History of Television Articles | Television

By: Beverly Clarke

TELEVISION SET HISTORY

Television is certainly one of the most influential forces of our time.  Television usage in

the United States skyrocketed after World War II with the lifting of the manufacturing freeze

and war-related technological advances.Also contributing was the gradual expansion of the

television networks westward, the drop in set prices caused by mass production, increased

leisure time, and additional disposable income. Television has grown up all over the world,

enabling every country to share aspects of their culture and society with others.


Television: An international history of the formative years


Television went though many changes in its younger years.  Television has had a dramatic

impact on the politics of human's everyday lives. On August 16, 1944, Baird gave the first

demonstration of a fully electronic color television display.  NBC (owned by RCA) made its

first field test of color television on February 20, 1941. These color systems were not

compatible with existing black and white television sets, and as no color television sets

were available to the public at this time, viewership of the color field tests was limited to

RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. 


However, the War Production Board halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment

for civilian use from April 22, 1942 to August 20, 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color

television to the general public.


The CBS field-sequential color system was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue,

and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc

spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set.  During

its campaign for FCC approval, CBS gave the first demonstrations of color television to the

American general public, showing an hour of color programs daily Mondays through Saturdays,

beginning in 1950. While the CBS color broadcasting schedule gradually expanded to twelve

hours per week (but never into prime time), and the color network expanded to eleven

affiliates as far west as Chicago, its commercial success was doomed by the lack of color

receivers necessary to watch the programs. With the refusal of television manufacturers to

create adapter mechanisms for their existing black and white sets,and the unwillingness of

advertisers to sponsor broadcasts seen by almost no one, it seemed as if television's demise

was close at hand. 


Hope was not lost when in April, 1951, CBS bought a television manufacturer, and in September

of that year, production began on the first and only CBS-Columbia color television model. 

But only 200 sets had been shipped, and only 100 sold, when CBS was forced to pull the plug on

its color television system on October 20, 1951, by the National Production Authority, for

the duration of the Korean conflict. The NPA bought back all the CBS color sets it could, to

prevent lawsuits by disappointed customers.


When CBS testified before Congress in March 1953 that it had no further plans for its own color

system,the National Production Authority dropped its ban on the manufacture of color television

receivers, and the path was open for the NTSC to submit its petition for FCC approval in July

1953.


Television's first prime time network color series was "The Marriage", a situation comedy

broadcast live by NBC in the summer of 1954. The DuMont network, although it did have a

television-manufacturing parent company, was in financial decline by 1954 and was dissolved

two years later.


The number of color television sets sold in the U.S. did not exceed black and white sales

until 1972, which was also the first year that more than fifty percent of televisions sold
i
n the U.S.were color sets. This was also the year that "in color" notices before color

television programs began, appeared on the television screen, due to the rise in sales of

color television sets.