Did any of you watched colour telly in the 50s?

[Aussie Bloke]

Hi all. I was wondering if any of you remember watching colour telly in the 50s during it's earliest years? And from what you's remembered of live colour programs back then how do you's compare the quality of them to todays programs?

[bohhey]

ahhhhh - I remember quite well - 1959 was the year - I was 5 years old. The neighbors bought a new Motorola 19" color TV. They made sure that the box that it came in stayed in the front yard for a week so that the entire neighborhood would know that THEY had one.

Westerns were the best - enjoy the contrast between the blue sky & the desert. As I remember, washed out colors. Local production was abysmal.

[Eric H]

I didn't get a color TV till 1979

[Celt]

We had a late '50's Admiral color set...but my earliest memory of a color broadcast was around 1964. I think it may have been 'Disney's Wonderful World of Color'.

[Steve D.]

Yep!

I'm old enough to remember color tv in the '50s. We didn't get a color set until '62, but in the 50's I watched in dept. stores and at a friend's home. As I recall on a well set up color tv the live network stuff was very good but in the late 50's when the networks started delayed broadcasting on color tape it was terrible. Here in L.A. several local stations had live color and some color films and it was amazingly good. Before tape most network color shows were delayed broadcast on b&w kinescope here on the west coast. Bummer.

[dewickt]

1957 watched a football game on a new RCA while at my brothers girlfriend's house, was 12 then. Was impressed by the beautfull colors and the green grass.

[Sandy G]

Not quite the Fifties, but early, early '60s-my cousin had a big, ugly green metal cabinet roundie tabletop set when I was a sprout. They lived in Kingsport, & as such, had good enuff reception to justify having a color set. Don't remember if it was a Zenith or an RCA, do remember being told that it was the cheapest color set you could buy-this cousin had the reputation of being the Family Cheapskate. Anyhow, seems like it had an OK picture-ANY color picture was still kinda "Va-Va-Va-Voom" back in '62. Also liked to go up there 'cause there was a '61 Imperial w/the giant fins that lived 2 houses down...Ahh, childhood in early Sixties America ! Couldn't have been a better time or place to be a kid...-Sandy G.

[reeferman]

Don't think so.

[mbates14]

hey, at least you all remember the 50s and 60s. I wasnt even around, hell I wasnt even born until 85, and my memory only dates back to 88.

[Dave A]

I was 7 years old when mom, dad, aunts and uncles bought grandma an economy CTC-7 (the Sanford I think, looking at Ed Reitans' site). The living room would be filled with family at holidays staring at the magic and grandma's collie would sit down right in front of the set knowing all eyes were there. Nothing better than the Dinah Shore Chevy Show on NBC with a bright red '58 Chev and Dinah in some electric blue gown on stage.

The Rose Parade was the best. The local NBC station would give out cards at stores with a list of the floats and the family would watch and follow along. It was funny to see NBC trying to hide the cameras on the street with a barricade of helium balloons around the TK-41's.

I got interested in electronics not long after (a family full of engineers) and I used that set to practice setups on for years. It ended up at my dad's house and ran well in to the late 70's. It did not suffer well the indignity of my dad giving it an "antique finish" that looked like peanut butter.

When it went to the great kinescope in the sky, I pulled the chassis and speakers and saved them for parts for a while. Who cared about roundies in 1978. I still have the speakers re-mounted in another cabinet I use as test speakers.

And I have it's table-top cousin, the "Abington", almost running with a small horz osc problem. Looses lock after running. It came from a TV shop, never sold but run hard, and still has the factory stickers on the safety glass. It lives here with 6 other roundies including my 1959 "Pensbury" everyday set in the den that has never been recapped. An all RCA household.

Dave A

[old_tv_nut]

In the 50's after the local NBC owned and operated in Chicago (WNBQ) went to color, you could go to the studios and enter a visitor's gallery that was on the upper floor and had windows high in the studio walls. (The studios were two stories tall). You could watch the production and see it simultaneously on color sets. I remember they had a rather elaborate daytime variety show. The time I saw it (I must have been on early teens or pre-teens, so 1956 or later?), they had a scene built up with a fake stream and mill with a water wheel, the water simulated by cellophane strips. They did a live refrigerator commercial where the door was opened "magically" by a stage hand pulling on a wire. The most noticeable thing to me was that the facial tones of the female performer looked very exaggerated (pale except for overly rosy cheeks), while the male performer looked rather tan. Well, when you looked into the studio, you could see why. That's how they were made up! When you had only the TV picture to look at, it seemed to need two different adjustments for the two performers. I commented to someone there, I think, and he said "yes, she puts on her own makeup and we can't get her to change it". So, I guess there were more challenges to getting a good-looking color picture than just technical ones!
I have tried to find more info on this show, but I suspect it wasn't long-lived due to production costs, and I can't identify it on any web sites showing WNBQ/WMAQ history.

In high school, I attended a broadcast of the Chicago Symphony, but there was no way to see the program at the same time. These broadcasts were done by WGN at the old Masonic Temple building. They parked their remote truck (also used for baseball games) outside. The impressive thing to me was one cameraman who dragged one of the pedestal-mounted TK-41s around the stage in broad swooping artistic moves while still aiming and focussing, for dramatic shots of the orhestra. Before the program started, they had the audience practice applauding in double-time so it would sound like twice the audience.

In the 50's, RCA also sponsored a Color Television exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. You could watch the NBC channel, of course. The most common noticeable defect I remember was that yellows (such as blond hair) could appear too greenish. One known reason for this is that the TK-41 camera was sensitive to the polarization of the light. Light reflected by the hair from backlighting is polarized. I suspect that the overly blue color temperature setting of the receivers and perhaps use of NTSC decoding for phosphors that had changed over the years also had something to do with it. In later years, "automatic" color correction was the fad in NTSC receivers, essentially moving all yellows toward orange so that greenish hair and faces became impossible. This gave excellent pictures of the tan cowboy on the brown horse riding ito the orange sunset!

The most popular part of the exhibit was "see yourself on color TV". They used a 3-vidicon camera intended for medical use (closed circuit coverage of operations). This camera had fairly poor sensitivity, and quite a lot of motion smear. The visitor stood in front of a mural depicting a tropical scene, and was lit by a hot bank of reflector flood lamps in a row overhead. This resulted in a picture in which the eyesockets were practically two black holes, while nearly blinding the subject. However, other people could see the subject and the pictures easily, and the color wasn't half bad. The vidicon tube has a non-linear characteristic that is approximately correct for the "gamma correction" of the signal. I don't know if that camera model attempted to correct it further, but I suspect it might not have, in order to save money. This could result in some brightness and color distortion as well.

[Steve D.]

Brett,

You mentioned in your post how you watched the WGN camera operators move their TK-41's with such ease. When I started my broadcast career at KTLA here in Los Angeles we also still used TK-41's. As a stage manager I was amazed with the fluid and graceful movement these guys could achieve with these huge, weighty cameras. They were required at times to steer, focus, zoom and compose the shot by concentrating on the small b&w image in their viewfinders. All while listening to some overwrought director and more steady technical director ready the next shot and give instructions. There was generally a cable person assisting in keeping the camera cable free of the pedestal and the operator's feet. The camera was steered by a large metal ring just above the pedestal. Some times I could see a collision between cameras about to occur and would step in and gently push, or pull, on the steering ring to slow things down. When you added a giant "Titan" camera crane to the mix, things really got interesting.

[old_tv_nut]

Now that you mention it, I can picture a cable handler - but not sure if I'm remembering or imagining.