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In Living Color:
The History of Colored Television
Written By: ^Northernstar*, Youth Director
On June 12th, 2009, America witnessed a drastic change in the history of television. If you were an individual who watched basic television channels, then it was important to buy & install a converter box for the transition of digital TV. Millions danced out to stores to buy the converter, all in fear they might not be able to see their favorite shows & they watched the conversion take place. The digital conversion is one of many pivotal moments to ever evolve in the history of television, but the most important change was colored televisions which showed the transmission of moving colors.
“The Wizard of Oz” is the base of any film or television show in color.
As early as 1904, there were proposals written for colored formats but the idea was thrown out of the window. In between, 1925 & 1940 the development of colored television was forthcoming, but German patent, Vladimir Zworykin, had no idea what he was doing. In 1939, MGM Studios produced a film which experimented with sepia & Technicolor to create a “fantasy” world society could only dream of. The movie featured a young girl growing up on a Kansas farm, when suddenly a tornado attacks the town & she transports to a place called Munchkinland… Do you know what movie this is? Of course, it’s the one & only “The Wizard of Oz”.
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“The Wizard of Oz” is the base of any film or television show in color, and this pushed RCA Laboratories much harder.
In R.J Reiman’s book Who Invented the Television, he revealed “the field sequential system displayed red, green, and blue television images in sequences, and depended upon the retentivity of the eye to merge these into a single color picture. If, however, flicker and picture sharpness were to be maintained at the level of monochrome television, a field sequential broadcast signal would require three times the bandwidth of monochrome. A compromise or trade off was reached by increasing the bandwidth from 4 to 5 MHz, number of frames were reduced from 30 to 20 per second, and scanning lines reduced from 525 to 343. RCA labeled this system as "mechanical", which was true of the color tube system only.” (Heiman, 1965).
On June 12th, 2009, America witnessed a drastic change in the history of television. If you were an individual who watched basic television channels, then it was important to buy & install a converter box for the transition of digital TV.
The usage of “mixed highs” was conducted by RCA’s Alda Bedford, who found progression in the human eye (sensitivity to the colors), frequencies & transmissions of the picture formats, and the bandwidth of red & blue signals were abridged significantly. The colored television sets hit an all time high in 1954 & became regular during the 1964, later producing film & television shows in color. It is still unclear who exactly invented the television, which is why R.J Reiman wrote the book. But, if it wasn’t for Zworykin finding the foundation for the colored televisions, we’d still watch our favorite shows in Black & White.
