Colour Television 1954

The second picture didn't come out quite as large as I'd hoped, but I can't see anyway of enlarging it. Hope you can read it anyway.

Keith

The picture is very square (though rounded corners) and flat and similar contrast and colour balance to rest of print also the case isn't very deep, so I vote for mock-up. Though experimental colour sets did exist in UK then.

Colour TV using the RCA shadowmask and luminance/chrominance system was operational in the USA as early as 1954. I recall seeing adverts in National Geographic (American edition) around the time. Very small screens, though. Sizes were quoted in square inches. It took a long time for colour TV to really get going in the USA, partly due to the considerable loss of brilliance caused by the early shadowmasks (only about 25% of each colour beam actually passed through the mask to reach the phosphor) and of course the NTSC system which, due to a lack of phase alternation and delay line storage, became known as 'Never Twice the Same Colour'. On this side of the pond we benefitted from NOT being the first with a large-scale colour TV service. The European PAL system with its phase alternation and delay proved far better tham NTSC in picture quality.
All that said, the images above do look rather like mock-ups to me. An interesting item, this.
-Tony

I've always be blown away by the quality of early American Colour or Color as they say. Check out this 1956 RCA Victor. It's worth checking out this guys other videos he's got a great collection and is a top restorer.

... r_embedded

Chris

First successful demonstrations of NTSC color by RCA in 1951. First Electronic Colour TV tests probably 1924 in Germany.

Cinemascope (1953 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinemascope ) and later Panavision (1954 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panavision ) plus greater emphasis on Colour production of Holywood films from 1953 was a direct reaction to the perceived threat of color TV. Though some Widescreen films made in 1920s and first colour movie in 1890s! UK, French and German film industry continued to do a lot of B&W and Academy format (close to 4:3) into the 1960s.

So we can thank TV for more and better cinema colour. The value of widescreen though is debatable and certainly should never have been introduced before HD on TV as the Horizontal resolution of 576 line Digital and is the same pixels as 480 line digital and PAL already had poorer horizontal than vertical resolution.

NTSC is fine in the lab. It's distortion during transmission that is the problem. PAL is essentially the same system where hue errors caused in distribution/transmission are swapped for desaturation.

You can switch the crystal and disable the alternate line switching on some PAL decoders to use them as NTSC. I did this with Thorn TX10 in about 1981 to see colour on the "black & White" Apple II for Europe, which simply has non-standard crystal (not 3.57MHz) due to being 625line instead of 525line. I don't know how the later European "colour" Apple II worked.

So if you had 405 -625 colour dual standard all you need is suitable change over switch, a small relay stuck on veroboard with PAL and 405 NTSC crystals soldered into holes on PCB for original crystal and a couple of other small modifications.

I think it's easier with older ones! But likely depends on the chip(s).

It's a LOoooonggggg time since I looked at that stuff. Strangely the BBC lecturer on Colour systems I had was colour blind. Maybe he dated from before applicants did a colour blindness test (the pages of numbers with pastel coloured dots).

From the great sage, F.J. Camm - 1958

A fantastic read, thanks!

Brian

Glad you enjoyed it Brian

Keith