Kinescope /ˈkɪnɪskoʊp/, shortened to kine /ˈkɪniː/, also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940s for the preservation, re-broadcasting, and sale of television programs before the introduction of quadruplex videotape, which from 1956 eventually superseded the use of kinescopes for all of these purposes. Kinescopes were the only practical way to preserve live television broadcasts prior to videotape.
Typically, the term can refer to the process itself, the equipment used for the procedure (a movie camera mounted in front of a video monitor, and synchronized to the monitor's scanning rate), or a film made using the process. Film recorders are similar, but record source material from a computer system instead of a television broadcast. A telecine is the inverse device, used to show film directly on television.
The term originally referred to the cathode-ray tube (CRT) used in television receivers, as named by inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin in 1929.[1] Hence, the recordings were known in full as kinescope films or kinescope recordings.[2][3][4] RCA was granted a trademark for the term (for its CRT) in 1932; it voluntarily released the term to the public domain in 1950.[5]
- ^ Albert Abramson, Zworykin, Pioneer of Television, University of Illinois Press, 1995, p. 84. ISBN 0-252-02104-5.
- ^ Popular Mechanics April 1953 Page 227
- ^ David Morgan (September 24, 2010). "1960 Series Game Found in Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar". CBS News. Retrieved October 29, 2015.
- ^ Audio Engineering Society, Inc. Retrieved October 29, 2015
- ^ "RCA Surrenders Rights to Four Trade-Marks," Radio Age, October 1950, p. 21.