Why color C.R.T.'s (picture tubes) are also known as banana tubes? Is beaucase in an early color telelvision experiments a guy painted a banana in blue?

I did a Google search, because I had never heard the term "banana tube". It seems that about 1960, a type of long narrow tube was tested with TV signals as a possible alternative technology for the standard color CRT ("shadow mask" tube) that was always used. This long tube was called a "banana tube". Others here may know more about it.

All color tubes were not called "banana tubes."

There was a type of experimental color picture tube, developed by the vacuum-tube maker, Mullard of England, specifically called the Banana Tube.

This tube resembled an elongated wine bottle, with a single electron gun in the neck and a line going down the side of the bottle which was a single triad of three phosphor stripes, red, green and blue.

The electron beam was made to scan the triad, switching colors at a very high rate, similar to the method used in the Lawrence Chromatron, over and over, scanning out each TV line on the single triad.

The tube was in turn mounted in a rotating drum with a specially shaped curved mirror behind it, so that the glowing single stripe was made to scan the image vertically by the drum's mechanical rotation. The horizontal scanning was, of course, done by the electron beam.

Evidently this tube was developed at the time that the BBC was experimenting with a 405-line version of the NTSC system, sometime in the 1950s and early 60s. None of this came to fruition of course and color in England waited until 1967, when 625-line PAL broadcasts on UHF were initiated.

By this time the shadow-mask tube was well entrenched, sporting improvements like rectangular shapes, rare-earth phosphors and possibly by that time, in-line guns.

Other developments like plumbicon color cameras and high-band videotape recording also insured that when the Europeans finally got color television, they got a well advanced system and never had to face the years of slow growth and technological problems that we had in the U.S.

Wow! The things you learn on VK!

I saw a homebrew of that idea at burning man out in the desert. It was done with a spinning drum of RGB LEDs and a mirror. I was impressed.

Amazing stuff

... at burning man out in the desert. ...

Amazing stuff

What does that phrase mean? Maybe I'm asleep, but I don't get it at all...

Its like a tech/hippy/art/rave festive on a dry lake in Nevada. People spend all year building experimental stuff to display. Lots of it is electromechanical.

Isn't it named "Burning Man" in honor of Gram Parsons, who actually WAS burned at the 1st one in '73 or so ? Story goes, way I heard it, anyhow, they were having a huge party, Gram passed out/died from Too Much "Too Much", & burning his body just seemed like THE Thing To Do at the Time...