Sure many of the old-timers around here remember the very first time they watched TV in color. Here is a very fun and interesting read...............
WASHINGTON — Doreen Golanoski remembers being a little girl when her family's television set delivered something new and amazing to her eyes. Finally, she could see The Jetsons in vivid greens, blues, reds.
RCA introduced the first color TV set in 1954.
1954 AP file photo
"You can't really appreciate color television unless you know what it was like to watch black-and-white," says Golanoski, who has five sets in her Nanticoke, Pa., home.
On March 25, 1954, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) began making color sets at its Bloomington, Ind., plant. It built 5,000 with 12-inch screens, known as the model CT-100 color receiver. They sold for $1,000 each, astronomical in those days.
They didn't get much use that year, because color telecasts were so rare. But the American love affair with the tube had taken a leap forward.
The effort to bring color to the home screen was not easy. It occupied scientists through the late 1940s and early 1950s at RCA laboratories in Princeton, N.J. Their eventual concoction sounded like something out of a science-fiction novel: the three-beam shadow mask tube.
But the struggle for a clear and true color picture had just begun. RCA continually tweaked the technology behind it all and soon replaced the original combination of phosphate, silicate and sulfide phosphors with a more efficient group made up entirely of sulfides.
The results: higher light output and better color balance. Even so, generations of viewers would fiddle with mysterious buttons to try to make green or red faces the color of flesh.
After an experimental start by CBS, NBC — a subsidiary of RCA — developed and promoted color broadcasts in the marketplace.
Ten years later, the Peacock Network was airing up to 40 hours a week in color.
While the first 5,000 color sets were gobbled up by consumers, it wasn't until 1967 that color outsold black-and-white for the first time — with more than 5.5 million sets sold. By 1973, more than half of all households had color TVs.
Like Golanoski, many remember the first time they tuned in to color.
"Everyone was piling into my mother's room" to watch the new color set there, says Jermaine Johnson, 28, of Washington, D.C.
For him, it was 1987. "I felt like we ... moved up a notch," he says.
Johnson and his wife have four TVs now — two in regular use and two more for when guests are over. "I watch it until I fall asleep," he says.
U.S. households had 248 million TV sets in 2001, or 2.4 each on average, according to the Census Bureau, citing the latest year measured.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that more than 18 million color sets and 150,000 black-and-white sets will be sold this year.
TV ownership blanketed the country as far back as 1960, when 87% of homes had one, according to the bureau. Now they are nearly universal, in more than 98% of homes.
And, increasingly, in cars.
Golanoski, 48, who has TVs in her living room, basement and three bedrooms, is ready to pass on her love of the tube to younger generations.
With her stepdaughter, Golanoski shopped at Best Buy in Alexandria, Va., for a portable TV to keep her granddaughter entertained during long road trips.
The granddaughter and her mother live in North Carolina; Golanoski lives in Pennsylvania.
"We need to see each other more often, and we need a television for the car so we can accomplish that," Golanoski explains.
People watch a ton of TV. Adults are projected to watch, on average, 1,669 hours of television this year — or about 70 days' worth, the Census Bureau says.
Frank Vespe, executive director of TV-Turnoff Network, a group that tries to get people to do just that, is not cheering color TV's anniversary.
"Television has supplanted just about every other leisure activity," he laments.
WASHINGTON — Doreen Golanoski remembers being a little girl when her family's television set delivered something new and amazing to her eyes. Finally, she could see The Jetsons in vivid greens, blues, reds.
RCA introduced the first color TV set in 1954.
1954 AP file photo
"You can't really appreciate color television unless you know what it was like to watch black-and-white," says Golanoski, who has five sets in her Nanticoke, Pa., home.
On March 25, 1954, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) began making color sets at its Bloomington, Ind., plant. It built 5,000 with 12-inch screens, known as the model CT-100 color receiver. They sold for $1,000 each, astronomical in those days.
They didn't get much use that year, because color telecasts were so rare. But the American love affair with the tube had taken a leap forward.
The effort to bring color to the home screen was not easy. It occupied scientists through the late 1940s and early 1950s at RCA laboratories in Princeton, N.J. Their eventual concoction sounded like something out of a science-fiction novel: the three-beam shadow mask tube.
But the struggle for a clear and true color picture had just begun. RCA continually tweaked the technology behind it all and soon replaced the original combination of phosphate, silicate and sulfide phosphors with a more efficient group made up entirely of sulfides.
The results: higher light output and better color balance. Even so, generations of viewers would fiddle with mysterious buttons to try to make green or red faces the color of flesh.
After an experimental start by CBS, NBC — a subsidiary of RCA — developed and promoted color broadcasts in the marketplace.
Ten years later, the Peacock Network was airing up to 40 hours a week in color.
While the first 5,000 color sets were gobbled up by consumers, it wasn't until 1967 that color outsold black-and-white for the first time — with more than 5.5 million sets sold. By 1973, more than half of all households had color TVs.
Like Golanoski, many remember the first time they tuned in to color.
"Everyone was piling into my mother's room" to watch the new color set there, says Jermaine Johnson, 28, of Washington, D.C.
For him, it was 1987. "I felt like we ... moved up a notch," he says.
Johnson and his wife have four TVs now — two in regular use and two more for when guests are over. "I watch it until I fall asleep," he says.
U.S. households had 248 million TV sets in 2001, or 2.4 each on average, according to the Census Bureau, citing the latest year measured.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that more than 18 million color sets and 150,000 black-and-white sets will be sold this year.
TV ownership blanketed the country as far back as 1960, when 87% of homes had one, according to the bureau. Now they are nearly universal, in more than 98% of homes.
And, increasingly, in cars.
Golanoski, 48, who has TVs in her living room, basement and three bedrooms, is ready to pass on her love of the tube to younger generations.
With her stepdaughter, Golanoski shopped at Best Buy in Alexandria, Va., for a portable TV to keep her granddaughter entertained during long road trips.
The granddaughter and her mother live in North Carolina; Golanoski lives in Pennsylvania.
"We need to see each other more often, and we need a television for the car so we can accomplish that," Golanoski explains.
People watch a ton of TV. Adults are projected to watch, on average, 1,669 hours of television this year — or about 70 days' worth, the Census Bureau says.
Frank Vespe, executive director of TV-Turnoff Network, a group that tries to get people to do just that, is not cheering color TV's anniversary.
"Television has supplanted just about every other leisure activity," he laments.
