Check this out…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ryb-LGqm7fA
What was the machine with the rotating dish antenna? Some studio prop?
The host (Truman Bradley)-was this his real name?
Nice music though!
Apparently it was his real name., according to the Wiki.
The thing below the rotating dish is a simple oscilloscope (which, from the loks of the signal, isn’t measuring anything at all.)
As far as the gizmo, an antenna dish that size would probably be useful only for S-band reception, and about the only S-band use I can think of in that era (besides radar) would be amateur S-band television. I can accept that someone on the crew fiddled around with amateur TV and brought in a homemade gizmo for set dressing (ZIV was a low-budget operation all the way around) but I think it probably falls into the category of “scientific looking but completely non-functional.”
Thanks for the link-ZIV was in many ways, a very interesting TV producer. In spite of limiteffinancial resources, they managed to produce some very good shows.
I also remember a show called “West Point Story”-it had Robert Vaugn as a star.