More than 40 years ago, amateur radio operators developed a system which allowed to transmit television images around the world with existing shortwave radio equipment at normal voice bandwidth. Inspired by the new medium several young electronic engineers in different countries started to work hard to step-by-step improve the original system by applying the latest available technology. It has been a long way from the early long-persistence tube monitors to today's software-based PC-systems with their brilliant color imaging capability. SSTV is one example of many where radio amateurs were among the first to pick up new challenges and successfully apply high technology paving the way for new technical and industrial applications.

• 1973: SSTV Monitor, using a long persistence display-tube. Fastscan to slowscan tv camera converter (sampler).
  


• 1975: First commercially available digital memory SSTV-Scanconverter SFC-1404 (was displayed on the 1975 Geneva ITU Show and designed by DL2RZ).
  


• 1976: First combined Receive&Transmit-SSTV-Scanconverter SC-420 with integrated Keyboard and Lightpen.
  


• 1978: First Color and High-Resolution Transmit&Receive SSTV-Scanconverter SC-422A. First system using the unique line sequential RGB-color transmission scheme, which directly led to today's color SSTV-standards (M1/2 S1/2, WRAASE180).
  


• 1981: First combined high-resolution color sstv and fax scanconverter SC-1. This unique system did not only allow to easily generate live sstv pictures with any standard black&white camera but also allowed reception of high resolution fax and wefax images from polar orbiting and geostationary weather satellites and to convert fax to sstv and vice versa.
  


• 1986: High resolution color sstv & fax scanconverter SC-2, allowed higher than tv-quality images (512 pixels per line) to be transmitted via ham radio. Became a difficult to reach standard for all software developers.
  


• 1993: SC-3 SSTV & FAX-PC-Scanconverter with DK7BO-DOS-Software.
  


• 1995: First true Windows SSTV-Program "Charly" developed by DJ6PS for the SC-3 PC-Scanconverter.
  


• 1997: SC-4 SSTV-PC-Scanconverter designed by DL2RZ with fully multitasking Windows 95/98 Software "Charly 4.0" written by DJ6PS.
  

The current products of DL2RZ, mainly the SC-4 SSTV-PC-Converter, represent more than 25 years of experience with this medium of SSTV, not only as engineer and electronic equipment designer, but also as an active amateur radio operator testing his developments under all kinds of propagation conditions.