Cameras -- Fiction; Inventions -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Television programs -- Fiction
Don knew he ought to kill his B Plus before any more damage was done,
but there was something about the total blackness of that hole in the
picture on the monitor tube which fascinated him. It simply wasn’t
possible to get such a perfect black, even if you dug for it. He began
cautiously to turn the brightness control. Slowly the blackness became
lighter.
All of a sudden an image appeared in the hole! Don worked the contrast
control. The picture came swiftly into focus. It was _not_ the image of
the space suit as it should have been. Through the hole shaped like the
space suit Don was looking into the interior of a spaceship!
At once Don’s mind supplied an answer. Something had happened to his
hookup when that metal spiral had fallen into the matting amplifier and
fused certain connections! Now he was actually able to pick up images
from an extra-terrestrial spaceship! He must be excused, however. He
had worked a long time on that TV space opera. And it wasn’t long
before he realized that what he was actually seeing in the hole was
merely the spaceship set built for “The Planeteers.” He was about
to kill his power when it struck him like a 1000-volt camera shock.
How could he _see_ the spaceship set? It was _behind_ the big black
backdrop!
He studied the image on the monitor intently. That was it, all right.
No mistake about it. He was looking right through the heavy, black
duvetyne backdrop with Camera II. Or--He suddenly had a thought.
Don ran out into the studio. Bill usually kept a piece of chalk for
floor markings near his cans. There! He went over Camera I. Carefully
he drew on the floor a straight line at a 90-degree angle to the lens
from the camera over to the black drop. Then he went to Camera II and
did the same. The lines did not converge in front of the drop.
He ran behind the black, lifted up the bottom to orientate himself and
continued the lines on the other side. They crossed each other right
smack in the middle of the spaceship set.
There could only be one answer. But Don had to be sure.
He went back to Camera II and carefully swung it a little to the right.
Now the two imaginary lines would cross about 100 feet further out.
He ran back to the control room. And there--in the spacesuit-shaped
hole in the monitor image he watched the traffic on the street outside
the studio roar silently by! He was seeing through the backdrop,
through the scenery stored at the rear of the studio, through the wall
itself, and into the street. Wherever the lines from the two cameras
would cross--_he saw!_ He estimated the focal depth of the picture to
be about ten feet on either side of the actual crossing point of the
vitally important imaginary lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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