Color television

Color television emerged because John Logie Baird—the Scottish inventor who had demonstrated the first television in 1926—recognized that electronic displays could produce color without the spinning discs that plagued mechanical systems. His 1944 Telechrome was the world's first fully electronic color television display, though the system that eventually prevailed came from American engineers at RCA.

Baird had demonstrated the first color television as early as 1928, using a mechanical system with spinning filter discs. But mechanical color television suffered from fundamental limitations: the discs were bulky, noisy, and prone to synchronization problems. As electronic television displaced mechanical systems in the 1930s, Baird turned his attention to all-electronic color.

In 1942-1944, working during World War II, Baird developed the Telechrome—the world's first color cathode ray tube. His design was ingenious: a semi-transparent screen with differently colored phosphors (blue-green and orange-red) on each side. Two electron beams hit the screen from opposite directions, producing two superimposed images that combined into color. In August 1944, Baird gave the world's first demonstration of a practical fully electronic color television display using a 600-line system with triple interlacing.

Meanwhile in America, CBS and RCA pursued competing approaches. Peter Carl Goldmark at CBS had introduced an electro-mechanical system in 1939, with a spinning color filter disc inside both camera and receiver. It produced excellent color but was incompatible with existing black-and-white sets. RCA pursued a fully compatible electronic system that would work on existing receivers (displaying in black and white) while enabling color on new sets.

Baird's early work was acknowledged as 'prior art' by RCA in their development. But Baird died in 1946, before color television achieved commercial success. CBS briefly launched a color service in 1941, halted by the war. The FCC initially approved CBS's incompatible system in 1950, but reversed course and approved RCA's compatible NTSC system in 1953.

The NTSC standard established in 1953 remained the basis for American color television until digital broadcasting. Yet adoption was slow: color didn't outsell black-and-white until the early 1970s. The technology that Baird demonstrated in wartime London took nearly three decades to become the default in American living rooms.

The pattern illustrates how technical merit doesn't guarantee market success. Baird's Telechrome was technologically elegant; RCA's system was commercially practical. Compatibility with existing infrastructure—the millions of black-and-white sets already in homes—mattered more than pure technical innovation.