I had the rare opportunity last night to reflect with great pleasure on a successful project of the past. No easy project, either. It is a tale of software that spans two decades, and covers technology from CPM to fiber optics. And all while watching TV.
For you fans of American Football, you know that last night was the regular season debut of Monday Night Football – its 35th season in primetime. You may have noticed a unique suspended camera system that was used in the game. This camera, the Skycam, is suspended from wires, and moves around with the action. It sits behind the Offense, and looks down into the offensive backfield. It is a unique shot, and it moves. The camera can track the action left or right, and down the field.
You are probably not aware that last night was the debut of the new, hi-resolution, redesigned and re-programmed Skycam on Monday Night Football. And it looked great! The picture was bright and crisp, the motion was smooth, the pilot and camera operator were in synch. My critical eye saw a bit of X-Y jaggedness in the motion on a diagonal move, but the Camera looked great. And the Director called it up frequently – often the first replay.
For me, it was a rich moment, to sit with a glass of Scotch, and watch on primetime live TV a fine performance by the Skycam. You see, more than 20 years ago, a group of us sat around inventor Garrett Brown’s dining room table, and dreamed this very dream – a software-driven suspended camera system whose moving, overhead viewpoint would change the look of televised Sports. And so it is coming to pass.
It was a long road, from my original FORTH (a dead process control programming language) prototype version of the control system running under CPM (a primitive OS for the 8-bit Z80 chip) on an Osborne 2 (an early suitcase computer) to the current six processor, networked, heads-up display version. The newer version that we took to the ’96 Atlanta Olympics was in use until last year. I’m only sorry that I have not a line of code left in the new system. The torch has been passed…Sigh.
There are lots of stories to share about the Skycam. As a project, it was one of my formative experiences. I’ll share those stories in the coming weeks. For now, I’d just like to shout out some congratulations to Garrett, Roland, Mike, Tom, and the rest of the Crew who made our twenty-year-old dream become real.