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  #16  
Old 10-27-2016, 04:37 PM
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Tom,

I give RCA all the credit for engineering, marketing and creating the color television industry in our country. They lost millions, but stuck with it.
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  #17  
Old 10-27-2016, 04:59 PM
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etype2, I believe there are no fewer than three extant Admiral C1617As around. Such a survival rate is a bit higher than some of the prototypes (of which perhaps a single example might exist for a given set) and about par with the survival rate of the GE set (four, perhaps a fifth in a reproduction cabinet).

I'm not so sure I'd give RCA *all* of the credit. GE and Hazeltine both held patents integral to the development of the NTSC system. I believe Philco may have held a patent on some integral part as well. The idea of separating the image into luma and chroma for transmission in order to preserve backward compatibility was known to Georges Valensi in France and patented in 1938, and was considered (mathematically anyway) by a German biophysicist in the mid-20s.

Sure, RCA poured millions into it, and sure they were color's biggest champions in those early years, but they needed quite a deal of help getting to December 17, 1953.

Then there's CBS-Hytron's big contribution: depositing the phosphor dots of a color CRT directly on the face of the CRT. It wasn't a strictly necessary development (the 15GP22s worked) but it was a major leap toward wider acceptance of color television in the 60s.

Last edited by benman94; 10-27-2016 at 05:04 PM.
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  #18  
Old 10-27-2016, 05:10 PM
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Ben,

Your points are well taken. I should amend my statement "all the credit".

I have said many times over: "RCA pioneered color television in the United States, although at times it was the corporate executives in New York who did so in a rather heavy handed manner. Farnsworth, Aiken, Philco (inventors/innovators) and others come to mind. Despite this, we have a personal fondness for RCA color televisions."
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  #19  
Old 10-27-2016, 06:40 PM
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Enjoying this discussion on who was first. Not the 1st time i've engaged in this back & forth, but always great to see new information and other's point of view.
To add to the mix I am including this ad dated Jan. 21, 1954 from the Abraham Strauss Dept. Store in NYC. The ad is for their house brand AMC color receiver.
The text notes that the set was produced by The Philharmonic Radio Co. Here an ad for their 1952 TV receiver:http://www.tvhistory.tv/1952-Philharmonic-Ad.JPG.
The ad also invites customers to come in and view The Dinah Shore Show telecast in color at 7:30pm that evening. I have also included a copy of that TV listing from TV guide. The ad also invites people to place their order. I apologize
for the quality of the ad. It was copied by me at the L.A. library from the New York Times microfiche file many many years ago.

-Steve D.
Attached Images
File Type: jpg addtext_com_MTkwNjE2MTAwMzIw.jpg (112.3 KB, 45 views)
File Type: jpg 1954 AMC color tv #2 (1).jpg (146.0 KB, 42 views)
File Type: jpg addtext_com_MTkwMzM4MTAwMjEy.jpg (141.0 KB, 39 views)
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  #20  
Old 10-27-2016, 06:41 PM
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Didn't many companies at first just use RCA chassises and picture tubes and install them into their own cabinets and call those their own? Until they could make their own sets.
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  #21  
Old 10-27-2016, 06:53 PM
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No, many manufacturers designed and built their own chassis. In fact, GE went so far as to develop and register two new tube types for the 15CL100: the 6BU5 pentode HV shunt regulator, and the 2V2 HV rectifier.
The Westinghouse and GE demodulate along R-Y and B-Y, the RCA used the I and Q axes. The Westy, GE, and RCA all have markedly different HV sections, etc.
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  #22  
Old 10-27-2016, 08:28 PM
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Nothing mattered if the pump didn't get primed. RCA today would be sued by stockholders angry at what they'd see as a boondoggle that lost money for more than a decade. Someone had to get the sets out there and break the chicken and egg issue of without programming in color and product out there it would never catch on. Most countries went to color later IIRC as the fifties were not a practical time for it from a components, economic, and business point of view.

So as far as the development of a viable *system* of NTSC color RCA gets the lion's share of the credit. Marconi and Edison get credit mostly for developing the first workable systems- they invented outright quite little, mostly they refined manufacture and reliability.
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  #23  
Old 10-28-2016, 06:57 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by benman94 View Post
I believe Philco may have held a patent on some integral part as well.
IIRC Philco's contribution was the QAM modulation scheme for chroma modulation.
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  #24  
Old 10-28-2016, 11:20 AM
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Good thread. The articles were interesting reading. Thanks.
As to who threw the first punch in the 15" introduction; other than bragging rights, does it really matter? Only RCA had deep enough pockets to stay for the next several rounds.
Admiral's president seemed more interested in having his picture in the newspaper articles rather than possibly having a picture of the color TV.
And as we all know, talk is cheap.

PS
I noticed how the Radio Age article stated women installed sub circuits, aligned and soldered, and the men installed picture tubes, base assemblies, etc. into the cabinet. Today I don't think they would get by with printing that division of labor based on gender.
The article also stated that RCA revealed its color plans to seventy competing manufacturers. Do you think that was a typo??

Last edited by reeferman; 10-28-2016 at 10:13 PM.
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  #25  
Old 10-30-2016, 12:36 PM
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Quote:
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The article also stated that RCA revealed its color plans to seventy competing manufacturers. Do you think that was a typo??
I'm thinking it was like the rest of RCA's industrial color TV socialism- a rising tide lifts all boats, or no boats, thing. Since Dave Sarnoff was at the helm it shows he was a far-thinking visionary, swashbuckling type despite everything.
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  #26  
Old 10-30-2016, 09:43 PM
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He probably had his fingers crossed when he said that.
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  #27  
Old 10-31-2016, 10:04 AM
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Seventy would not have been too many.

Remember ... RCA lived off of already arranged royalty arrangements,
color would juct make them bigger.

Its exactly the same as the upcoming EXTREME increase in the
costs of air conditioners due to Obama's "climate deal".... the
royalty arrangements are in place, just that the old cheap gases
will be outlawed (in the US of course ... not in places like China or
India, until the patent runs out). This is off topic, but you get the
point. The key is "already arranged patent sharing".
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  #28  
Old 10-31-2016, 10:35 AM
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Originally Posted by dtvmcdonald View Post
Seventy would not have been too many.
Especially when you consider that many of those seventy manufacturers produced maybe a single prototype set, or extremely limited pilot run of sets (à la Zenith and Admiral), and then bailed on color TV before it even got off the ground.
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  #29  
Old 10-31-2016, 10:51 AM
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Quote:
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Especially when you consider that many of those seventy manufacturers produced maybe a single prototype set, or extremely limited pilot run of sets (à la Zenith and Admiral), and then bailed on color TV before it even got off the ground.
IIRC, RCA continued to build color sets after the others bailed, selling chassis to other set makers.
Mainly because of the NBC network, which seemed to be the only color programming on the air.
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  #30  
Old 10-31-2016, 11:14 AM
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Originally Posted by dieseljeep View Post
IIRC, RCA continued to build color sets after the others bailed, selling chassis to other set makers.
Mainly because of the NBC network, which seemed to be the only color programming on the air.
They did sell complete chassis to other manufacturers. They also licensed the LB-962 circuit to other manufacturers. They'd attach their own tuner, maybe modify the audio circuit a bit, stick it in their own cabinet and then call it their own. Hoffman did this with their '55-'56 Colorcasters, the two Gilfillan prototypes use this circuit, the '56 Sentinel uses it, Emerson and Raytheon used it, etc.
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