Retrotechtacular: The Original Weather Channel

The Weather Channel has decided to pull the plug on its automated weather display, a favorite experience for weather geeks everywhere. However, it wasn’t the original weather nerd TV station.  Early cable TV networks had their own low-tech versions of this much longer ago than you might expect. For example, check out the video below which shows one of these weather stations back in 1975.

The audio was from a local FM station and you can enjoy handwritten public service announcements, as well.

Vendors

We always wondered exactly what the hardware for all this looked like. You could guess that some guy wasn’t panning the camera back and forth. Of course, the Internet knows all, so it didn’t take long to uncover several commercial units made for this service. We saw press releases dating back to at least 1964 and it looks like 1967 was when the devices became very mainstream.

A major supplier of this kind of “local origination” equipment was Telemation and [T. Buckingham Thomas] has a good recollection of it being in operation and how it led to him being the program director of a mid-sized cable TV company. There were a few different units that were pretty pricey, especially for those days. There were several competitors vying for this market. Texas Electronics still makes weather stations, but probably not with automated cameras anymore. Telemation, on the other hand, got sold a few times and somewhat lives on as a part of Thompson.

Note that some of the models had a slide projector and, presumably, a way to scan the slides (probably a rear projection screen). It wasn’t uncommon to see a crawler at the bottom with announcements or advertisements, also.

You might notice that there are at least two distinct designs for these machines. In one, a camera pans back and forth. The other panned a mirror — presumably, easier since there was no power or signal rotating. However, that also means, we assume, that either the dials were mirrored or the camera scan took the mirroring into account.

The units got smaller and smaller until they finally disappeared completely.

Nostalgia

We can’t honestly say we miss these old weather channels, but they do remind us of simpler times. Imagine what would have to design today to do the same function. No corporate overlord would allow you to put places in for handwritten advertisements. Of course, you don’t have to. Today, you could grab the weather data off the Internet, format it using any number of rendering techniques, and pump out video all day with zero mechanical footprint.

Better? Maybe, but it doesn’t stop us from feeling nostalgic. We also marvel at how ingenious and simple you can be when you don’t have a lot of options. Also, we are a bit surprised someone isn’t streaming from one of these old beasts or a replica today. Where is the MAME simulator for the WeatherScan?

If you just want your own wacky weather display, go for it. If you really like the analog vibe of the WeatherScan, you can do that too.