Nightly News   |  December 07, 2012

John Silva, ‘Telecopter’ creator, dies at 92

The man who introduced news viewers to the news helicopter – a helicopter outfitted with a TV camera – helped change the way we cover live events. NBC’s Brian Williams reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> john silva has died, while you may not know his name, he changed television forever. he worked for kt la in los angeles , and in 1950 he had an idea, put a live helicopter on television, and including car chases, it has never been the same. it dominated tv news coverage. later he had a hand in developing the first mobile unit tv live truck. one of the telecopter's pilot was francis gary powers who survived getting shot down by the soviets being a captive. only to die in 1977 . for his part, he was a stanford graduate, a decorated wounded veteran of the pacific campaign in world war ii . he was ninety-two years old.