not finding the right landing spot, when you haven't even got the right planet!

[CapCom Charlie Duke has confused the Moon with the Earth in the TV monitor, and is also referring to the continuing uncertainty about where Eagle actually landed. It will only be resolved after their return to Earth.]

155:37:46 Duke: I'll never live that one down.

[gillianren]

See, when things like that come up, I think, "Well, there's probably something I don't know." Instead of assuming Apollo was hoaxed because they didn't fit into what I did know. Then again, some HBs know everything, so of course Apollo must have been hoaxed given its failure to fit into what they know.

[Kiwi]

Sept 6, 2010 15:14:31 GMT -4 gillianren said:

Then again, some HBs know everything...

Indeed.

Little do they know about the little I know about the little they know. If they only knew a little about the little I know, they'd know a little. But then again, if they only knew a little about the little I know, and I knew they know only a little about the little I know, then they also would only know a little about the little I know about the little they know.

[AstroSmurf]

It just goes to show how fiendishly creative the hoaxers were, that they invented a technology to support it 30 years before the hoax!

[Jason]

Fascinating. They sound like they would have been hard to repair if they stopped working.

[ka9q]

Sept 6, 2010 15:14:31 GMT -4 gillianren said:

See, when things like that come up, I think, "Well, there's probably something I don't know." Instead of assuming Apollo was hoaxed because they didn't fit into what I did know. Then again, some HBs know everything, so of course Apollo must have been hoaxed given its failure to fit into what they know.

I know you're being partly facetious, but I think this really is what being a HB is all about.

Most people welcome information they didn't already know. That's how you learn. That's how science progresses. But HBs, for some reason, find new information upsetting and threatening, so they look for ways to blunt or counteract it.

[gillianren]

I'm not sure "facetious" is the word. I mean, obviously, I don't believe they really do know everything, but I think I was making exactly the point you just did.