[oldtvman]

I think it all boils down to the fact that Gen David Sarnoff was a visionary and wasn't going to let anything stand in the way of his dreams. The battle for early color and the personnalities involved was lengendary. Gen. Sarnoff attacked the color issue the same way he would have attacked any battle in the war. The fact that Rca owned both a tv network and a tv manufacturing facility didn't hurt their cause also.

Don't get me wrong Zenith is an outstanding company, but they also saw the fact that Rca was going to spend whatever it took to get color tv off the ground, meanwhile Zenith engineers were busy perfecting their own circuit designs and finally in 1962 released the 29jc20 chassis to the public.

I still say the battle for color television would make a great mini series on tv. Here you have William S. Palley vs Gen Sarnoff facing off in the initial battle just like Patton va Rommel. The fact that there were more early Rca color sets produced leads back directly back to the fact that most companies took a wait and see approach to color.