TeleMation was an American company specializing in products for the

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

industry,

post-production Post-production, also known simply as post, is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording indivi ...

and film industry, located in

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in the state. The city is the core of the Salt Lake Ci ...

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

. TeleMation started with a line of

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white to produce a range of achromatic brightnesses of grey. It is also known as greyscale in technical settings. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, ...

video equipment, and later manufactured color video products. Lyle Keys was the founder and president of TeleMation, Inc., started in the late 1960s. Early equipment was for the black-and-white

broadcast Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...

, and

CCTV Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of closed-circuit television cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signa ...

market. It was acquired by

Bell and Howell Bell and Howell is a United States brand of cameras, lenses, and motion picture machinery. It was originally founded as a company in 1907, and headquartered in Wheeling, Illinois. The company was acquired by Böwe Systec in 2003. Since 2010, the ...

in 1977 and the brand continued to be used under a number of different owners until the business was bought by French electronics company,

Thomson SA Vantiva SA (formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, Thomson SA, and Thomson Multimedia) is a French multinational corporation that provides technology products and services for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Headquarter ...

in 2002.

History

In 1954, Lyle Oscar Keys was an itinerant equipment salesman from Wibaux, Montana. John F. Fitzpatrick was president of ''

The Salt Lake Tribune ''The Salt Lake Tribune'' is a newspaper published in the city of Salt Lake City, Utah. The ''Tribune'' is owned by The Salt Lake Tribune, Inc., a non-profit corporation. The newspaper's motto is "Utah's Independent Voice Since 1871." History ...

'' at the time. Fitzpatrick's assistant John W. Gallivan hired Keys as an engineer for

KUTV KUTV (channel 2) is a television station in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside independent station KJZZ-TV (channel 14) and St. George, Utah, St. George–licensed MyNetwor ...

Channel 2, of which the ''Tribune'' was part owner. In a time when the electronics industry was burgeoning, Keys knew how to get essential parts fast in a time when these parts were unavailable or slow to get. By 1962, the ''Tribune''s owner, Kearns-Tribune Corporation, and their partners in KUTV organized Electronic Sales Corporation (ELCO) to help meet these needs. Keys was installed as president with an office in the Kearns Building in Salt Lake City. Within eight years, the company, which had been incorporated as Telemation, had 420 employees, producing and marketing 156 products for the television industry with annual sales of $10 million. It became the nation's largest supplier of closed circuit TV systems and developed scores of proprietary items for cable television, industrial, educational and commercial TV. Keys personally conceptualized many of the firm's products, helped engineer them, produced millions of dollars in sales, and even wrote Telemation's news releases and advertising copy. He also laid out the blueprint for the company's development of of space in southwest Salt Lake County's technological park. The Kearns-Tribune Corporation's interest in this publicly owned enterprise as of early 1971 was twenty-four and one-half percent. *In 1977, TeleMation inc. became a division of

. *In October 1979, Bell and Howell entered a joint venture with

Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch (styled BOSCH), is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 188 ...

, Bosch's

Fernseh Fernseh AG was a German television company headquartered in Berlin. Founded in 1929, it did research and manufacturing of television equipment. Etymology The company name "Fernseh AG" is a compound of ''Fernsehen'' ‘television’ and ''Aktien ...

Division, called Fernseh Inc. Bosch Fernseh Division was located in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

, Germany and for many years manufactured a full line of video and film equipment,

professional video camera A professional video camera (often called a television camera even though its use has spread beyond television) is a high-end device for creating electronic moving images (as opposed to a movie camera, that earlier recorded the images on film). O ...

, VTR and

Telecine Telecine ( or ), or TK, is the process of transferring film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in this post-production process. Telecine enables a motion picture, captured origi ...

, under Robert Bosch Fernsehanlagen GmbH. *In April 1982, Bosch fully acquired Fernseh Inc., renaming the company Robert Bosch Corporation, Fernseh Division. *In 1986, Bosch entered into a new joint venture with

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

Broadcast in Breda, Netherlands. This new company was called

Broadcast Television Systems Inc. Broadcast Television Systems (BTS) was a joint venture between Robert Bosch GmbH's Fernseh Division and Philips Broadcast in Breda, Netherlands, formed in 1986. History Philips had been in the broadcast market for many years with a line of PC- ...

(BTS). Philips had been in the broadcast market for many years with a line of

Norelco Philips Norelco is the American brand name for electric shavers and other personal care products made by the Personal Care division of Philips. For personal care products marketed outside the United States, Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall I ...

professional video cameras and other products. *In 1995, Philips Electronics North America Corp. fully acquired BTS Inc., renaming it Philips Broadcast - Philips Digital Video Systems. *In March 2001, this division was sold to

, the current owner; the division was called Thomson Multimedia. *In 2002, the French electronics giant Thomson SA also acquired the Grass Valley Group from

Tektronix Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent c ...

in Beaverton, Oregon, US. * Grass Valley was sold to Belden on February 6, 2014. Belden also owns Miranda.

Products

*Various Telemation B&W video products *TSE-200 Special Effects Generator *TPC-100 Porta-Studio *TMV-529 Waveform Sampler *TMV-708 Camera Control Unit *TMC 2100 Camera *TVM-650 Multicaster Switcher -

vision mixer A vision mixer is a device used to select between different live video sources and, in some cases, compositing live video sources together to create visual effects. In most of the world, both the equipment and its operator are called a visio ...

*TMM-203

Film Chain A film chain or film island is a television – professional video camera with one or more projectors aligned into the photographic lens of the camera. With two or more projectors a system of front-surface mirrors that can pop-up are used in a ...

-Multiplexer - Film Island *TMU-100 Uniplexers *TVM-550 video

distribution amplifier In electronics, a distribution amplifier, or simply distribution amp or DA, is a device that accepts a single input signal and provides this same signal to multiple isolated outputs. These devices allow a signal to be distributed to multiple de ...

*TPA-550 Pulse distribution amplifier * AP C.A.T.V. Character Generators (using

Teletype A teleprinter (teletypewriter, teletype or TTY) is an electromechanical device that can be used to send and receive typed messages through various communications channels, in both point-to-point and point-to-multipoint configurations. Init ...

machine & video camera) (1965) * A line of Character Generators * Automation equipment, like the BCS 2000 * Digital Noise Reducer, also called Digital Noise Filter, 1984 *TVU-175 Ventilation Unit * Some color products (made in Salt Lake City under various brands) *TVS-1000 TAS-1000 routers and line of party line control panels ** Phone remote router control interface *MCS 2000 Master Control Switch - vision mixer *MC Machine Control *TSG-550 Sync Generator *Tmt-101 Stairstep Generator *Tmt-102 Multiburst Generator *Tmt-103 Sin Pulse/Window Generator *Compositor

character generator A character generator, often abbreviated as CG, is a device or software that produces static or animated text (such as news crawls and credits rolls) for keying into a video stream. Modern character generators are computer-based, and they can ...

*TCF-3000 Color film chain-Multiplexer - Film Island *Digital Encoder Pal and NTSC *Mach One Editor (acquired) - a

Non-linear editing system Non-linear editing (NLE) is a form of offline editing for audio, video, and image editing. In offline editing, the original content is not modified in the course of editing. In non-linear editing, edits are specified and modified by speciali ...

*Alamar Automation (acquired) *TVS-2000 router and line of party line Control panels with and w/o mnemonic displays *CE 2200 party line controller, CE 2500 *Status Display *TVS-3000 router *Venus router *BCS 3000 HP UNIX Based controller - VG 3000 VGS card *Jupiter Controller - Windows-based router control system **VM 3000 VGA Status Display, V board **SC 3000 Serial Control Interface S board **CE 3000 Matrix Controller, M board - can support 3 level switching and other brands **ES 3000 ESnet Interface **PL 3000 party line Controller **SI 3000 Control Processor *Jupiter Control panels: CP 3200, CP 3300, CP 3310, CP 3320 *Jupiter XPress, CM4000 *Trinix router, DM–33100 *Saturn Master Control Switch Weather Channel 97 *Mars *SDR–400 *GS–400 *FGS 4000 3D Character – Graphic Generator -

Computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is a specific-technology or application of computer graphics for creating or improving images in Digital art, art, Publishing, printed media, Training simulation, simulators, videos and video games. These images ...

*Vidifont

Character generator A character generator, often abbreviated as CG, is a device or software that produces static or animated text (such as news crawls and credits rolls) for keying into a video stream. Modern character generators are computer-based, and they can ...

(acquired from

) *The Media Pool - disk recorder

Trivia

''Fernseh'' is German for "television". In German the words ''fern'' and ''seh'' literally mean "far" and "see", respectively. Because of all the mergers, customers sometimes fondly called these company(ies): Tele-bella-bosch-a-mation. Thomson still operates offices in the cities of all these acquisitions: *

Cergy Cergy () is a commune in the French department of Val-d'Oise, to the northwest of Paris. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise, created in the 1960s, of which it is the central and most populated commun ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

(Thomson World Headquarters) *

Salt Lake City, Utah Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC, is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. It is the county seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Salt ...

, US - from TeleMation Inc *

Beaverton, Oregon Beaverton is a city in the Tualatin Valley, located in Washington County in the U.S. state of Oregon, with a small portion bordering Portland. The city is among the main cities that make up the Portland metropolitan area. Its population was ...

, US - from

Nevada City, California Nevada City is the county seat of Nevada County, California, United States, northeast of Sacramento, California, Sacramento, southwest of Reno, Nevada, Reno and northeast of San Francisco. The population was 3,152 as of the 2020 United States ...

, US - from Grassvalley Group *

Breda Breda ( , , , ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of North Brabant. ...

the Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

- from Philips-

* Weiterstadt -

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

- from Bosch Fernseh Awards: *Outstanding Achievement in Technical/Engineering Development Awards from National Academy of Televisio Arts and Sciences **1966-1967: Plumbicon Tube - N.V. Philips **1987-1888: FGS 4000 computer animation system - BTS - SLC, UT **1992-1993: Prism Technology for Color Television Cameras - N.V. Philips **1993-1994: Controlled Edge Enhancement Utilizing Skin Hue KeyingBTS and Ikegami (joint award) **1997-1998: Development of a High Resolution Digital Film Scanner Eastman Kodak and Philips Germany **2000-2001: Pioneering developments in shared video-data storage systems for use in television video servers - Thomson/Philips - SLC, UT **2002-2003: Technology to simultaneously encode multiple video qualities and the corresponding metadata to enable real-time conformance and / or playout of the higher quality video (nominally broadcast) based on the decisions made using the lower quality proxiesMontage. Philips and Thomson.

Telemation Productions

Telemation Productions was a post-production house in Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois; Phoenix, Arizona; and Denver, Colorado in the 1970s and early 80s. Offices were sold or closed in the late 1980s. Telemation Productions was started as a marketing tool by Telemation Inc. in the early 1970s. It started as a single office located in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. In 1978, a second office was opened in Denver. Also in 1978, the television equipment manufacturing operation was sold to Bell & Howell. At that time, Telemation Inc. owned only the two production facilities and the manufacturing building in Salt Lake City, which was leased to Bell & Howell. In 1979 Telemation acquired a production facility in Seattle and renamed it Telemation Productions. In the early 1980s, Telemation acquired a facility in Phoenix, also renaming it Telemation Productions. In the early 1980s, Telemation Productions added a distribution division located in Chicago which provided duplication and shipping services to advertising agencies and a mobile division equipped with a television remote truck. Telemation Productions ownership changed in 1987 and again in 1990, with the Home Shopping Network buying the company. The Phoenix office and distribution division were sold in 1989 prior to this acquisition. The remote truck was sold in 1990. The Seattle office was closed in 1991, the Chicago office was closed in 1993, and the Denver office was closed the following year.

References

{{reflist

History

Products

Trivia

Telemation Productions

References

External links