Link Electronics
Link Electronics Ltd. was a major UK industrial and broadcast television equipment manufacturer and systems integrator in the 1970s and 1980s. The company was founded by John Tanner and David Mann, who began manufacturing television cameras in 1966.
Link was mainly known for its range of broadcast television cameras, but was also a manufacturer of outside broadcast vehicles, including the famous BBC "Type 5". Link also produced a wide range of ancillary studio equipment, such as distribution amplifiers, measuring sets and test signal generators.
Cameras
Link started as an industrial camera manufacturer but soon moved into broadcast equipment when the BBC approached it to develop a successor to the commercially successful EMI 2001, when EMI's own design for the 2001's successor, the 2005, failed to meet expected standards when launched around 1975. The poor performance of this camera considering its development cost led to EMI exiting the broadcast camera industry. A similar fate befell Link around 10–15 years later upon the release of the Link 130.Type 100
The Link-NEC 100 was the companion camera to the Type 130 and designed in conjunction with NEC. It had a triax interface unit and could be used stand alone, via a radio link or with a CCU via triax cable. it shared a common architecture with the 130 by using the same 18mm tubes and both where fully automatic for set-up and used the same CCU, OCP and MSUType 109
The Type 109 was a broadcast quality black and white camera mainly used as a caption scanner or simple tele-cine.Type 110/111
The 110 was Link's first attempt at a colour broadcast camera and around 200 cameras were manufactured. Styling was based on the famous EMI 2001 colour camera but at an economical price, including what some claim to be a very flimsy casing that was not of rugged design.The camera consisted of a closed body and an internal lens from a range of manufacturers, like the EMI 2001, leading to similar claims that the design was "boxy". The camera was capable of both studio and outside broadcast use and at the BBC found its way into TC6, TC8 and several presentation studios at Television Centre, BBC Lime Grove, BBC Bristol, BBC Bangor the Open University studio in Milton Keynes, BBC Wood Norton Training Centre and onto several BBC outside broadcast vehicles. ITV company Thames Television also used them at their Euston road studios from around 1979, replacing their Marconi MkVIIs.
The 110 was seen as a good, cheap, modern option which was lightweight and easier to carry compared to the much older and heavier EMI 2001 camera.
The Link 111 was a low cost version of the Link110 with a reduced feature set. In the "Video Yearbook for 1977" the Link 111 is listed at £12,000 less tubes & lens.
Type 120
The Link 120 was a portable camera system that consisted of the camera head and a portable electronics box that then connected to the CCU via standard TV36 multicore cable. The Type 120 was intended to be able to 'clip' into a studio frame to allow easy conversion from either a handheld camera on location or to a large lens camera at sports events in studio. An advert in the Guild of Television Cameramen magazine ZERB notes that there are three options. the Type 121 shoulder mount Type 122 with 3 inch viewfinder, Type 123 in sports camera body and 5 inch viewfinder and the Type 124 with full studio lens and 7 inch viewfinder. The Link 125 camera was the next step to purpose designed studio camera.Type 125
The Link 125 camera was purchased in quantity by the BBC and deployed to most of the studios at Television Centre, Pebble Mill in Birmingham and Belfast as well as several other BBC studios. It was also the camera of choice at Limehouse Television. In addition, ITV company Television South used the model in its Maidstone studios, which were still in use by those studios when they were sold off as an independent studio facility following the loss of TVS's franchise at the end of 1992.The 125 was a well thought out and well-built studio and OB camera developed from the Link 120 portable camera system. It also contained a comprehensive communications system and used a camera control unit based around the 110's but updated with auto black, white, iris and centering functions.
The BBC preferred to use a mid range Schneider-Kreuznach lens as it gave good zoom angles. Some believed it produced one of the best images for a pickup tube camera, others believed it could never match the quality of the EMI 2001. Many BBC users felt that the image was soft and not easy to focus, it also produced an unusual image effect that formed the shape of a 'teardrop'
The Link 125 was the most successful of all of Links cameras and it is believed the last studio to use them was BBC Pebble Mill which decommissioned the last four in 1994 from the news studio having upgraded to Sony BVP-375's and Ikegami HL-55's a few years before. These cameras have become collectable vintage items.
Type 130
The 130 was designed in the mid 1980s as a high tech modern camera with aspirations of quality and high tech design through the use of microprocessors for full auto setup. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that there were several hardware and/or software errors made during the design and manufacture of this model, which seriously affected the manufacturer's reputation with its broadcast customer base, much in the same way the 2005 had done for EMI around 15 years before.This was compounded by competition from high quality camera systems from Japanese manufacturers including Sony, Ikegami and Hitachi and by the Dutch manufacturer Philips. Also at this time RCA had started to use CCDs in its cameras which produced what was considered a superior picture to the then prevailing technology of camera pickup tubes, which necessitated not so many regular adjustments in their setup procedures.
In the mid-1980s the BBC was designing the Type 6 Scanner and had chosen the Link 100 and 130 and had several camera channels for testing. Prototypes had been sent to Israel, Sweden and Australia. The BBC Link 130 cameras were initially installed in Elstree Studio A along with some NEC MNC-100 lightweight cameras. Sadly, they proved to be very unreliable. They had been around for a few years in development and the idea was to use studio A Elstree and BBC Glasgow as test beds to try to make them work.
Unfortunately as this trial showed the camera suffered from poor design and many software bugs, the BBC engineering department felt that these faults wouldn't be fixed quickly and the order for Television Centre was cancelled and TVCentre opted for Thomson1531 Cameras. As a result, this act allegedly caused the final collapse of Link, which was declared bankrupt. UEI Group then briefly purchased the Company, after investing many hundreds of thousands of pounds in the development of the camera only for the poor design not being rectified in the design or prototype stages giving Link a poor reputation after several technically and commercially successful models. The company then transferred to the ownership of Quantel.
There are several units in private collections and until the early 2000s several casings were to be seen at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford as part of a public display.
Studio Equipment
Link produced a full range of sync pulse generators, colour bar generators, video distribution amps and various other pieces of industrial and broadcast television equipment.Including -
107 Camera Tube Test Channel
A Plumbicon tube condition tester251 Colour Syncrohnising Pulse Generator
A Colour Syncrohnising Pulse Generator including mixed sysnc and blanking, line and field, PAL Subcarrier and PAL ident255 Series PAL Encoder
A PAL Ecncoder with picture input and three composite outputs. Optional modules could produce Black and Burst signal and Colour Bars.260 Series PSU
286 Rack Frame
8 Module rack from and space for a 260 Series PSU.260 Series Generators
Worked with the 251 Sync Generator.260 Ramp Generator
261 RGB Colour Bar Generator
262 PAL Black and Burst Generator
263 Grille and Dot Generator
264 Step Staircase Generator
265 PLUGE Generator
268 Phase Locked Sweep Generator
271 6In to 1Out Selector panel
272 PAL burst Adder
Type 280 Video Distribution Amplifier
A universally mains powered video/sync distribution amp with six individual isolated outputs. A rack frame was available to contain up to 8 modules290 Video Delay
290 Single Channel Delay and 291 Triple channel Delay that where housed in the 280 type chassis.329 Waveform generator
Generates a 5 step Staircase pattern, Peak White and Black signals and PAL sub-carriers.360 Video Noise Meter
A devise for checking the signal quality of a video signal375 Insertion Test Generator
700 Series Talkback/Intercomm
Link 700 series intercom where custom built systems using computerized FET cross-point switching with selector panels and feeds to and from VT's and cameras.710 Directors Talkback
Specially designed for EFP applications. It consisted of three control panel's which had access to each other as well as a maximum of four cameras and an auxiliary feed.760 Series Audio Distribution
760 1In - 8Out Audio Distribution amplifier762 Rear Connector Assembly