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To: Fresh Wind

I do. The guy a few houses down worked for RCA on the color TV system, and he had a prototype color set on temporary loan. January 1, 1954


The first broadcast circa 1948-49 from the RCA Labs on US 1 in NJ only reached a few miles I think - it was aimed at a system to broadcast color to black & white TVs ( the only kind available then ). The broadcast was a repeating loop of a black monkey in a green jungle eating a yellow banana under a blue sky. No Rose Bowl.


271 posted on 12/10/2025 5:15:56 AM PST by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now its your turn)
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To: PIF

What you described was not a “broadcast” in the usual sense, it was an experiment, like many other experiments that preceded it. It depended on three separate projection CRTs, not a single tube that came a few years later.

By late 1953, RCA got approval from the FCC for a true compatible color TV system, after they had prematurely approved and then unapproved the non-compatible CBS color wheel system.

The 1954 Rose Parade was the beginning of true commercial color TV broadcasting in the US, even though few people saw it in color. The first RCA production color TV, the CT-100, hit the market in April of 1954.


274 posted on 12/10/2025 7:52:10 AM PST by Fresh Wind (Charlie Kirk: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine")
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