Review of TV Camera Tubes and Electron Optics

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a review of TV camera tubes and electron optics. Television camera tubes can now look back on almost 50 years of development and their performance has improved beyond the wildest dreams of their originators. The priorities of some of these characteristics depend on the applications that can be roughly divided between entertainment and closed circuit television. This tube has completely displaced the image orthicon for both studio use and outside broadcasts because it is sensitive and it has a linear light transfer function. This is important for the colorimetry in color television, but it makes the output signal more vulnerable to light overloads. A solution to the problem was found by scanning the target during line return with a strong, defocused beam while pulsing the gun cathode positively so as to lap off all charges on the target which had caused voltage excursions above the height of the pulse, while leaving the useful signal charges below this voltage untouched. The resolution in lead oxide tubes is more limited by the target itself than by the electron optics of the scanning beam, especially at the red end of the spectrum.