Electronic Color Television is Here
February 1947 Popular Science

February 1947 Popular Science [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Science, published 1872-2021. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

When you see an article title such as this one from at 1947 issue of Popular Science magazine titled "Electronic Color Television is Here," you might think well duh, what other kind of TV would there be other than "electronic?" If you had been around at the time and were aware of developments in color television, you would know that there were a couple variations of electromechanical systems being considered. In fact, RCA and CBS had a rotating color wheel (red, green, and blue segments) which rotated in front of the video detector tube to separate colors for comprising the composite signal, and then a similar setup for projecting onto a display screen. Fortunately, the all-electronic NTSC format won the competition. Even so, because of complexity and reliability concerns, the color TV cameras that flew on Apollo 10 and Apollo 11 (the first moon landing) in 1969 used the color wheel approach. The RCA scheme reported here uses stationary mirrors, which went away before the NTSC standard became law.

Electronic Color Television Is Here

All-Electronic color television, which RCA engineers have achieved in a form that does not make black-and-white equipment obsolete, is a complete departure from the mechanical color transmissions of recent years. Mirrors and photoelectric cells replace moving parts.

In a recent demonstration at Princeton, N. J., pictures were broadcast with a new color-slide camera. Its developers plan laboratory transmission of live-action studio scenes by mid-1947, outdoor action scenes late in 1947, theater-size pictures in 1948:

The electronic system's mirrors and tubes split a beam of light into red, blue, and green images. Three kinescopes in the receiver pick up the separate images simultaneously - in contrast to mechanical systems in which a rotating filter transmits the three colors one at a time - and project a merged, flickerless picture.

Color television requires much higher frequencies than black-and-white work because a wider band must be used. The operating standards, however, such as the scanning rate, number of lines, and rate of picture repetition (30 per second), are the same as in commercial television. So a frequency converter would suffice to equip any black-and-white receiver to handle color broadcasts in black and white. Thus the advent of commercial color television - still some years away by RCA estimates - need not make present sets obsolete.

Color and Monochrome (B&W) Television Articles

• Color Television Has a Problem - May 1966 Radio-Electronics
• What You Want to Know About Television - February 1949 Popular Science
• Electronic Color Television Is Here - February 1947 Popular Science
• Television on the Job - February 1947 Popular Science
• What You Should Know About X-Ray Radiation in TV Sets - November 1967 Radio-Electronics
• Apollo 10 & 11 Color Video Camera Used Rotating Color Wheel - August 1969 Radio-Electronics
• What Happened at Oslo? - ITU Color TV - January 1967 Radio-Electronics
• Color Television Past Present Future - January 1954 Radio-Electronics
• Basic Color TV, Part I - January 1954 Radio-Electronics
• How Television Cathode Ray Tubes Are Made - July 1938 Radio News
• Color Television Fundamentals, Part 1 - March 1954 Radio & Television  News
• Color Television Systems - January 1951 Radio-Electronics
• Simulating a CBS Color Signal - September 1951 Radio & Television News
• The Strange World of Color Vision - January 1958 Radio Electronics
• Color Television? - December 1949 Radio & Television News
• Fundamentals of Color TV: The NTSC System - April 1954 Radio & Television News
• Color TV - October 1953 Radio & Television News
• The Color TV X-Ray Problem - November 1968 Radio-Electronics
• Introduction to Modern Television - February 1939 Radio News
• Television Industry Prepares for Postwar - January 1945 Radio News
• Television Transmission Lines - May 1952 Radio & Television News
• Television in Great Britain - January 1945 Radio News
• Television Set Shipments by Areas - May 1949 Radio & Television News
• Television Forges Ahead - March 1930 Radio News
• The Television Test Pattern - January 1949 Radio & Television News
• Television Tubes by the Thousands - December 1947 Radio News
• Television I.Q. Quiz - October 1948 Radio & Television News
• Television, As I See It - January 1945 Radio News
• The Outlook for Color TV - March 1957 Radio & Television News
• Color TV Today - September 1959 Popular Electronics
• Mac's Service Shop: Motorola's 1974 Color TV Receivers - November 1973 Popular Electronics
• Mac's Service Shop: Cost of Color TV Service - February 1969 Electronics World
• Practical Color TV for the Technician - September 1957 Radio & TV News
• Anxiety Amid Affluence: Why Color-TV Makers Worry - December 27, 1965 Electronics Magazine
• Fundamentals of Color TV - Tri-Gun Receiver Circuits - June 1954 Radio & Television News
• 3-D Color TV for the Future? - May 1958 Radio News
• Mac's Radio Service Shop: Barney Takes on Color - February 1955 Radio & Television News
• TV X-Rays - April 1970 Radio-Electronics
• TV X-Rays Are Back - June 1969 Radio-Electronics
• Television in Twelve Colors - October 1930 Radio-Craft
• Trinitron - Still a Mystery? - February 1972 Popular Electronics

Posted November 17, 2023