Abstract: A two-piece drapery traverse rod master carrier comprising a carrier body having rod guides for supporting the carrier body for movement along a traverse rod, and a drapery support arm having lead and trail ends and a mounting stem extending laterally from one side of the support arm at a location intermediate the lead and trail ends of the arm. The carrier body has an arm guide supporting the mounting stem for horizontal movement in a direction perpendicular to the path of movement of the carrier body when the lead end of the drapery support arm extends from the arm guide to adjust the lateral position of the support arm relative to the slide body. The drapery support arm can be positioned on the carrier body with the lead end extending in either of two opposed directions generally parallel to the path of movement of the carrier body.

Abstract: Transmitters and receivers are disclosed for communicating composite modulated signals including at least two modulated components. The transmitters include phase and envelope operators (54, 56) which generate the phase and envelope portions of the composite modulated signals separately by directly implementing the mathematical equations defining them. The phase operator (54) derives the phase portion as an audio frequency signal, and a phase modulator (58) responds to this phase signal to modulate the phase of an RF carrier signal in accordance therewith. The receivers include circuits (230, 232) for separately detecting the envelope and phase portions of the composite modulated signal. The phase signal is directed through a trigonometric operator such as a cosine (234), sine (236), or tangent (258) operator, and the output of this operator is multiplied by the envelope signal in an analog multiplier (238, 240) to recover a selected component of the modulated signal.

Abstract: A system for controlling beam current in an image pickup tube so as to prevent comet-tailing and blooming of highlights in the imaged scene. The video signal derived from the image pickup tube (12, 14, 16) is fed back to the beam current control circuitry (22, 24, 26) so that the beam current varies with the video signal. A non-linear amplifier (20) included in the feedback loop has low gain for normal video signals and greater gain for highlights in the video signal. This reduces normal beam current overhead and thus extends the useful life of the tube. The feedback signal provided by the amplifier (20) is a current signal in order to simplify the addition of a DC component to it. A resistor (54) and voltage source (56) perform the addition of the DC component. When multiple image pickup tubes (12, 14, 16) are used, a non-additive mixer (18) combines the plural video signals to provide the amplifier (20) with a signal representative of the video signal of greatest intensity.

Abstract: A circuit for communicating both a video signal and a timing signal over a single information channel from a television camera head to a remote camera control unit. A horizontal interval timing signal is modified by delaying the beginning of each timing pulse so that each pulse is shortened in duration by a fixed amount. This modified timing signal is added to a video signal such that the portion of the sum signal which corresponds to the modified timing signal has a distinctive amplitude which is outside of the range of amplitudes established by the white and black levels of the video signal. At the camera control unit, a circuit separates the modified timing signal from the sum signal and synchronizes a multi-phase oscillator therewith through use of a phase locked loop. The original timing and video signals are reconstructed through logical operations which use selected phases of the oscillator.

Abstract: A system for communicating a periodic signal, such as a timing signal, over a relatively low frequency channel. The periodic signal is modulated (e.g. amplitude modulated) onto a low frequency carrier signal which is phase-locked with the periodic signal. Since the carrier is coherent with the periodic signal, phase jitter and other spurious variations, which would otherwise be present in the subsequently demodulated signal, are essentially eliminated. The system is described with specific reference to the communication of timing signals between a television camera head and a camera control unit. In the described system, coherence between the carrier signal and the timing signal is assured by using the carrier signal to clock the circuit which generates the timing signal.

Abstract: An automatic system for compensating for arbitrary amounts of attenuation introduced by arbitrary lengths of transmission cable being used to communicate multichannel broadband RF signals between a television camera head and a remote camera control station. An attenuation detector is provided which monitors the peak amplitude of the signal in a selected frequency channel of the broadband signal to generate control signals which each change from a first state to a second state at a respective preselected attenuation level. These control signals are used to effect the selective bypassing of an attenuation pad located at the termination of the cable, fixed gain preamplifiers associated with the higher frequency channels of the broadband signal, and a second attenuation pad located at the output of the circuit which transmits the video signal to the viewfinder of the camera head.