Article about General Electric 15CL100

[Steve D.]

Ben & etype,

You both make good arguments. Etype2, not to sound stubborn on this, I have yet to find an actual advertisement in any major newspaper that announces the sale of Admiral color tv's during this time period. I am familiar with the catalog sheets you posted and the Littlefuse ad. As well as the posted dealer photo. I suspect that may be a pre-production model sent to a distributor. Many of the Admiral, like GE, newspaper articles were probably more hype then substance and little more then a small pilot run occurred. Ben, I do like the fact that RCA already had a Model 5 in limited production (200) in late 1953 ahead of the Rose Parade color telecast. And with very little modification they could have probably started up the CT-100 line more quickly then they did. We may never know the reasons whether from the marketing dept. or engineering or problems at the Bloomington plant itself. Pete Deksnis, well known expert on all things CT-100 maintains that the CT-100 was the 1st NTSC consumer color tv based on production #'s alone. We agreed to disagree on this many years ago. I'll still go with Westinghouse.

-SteveD.

[Electronic M]

Depends on how you count first. From what I've seen here a good argument has been made that Admiral made the first NTSC compatible color sets meant for/intentionally available to consumers. Westinghouse was the first to sell AND market well, and RCA was the first to churn out thousands and get them into the market en mass.

Personally I think arguing that RCA was the first color TV because it was first to be mass produced is like arguing Ford made the first car because he was the first to mass produce them (and he marketed them well and contributed to their tech)...A rather dopey, but marginally valid point of view.