Tomorrow's World Christmas 1982

I was under the impression that NODD was actually the name of the apparatus of which the globe, clock, schools dots and various breakdown captions were parts. I have a photo somewhere of a complete NODD camera, lights and all the globes in front of it...! I'll see if I can upload it to metropol and share it with y'all. There was also a BIGEARS - which was a slide scanner.

The colour was added to black/white images (moving or still) through a device known as the "Cox Box". Invented by a Mr Cox by all accounts. AIUI it had rotary dials for Red Green and Blue for both whites and blacks: hence a black/white image could be coloured to any combination of two colours. Although I suspect there were standard colours for the globe and clock (even if that was by means of chinagraph marks alongside the pots) it might account for the seemingly wide range of blue/yellow employed over the years.

There's a photo of BBC1's on the VT Old Boys site
http://www.vtoldboys.com/archive%20images/I33b.jpg

and BBC2's on the TV Studio History site

http://www.tvstudiohistory.co.uk/images/noddy.JPG

Looks like the camera was changed at some point

Didn't they just. I didn't realise quite how well they'd got the feel of the presentation down in LAY2 until I saw these old TW's.

The BBC 1 photo is from the late 70s and the BBC 2 photo from the mid 60s at a guess. Have you seen the pictures (and moving footage) of the Noddy for BBC1 in the late 60s / early 70s? It has 2 globes, one without the COLOUR for B&W programmes such as schools programmes. There would also be a second clock for the same purpose.

I guess the reason for the Playschool caption (you can just about make out the edge of the house logo in the top right of the BBC2 pic above) was that Playschool opened BBC2 5 times a week, so it helped to have the caption in the Noddy instead of on a slide.

The Cox Box would be analogue, so the colours would drift with the temperature of the equipment, room etc..., but they were adjusted quite often from what I've been told. BBC 2 played around with the colours on theirs all the time for Service Information broadcasts. There was probably a third control, otherwise you wouldn't be able to do this...

http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/images/bbcone/images_idents/1974/bbc1globe1978large.jpg

It appears that the globe itself was mid-luminance (they adjusted the light in the globe so that it wasn't so bright), so that it could be coloured yellow whilst the background and BBC 1 were at the extremities of luminance.

I like how they call a b&w camera a "caption scanner".

Back in the 80s I had three JVC tube cameras and had a wee rig built with R95 100w spotlights to point at letraset signage I made myself. It's mind boggling to think that's how the real thing was made.

God only knows what I thought I'd do with all that kit, but it was a hobby.

I'm no better now. I've got more equipment than half the ITV regions now, and nothing to produce with it.

Happy to rent it out for forumers who want a shot at news reading...