Color Television Inc.

Last updated
Color Television, Inc.
Industry Color television research and development
Founded1947;76 years ago (1947)
DefunctOctober 1951 (1951-10)
FateProduction halted following Korean War conservation efforts
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
,
United States
Key people
Arthur S. Matthews (President)
George E. Sleeper, Jr. (Vice president and chief engineer)

Color Television Inc. was an American research and development firm founded in 1947 and devoted to creating a color television system to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission as the U.S. color broadcasting standard. Its system was one of three considered in a series of FCC hearings from September 1949 to May 1950.

Contents

Background

Unlike the winning field-sequential color system by CBS, the line sequential CTI system was all-electronic with no color scanning disk, and fully compatible with existing black and white receivers. Unlike the dot sequential RCA system, it used only one scanning tube in the camera and one picture tube in the receiver. CTI's camera used three lenses, behind which were mounted red, blue, and green color filters that produced three images side by side on a single scanning tube. At the receiver, the three images were received on three separate areas of a picture tube, each area treated with different phosphorescent compounds that glowed in red, blue, or green. Superimposing lenses were used to merge the separate images into a single color image on a rear projection screen in the television set.

History

The CTI system was first demonstrated to the FCC in Washington, D.C., on February 20, 1950, by which time CTI had spent $600,000 to develop the system. [1] The CBS, RCA, and CTI systems were compared side by side three days later. Billboard reported that FCC insiders said that CTI's system came in third place, on the basis of color registry and definition. "CTI's sets lacked intensity," it said, "but while its colors were of a hazy blue-violet cast, some engineers believed that it showed potentialities." [2] A writer for Popular Science similarly reported that the colors were not true, nor were they in register. [3]

On August 29, CTI declared in a petition to the FCC that it had invented a "wholly new" color system, which it called "uniplex". [4] Nonetheless, the FCC released a report on September 1 strongly favoring the CBS system. The FCC issued its final report, choosing CBS, on October 11. In reply to CTI's petition to reopen the hearings, the FCC said that "new ideas and new inventions are matters of weekly, even daily, occurrence," and therefore the Commission had to make a decision at some point. But it held the door open, adding that it "cannot refuse to consider" improved color systems are they are developed. [5]

CTI negotiated a $4 million contract in August 1951 to manufacture airborne radar and other electronic products, planning to use the revenue to further develop its color television system for public acceptance. [6] Nothing further was heard from CTI after the Defense Production Administration suspended the mass production of color television receivers in October 1951 "to conserve critical materials" for the duration of the Korean War. [7]

The firm was based in San Francisco, California. George E. Sleeper, Jr. was Vice President and Chief Engineer. Arthur S. Matthews was President. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NTSC</span> Analog television system

The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by the National Television System Committee (NTSC) in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard.

The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded in 1919 as the Radio Corporation of America. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Company. In 1932, RCA became an independent company after the partners were required to divest their ownership as part of the settlement of a government antitrust suit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Television</span> Telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment, news, and sports.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Color television</span> Television transmission technology

Color television or colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white television technology, which displays the image in shades of gray (grayscale). Television broadcasting stations and networks in most parts of the world upgraded from black-and-white to color transmission between the 1960s and the 1980s. The invention of color television standards was an important part of the history and technology of television.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shadow mask</span> Metal sheet with hundreds of thousands of holes, used in CRTs to correctly align colors

The shadow mask is one of the two technologies used in the manufacture of cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors which produce clear, focused color images. The other approach is the aperture grille, better known by its trade name, Trinitron. All early color televisions and the majority of CRT computer monitors used shadow mask technology. Both of these technologies are largely obsolete, having been increasingly replaced since the 1990s by the liquid-crystal display (LCD).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Sarnoff</span> Russian and American businessman (1891–1971)

David Sarnoff was a Russian and American businessman who played an important role in the American history of radio and television. He led RCA for most of his career in various capacities from shortly after its founding in 1919 until his retirement in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video camera tube</span> Device used in television cameras

Video camera tubes were devices based on the cathode ray tube that were used in television cameras to capture television images, prior to the introduction of charge-coupled device (CCD) image sensors in the 1980s. Several different types of tubes were in use from the early 1930s, and as late as the 1990s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mechanical television</span> Television that relies on a scanning device to display images

Mechanical television or mechanical scan television is an obsolete television system that relies on a mechanical scanning device, such as a rotating disk with holes in it or a rotating mirror drum, to scan the scene and generate the video signal, and a similar mechanical device at the receiver to display the picture. This contrasts with vacuum tube electronic television technology, using electron beam scanning methods, for example in cathode ray tube (CRT) televisions. Subsequently, modern solid-state liquid-crystal displays (LCD) and LED displays are now used to create and display television pictures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Carl Goldmark</span> Hungarian-American inventor (1906–1977)

Peter Carl Goldmark was a Hungarian-American engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 3313 rpm phonograph disc, the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single disc for two generations. The LP was introduced by Columbia's Goddard Lieberson in 1948. Lieberson was later president of Columbia Records from 1956–1971 and 1973–1975. According to György Marx, Goldmark was one of The Martians.

The penetron, short for penetration tube, is a type of limited-color television used in some military applications. Unlike a conventional color television, the penetron produces a limited color gamut, typically two colors and their combination. Penetrons, and other military-only cathode ray tubes (CRTs), have been replaced by LCDs in modern designs.

The 405-line monochrome analogue television broadcasting system was the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. The number of television lines influences the image resolution, or quality of the picture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of television</span> Development of television

The concept of television is the work of many individuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first practical transmissions of moving images over a radio system used mechanical rotating perforated disks to scan a scene into a time-varying signal that could be reconstructed at a receiver back into an approximation of the original image. Development of television was interrupted by the Second World War. After the end of the war, all-electronic methods of scanning and displaying images became standard. Several different standards for addition of color to transmitted images were developed with different regions using technically incompatible signal standards. Television broadcasting expanded rapidly after World War II, becoming an important mass medium for advertising, propaganda, and entertainment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apollo TV camera</span> Outerspace broadcasting device

The Apollo program used several television cameras in its space missions in the late 1960s and 1970s; some of these Apollo TV cameras were also used on the later Skylab and Apollo–Soyuz Test Project missions. These cameras varied in design, with image quality improving significantly with each successive model. Two companies made these various camera systems: RCA and Westinghouse. Originally, these slow-scan television (SSTV) cameras, running at 10 frames per second (fps), produced only black-and-white pictures and first flew on the Apollo 7 mission in October 1968. A color camera – using a field-sequential color system – flew on the Apollo 10 mission in May 1969, and every mission after that. The color camera ran at the North American standard 30 fps. The cameras all used image pickup tubes that were initially fragile, as one was irreparably damaged during the live broadcast of the Apollo 12 mission's first moonwalk. Starting with the Apollo 15 mission, a more robust, damage-resistant camera was used on the lunar surface. All of these cameras required signal processing back on Earth to make the frame rate and color encoding compatible with analog broadcast television standards.

CBS Laboratories or CBS Labs was the technology research and development organization of the CBS television network. Innovations developed at the labs included many groundbreaking broadcast, industrial, military, and consumer technologies.

A field-sequential color system (FSC) is a color television system in which the primary color information is transmitted in successive images and which relies on the human vision system to fuse the successive images into a color picture. One field-sequential system was developed by Peter Goldmark for CBS, which was its sole user in commercial broadcasting. It was first demonstrated to the press on September 4, 1940, and first shown to the general public on January 12, 1950. The Federal Communications Commission adopted it on October 11, 1950, as the standard for color television in the United States, but it was later withdrawn.

The Chromatron is a color television cathode ray tube design invented by Nobel prize-winner Ernest Lawrence and developed commercially by Paramount Pictures, Sony, Litton Industries and others. The Chromatron offered brighter images than conventional color television systems using a shadow mask, but a host of development problems kept it from being widely used in spite of years of development. Sony eventually abandoned it in favor of their famous Trinitron system using an aperture grille.

The Geer tube was an early single-tube color television cathode ray tube, developed by Willard Geer. The Geer tube used a pattern of small phosphor-covered three-sided pyramids on the inside of the CRT faceplate to mix separate red, green, and blue signals from three electron guns. The Geer tube had a number of disadvantages and was never used commercially due to the much better images generated by RCA's shadow mask system. Nevertheless, Geer's patent was awarded first, and RCA purchased an option on it in case their own developments didn't pan out.

The Triniscope was an early color television system developed by RCA. It used three separate video tubes with colored phosphors producing the primary colors, combining the images through dichroic mirrors onto a screen for viewing.

Premiere is the first commercially sponsored television program to be broadcast in color. The program was a variety show which aired as a special presentation on June 25, 1951, on a five-city network hook-up of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television stations. Its airing was an initial step in CBS's brief and unsuccessful campaign to gain public acceptance of its field-sequential method of color broadcasting, which had recently been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the first color television broadcasting standard for the United States.

375-line corresponds to two different electronic television systems, both using 375 scan lines. One system was used in Germany after 1936 along with the 180-line system, being replaced in a few years by the superior 441-line system. It was also tested in Italy around the same time.

References

  1. "Color TV's Just Confusin'," The Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1950, p. L1.
  2. "Color Show Proves Little; FCC May Split Hue, Freeze", Billboard, March 4, 1950, p. 6.
  3. "You'll Get Color TV Sooner Than You Think", Popular Science, June 1950, p. 108, 110.
  4. "New Color TV Is 'Superior,' Firm Asserts," The Washington Post, Aug 30, 1950, p. B11. "Color Television, Inc., Comes Up With 'Wholly New' System," The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 1950, p. 2.
  5. "Color Television," The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 12, 1950, p. 3.
  6. "Color Television, Inc.," The Wall Street Journal, August 28, 1951, p. 14.
  7. "Color TV Shelved As a Defense Step", The New York Times, Oct. 20, 1951, p. 1.
  8. "Color Television, Inc., to Show Its Product to FCC Monday," The Washington Post, Feb. 17, 1950, p. 16.