I was watching Adam Savage on YouTube. He, like the rest of us reasonable people, is on self-induced lockdown. On the bright side, he can spend a lot more quality time with his tools in his “cave.” By himself, he has been posting “one day builds” and other maker type videos. He records his videos on his phone. So what? Well…it got me remembering about stuff from long ago.


In 1965 or so when I was very much younger than I am now, I used to watch television. I remember watching an afternoon talk show with television personalities discussing the news of interest. One segment was on a young boy, not much older than I was at the time. My guess is that he was 11 or 12 years old. He had created something amazing. He built his own television camera. It was in a box about the size of a bread box. Err…there I go again, geezering. In case you’ve never seen a bread box, it was a box about 16 inches wide by 8 to 9 inches high and deep, a little bigger than an “E1” Amazon box. It was probably build around a “Vidcon” tube. During the segment, they switched the video feed from the studio camera to his camera. The picture was good, and he was able to flip the image upside down. They discussed how much it cost him to make. Turns out his camera cost about one tenth the cost of the studio camera (which was also contained in a rather large box).

Fast forward 55 years…Now millions of people carry more capable television cameras in their pockets. During this lockdown, there were a few programs shot on cell phones. For example, Samantha Bee went from a crew of 70 to her husband filming the “Full Frontal Show” on his iPhone.

Well that’s probably enough “Geezering” for today…