Biography:Dalton Pritchard

Dalton H. Pritchard (September 1, 1921 - April 18, 2010), was one of the early color television systems pioneers, working at RCA Laboratories.

Early life

Dalton Pritchard earned a BSEE degree in Electronics from Mississippi State University in 1943. He received specialized radar training at Harvard University and MIT when he entered the U.S. Army Signal Corps, then served as captain in the Asiatic-Pacific Theater during World War II. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

RCA career

In 1946 Pritchard joined RCA Laboratories as a Member of the Technical Staff at Riverhead, NY, where he was engaged in communications research. In 1950 he transferred to RCA laboratories, Princeton, NJ. There his research involved many aspects of color television systems development, receivers, color kinescopes, transmitting encoders, cameras, and magnetic recording of TV. This work included the planning and testing of systems and circuits proposed for adoption by the National Television System Committee (NTSC). Between 1960 and 1970 Mr. Pritchard worked developing video processing circuitry for color TV receivers, colorimetry and decoder matrix methods, information display techniques, and analog techniques employing charge-coupled devices for TV applications. He also worked on Selectavision VideoDisc development. As a member of the Television Research Laboratory, Mr. Pritchard was involved in research related to high-definition TV (HDTV) systems that include applications of digital signal processing techniques.

Awards

Pritchard received seven RCA Laboratories Outstanding Achievement Awards. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of SID and member of Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Kappa Mu Epsilon. He is listed in American Men and Women of Science and in Who's Who in the East.

In 1975 he was appointed a Fellow of the Technical Staff, RCA laboratories.

In 1977, he received the Vladimir K. Zworykin Award for "significant contributions to color television technology" at the IEEE Consumer Electronics Spring Conference, Chicago.

In 1981, he was a team member recipient of the David Sarnoff Award for Outstanding Technical Achievement, "for the development and implementation of a CCD comb filter integrated circuit in color TV receivers." Also in 1981 Mr. Pritchard was the only American among nine corecipients of the international Eduard Rhein Prize 1980, presented in Berlin, and was cited for numerous contributions in the field of video techniques and particularly as a leader in the development of the Dynamic Detail Processor employed in RCA ColorTrak receivers. He was also appointed a member of the New Jersey Governor's state panel of Science Advisers.

In 1983 Mr. Pritchard was elected to membership in the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Patents

Mr. Pritchard holds 54 U.S. patents.

Amateur radio operator

Pritchard was an Amateur Radio Operator First Class. His FCC Callsign was K2BH. In the late 1960s, Mr. Pritchard demonstrated an early version of "Slow Scan Television" to me (N2GJ) at his home in Princeton, NJ. There was a ham radio transmitter and receiver and a device that resembled an oscilloscope. It had a small, 3-inch (7.65 cm) yellowish phosphor screen. As the audio signal on the receiver was displayed on the SSTV device, it "painted" a somewhat fuzzy picture, line by line by line until the whole picture was received and then it repeated the painting of the picture again (and again, if desired). I believe the picture I saw was a set of callsign letters. The SSTV picture took about 8 seconds to paint. He told me that this simple system would be used throughout the space program. To learn more about SSTV, see this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow-scan television#History

Death

Pritchard died April 18, 2010, at Hilton Head Hospital Hilton Head Island, South Carolina.