Chuck Coleman
Here's an interesting obituary of a man who many of you owe your livelihood to but have never heard of. This man is Chuck Coleman. Chuck's contribution to the television industry was, among many others, the invention of the first practical (dare I say operating) video timebase corrector, or TBC. For those of you production types, timebase correctors ahhh, well -- they correct timebase errors! Correcting timebase errors make the recording and playback of color video possible (OK for those of you nit pickers, you could always record color, you just couldn't play back in color). Timebase correctors also make it much easier to achieve interchange between recorders, that is to record a tape on one recorder and play it back on another. Those of you who remember quads as they were called, will recognize the names given to Chuck's TBCs, Amtec and Colortec. For technical details of Chucks TBC see U.S. Patent 3,100,816 issued August 13, 1963 http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html.
Note that Chuck's TBC was an analog device that used continuously variable analog delay lines with inductors and varactor diodes (and I wouldn't be surprised if Chuck invented the varactor diode as well). The first practical digital TBC, the CVS 500 blue box, was invented by Lee Scaggs, a Baptist preacher and a group of engineers at Consolidated Video Systems in the Silicon Valley (Santa Clara, California) CA1971 - see U.S. patent 3,860,952. In fact that TBC was the first practical digital video device in the world and opened up the digital television revolution with it's introduction in a hotel room at the 1972 NAB convention in Washington, D.C., but that is a whole other story.
Chuck worked for many years at Ampex and was responsible for a large number of innovations, not just improvements but real problem solving innovations, which found their way into Ampex tape machines. I dare say without Chuck's hard work we might still be watching black and white video tapes.
Chuck for a few years worked on a highly secret project for a government agency. This too was one of Chuck's great inventions. It is one which changed the world and one that every American should be thankful for. Unfortunately it is top secret. Chuck was one of the most modest people I ever had the pleasure of meeting. When asked to recount any of his many achievements his response was always to downplay the significance of the work and quickly deflect any credit to his coworkers. Oh, and one more thing, boy was he smart!
See Chuck's memorial at http://www.earlytelevision.org/coleman_eulogy.htm
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