The original system was NTSC monochrome video. The screens were all multiplexed as analog cable channels, and any display could access any screen. Note the "TV Channel" number display to the upper right of the screen. Other locations on site also had a cable connection and could view all the screens.
The system was built by Ford Aerospace. The same system was used at NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, and at the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale, the USAF control center for their satellites. Into the mid 1980s, which was kind of embarrassing.
Setups where any station can view any screen are common in command and control. Everybody can view the screen where the action is without hovering over the person controlling that station.
The USAF really, really wanted large screen displays, and funded extensive efforts to build them.
Pre-computer, they had big manual plotting boards. Big ones, the size of theater screens, with people on lifts updating them. There was the Iconarama, essentially an Etch-A-Sketch hooked to a projector. There was a scheme which drew on movie film with a CRT, developed the film in about 30 seconds, projected the film, and discarded it. This was updated very slowly except during crises. There was Eidophor, used for at least one screen at Apollo mission control. That's a good TV projection system, but high maintenance, involving oil films in vacuum.[1] It's the only early system with serious light output. Everything else was dim.
In my aerospace days, I once came across a USAF study with a history of all the strange large screen displays the USAF had tried. For the Iconarama it said "it is recommended that further systems of this type not be procured."
By the 1980s, projection TV tubes finally had enough light output to do large screen displays.
The system was built by Ford Aerospace. The same system was used at NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain, and at the Blue Cube in Sunnyvale, the USAF control center for their satellites. Into the mid 1980s, which was kind of embarrassing.
Setups where any station can view any screen are common in command and control. Everybody can view the screen where the action is without hovering over the person controlling that station.