1961 hand held color tv?

[rca2000]

It seems to have a form of "lollipop tube". PM claimed the set 'was coming soon". But--it took over a DECADE before a B/W lollipop tube was successful even--on the little sony sets!!

Does ANYONE out there know what happened?? did the two-color lollipop tube set prove to be too difficult for "real world" production or use?? Was there some sort of "reliability issue" discovered before production began?? I am SURE that the populace WOULD have embraced a truly portable color set in the late '60's even if the color was not "perfect"--as LONG AS it would "hold up" , not cost too much, be reasonably easy to use, and be "stable". After all--the first and 2nd gen LCD sets--BOTH B/w and color looked like $hit--but still sold somewhat decently in the '80's--enough to keep research to lcd sets today--which look MUCH better--and are MUCH cheaper.

Also--that LCD display that is being held in the RCA pix from 1966--looks to be a B/W display--was that REAL?? The case looked about the size of a SImpson 260 meter, adapted to fit the display. Bu that "test pattern looked--at least from the distance--MUCH better than pix of the B/W LCD sets from the mid 80's!!

Any thoughts??

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by rca2000

...did the two-color lollipop tube set prove to be too difficult for "real world" production or use?? Was there some sort of "reliability issue" discovered before production began?? Any thoughts??

If introduced by a small company, probably just lack of financial mass to keep the company going until it could become profitable. Development and promotion of new technology is seldom so smooth that it doesn't require at least double the time and money originally estimated (or more). A large company that already has income from existing product can support this kind of delay (although it may not choose to do so), but a startup depends on attracting patient (and maybe repeated) investment.

[etype2]

Originally Posted by rca2000

Also--that LCD display that is being held in the RCA pix from 1966--looks to be a B/W display--was that REAL?? The case looked about the size of a SImpson 260 meter, adapted to fit the display. Bu that "test pattern looked--at least from the distance--MUCH better than pix of the B/W LCD sets from the mid 80's!!

Any thoughts??

I know that the test pattern is real. The photo is part of the Sarnoff library. There is a book out by Costallano, one of the original engineers on Hielmeier's team at RCA. Hielmeier discovered 3 electro-optic effects in liquid crystals in 1962 and he put together a team and they worked in secret. That photo was taken in 1966 outside RCA's Princeton labs. They revealed their secret LCD project in May, 1968 to the world and demoed various LCD panels. I have seen photos of that demo. RCA obtained first patents on LCD and unfortunately did nothing with it. We all know what happened next, the Japanese commercialized LCD. The story goes within RCA circles at the time, that they did not want LCD to compete with their CRT division according to Costellano's book.

The subject of this tread was, could a 1961 hand held TV exist. We now know that RCA was still tinkering with it in 1963 at the time Hielmeirs team was developing LCD displays and we know that others were working on flat TV's like the flat two color CRT in 1966. The Popular Science article mentions the engineers name and I did some research on him. I found that he was awarded several patents for 3 and 4 color flat displays. The answer to what happened to this two color prototype may be available by doing a IEEE technical paper search.

Here is a another RCA mock up from 1965. You get the feeling this was for the LCD displays they were developing behind the scene. http://www.visions4.net/journal/time...k-up-1965-525/