1951 CBS Color Broadcast Screen Shots

[egrand]

Most of you probably know already about Google's many hidden search engines and digitized content, such as Google Books. Many magazines are available on Google Books including Life, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and Billboard. All of them have a large number of articles on early tv.

One thing you might not know about is that Google scanned Life Magazine's photo archive. These are not just photos that made it to print, but all the ones that didn't from the same event. A few years ago I ran across Life's article on CBS's historic first commercial color broadcast on June 25, 1951. Here is the original article on Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=l04...20life&f=false

They published six screen shots that look pretty good in the magazine. But, go to the Life archive and you'll see all the photos taken from that event: http://images.google.com/hosted/life...be65815c8.html

If you click on the thumbnails on the right you can scroll through the collection of about 40-50 screen shots. On some the color is evident, on many they aren't. One shows a peacock, so I guess they beat NBC in more than one way! If you look at the photos printed in the magazine, some were reversed and much better color than the originals. Probably Life enhanced or retouched them, a common practice back then.

I haven't seen these anywhere else on the web. There are many pictures from behind the scenes of this broadcast, and the six printed photos have made their rounds. But, I thought the members here would like to see the rest and get a better idea of what was broadcast that night.