You want "Early Color"??? This is about as Early as it gets...

[stromberg6]

I wonder if the Goldmark family might have some slides of screen shots in their archives, either from broadcasts, or laboratory work.
Kevin

[stromberg6]

I wonder if the Goldmark family might have some slides of screen shots in their archives, either from broadcasts, or laboratory work.
Kevin

[radotvguy]

cool pictures

[Steve D.]

Hey Pete,

As you rightly point out, the photos, wrongly dated 1954, at the top of this thread are from the June, 1951 CBS "Premier" broadcast of their field sequential color system. The CBS color logo, pictured, looks to be from that broadcast. The CBS "bloodshot" eye logos, a variation of their familiar b&w eye logo, came later when CBS adopted the NTSC color system. All the LIFE Magazine photos were from various issues that date back to the early 40's through the mid '50's as LIFE covered the developement of color tv.

-Steve D.

[ceebee23]

These images are of the public displays of CBS color that occurred as part of CBS' fight to get the NTSC to accept their standard..

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...a3fc10db1d3972

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...e4b509cb936976

[electroking]

Originally Posted by ceebee23

These images are of the public displays of CBS color that occurred as part of CBS' fight to get the NTSC to accept their standard..

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...a3fc10db1d3972

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...e4b509cb936976

A pity they're in black & white! But the photographer must have been
under severe lighting restrictions, especially for the interior shot.
Thanks for posting these.

[Eric H]

Originally Posted by ceebee23

These images are of the public displays of CBS color that occurred as part of CBS' fight to get the NTSC to accept their standard..

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...a3fc10db1d3972

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...e4b509cb936976

These are great pictures but are those color wheel sets? I don't see where the wheel could be?

[edison64]

They must be CBS sets, as you can see in screen 1 it is showing the 4 color CBS system, and if my thinking is correct the CT-100 could not have displayed this shot. because the systems were not compatable. But what would the CT-100 look like trying to decode ths signals?? would it a B/W pix, or a distorted out of sync color shot? Does anyone know if pictures of this exist???

[Steve K]

I think that those are the color wheel sets made by Zenith in 1949.

Steve

[Steve McVoy]

The field sequential and NTSC systems are completely different. You would see nothing but a jumbled mess on a CT-100 if you tried to watch field sequential. Horizontal scanning rate on the CBS system is 29,150 Hz vs. 15,575 for NTSC. Vertical scan rate for the CBS system is 144 Hz vs. 60 Hz for NTSC.

Yes, they are the Zenith sets:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/field...rototypes.html

[ceebee23]

The Life images are not fully tagged so searches are variable... you will find a jumble of RCA and CBS color tv images..and worse repeating a search does not always bring the same results...eek...BUT these images appear to be of RCA technicians working with early triple tube RCA prototypes...

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...7a3b4413f5d421

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...29657e584fca56

and these are of CBS technicians working on the console seen in the foreground on the the color images

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...c526082503f2d7

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...96475c6b49e955

Note the test pattern chart on the wall.

[ceebee23]

And this one ....of Balanchine directing a color tv broadcast of the NY Ballet.

It is from 1951 and note the CBS color camera....which seems to be a different model to those used in the other tests ...which are dated January 1950.

I assume it is a modified standard camera with a spinning wheel rather than drum ?

http://images.google.com/hosted/life...b8b87029a2b498

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Steve McVoy

The field sequential and NTSC systems are completely different. You would see nothing but a jumbled mess on a CT-100 if you tried to watch field sequential. Horizontal scanning rate on the CBS system is 29,150 Hz vs. 15,575 for NTSC. Vertical scan rate for the CBS system is 144 Hz vs. 60 Hz for NTSC.

Once heard an urban legend that some very rich baseball fan was willing to pay whatever it cost to have a B&W TV converted so it could receive (in B&W) the CBS colorwheel system, so he could watch the World Series, which was broadcast in the CBS colorwheel system. Later on, I heard that they never did the World Series back then in the CBS colorwheel system...

In any event, all you'd need to do is modify the timing circuits on the vertical, and the horizontal. Years ago I worked at a small company that made "cameras" for converting video to hard copy on Xray film. And we did a prototype 525p progressive scan monitor by modifying a more normal 525i interlaced B&W display. Forgotten all the details of what we needed to do to the horizontal output stage, but it wasn't that difficult. What does happen is that the flyback time stays about the same, but the forward scan deflection goes much faster. Which would make for more percentage of "overscanned" left and right edges of the video image being lost.

You's still have flicker in any highly color saturated parts of teh video image.

[Dave A]

Ceebee,

The photos of the "technician" appears to be of Fred Coe, the famous CBS producer of dramas of the era. Photo of Fred below from the UCLA Archives. He produced Playhouse 90 and many other dramas for them and may have been pressed in to service as a director for the event shown. The console looks to have only the one camera connected...and only one color monitor. Follow the taped-up camera cable in the second photo. It looks like the only one going to the console.

The CBS camera in the Balanchine shot is a RCA B&W camera with the color wheel inside the modified body behind the turret. Probably a 10 given the date. Neither the 10 or 11 had the side vents as manufactured. The camera also has the grey/white stripes which was used as a quick camera adjustment chart. More on this CBS B&W trick from this wonderful equipment website by Bobby Ellerbee;

http://www.eyesofageneration.com/bobby_TK11_A_31.php

Dave A

[Dave A]

There was at least one commercial adaptor for converting CBS color for a B&W set;

http://www.earlytelevision.org/colortone.html

Dave A