1953 NTSC Color Gamut

[old_tv_nut]

I just read a few bits of Mulvin-Sterne and think it should be taken with a grain of salt. It is an earnest attempt to analyze sociological aspects of color TV development, but some of its claims about the choice of test slides and names given to them are a stretch, and ignore the obvious.

For eample, they expound on the name "motion" for a slide of two running little boys that was obviously a still image. The obvious reason for naming the slide motion is not that anyone thought it would represent a live moving image, but because an evocative name is needed for each slide for quick and easy reference in conversation.

They also fall in the trap of assuming that the predominance of white people in the images meant that the reproduction of dark skin tones was ignored. This is only partially true, as it was well known that shading and black level balance in the early cameras could produce color shifts in darker colors. While this was not studied with Black models, it was continually studied with test charts, and live (white) models were chosen for their dark hair shades. For example, Marie McNamara, the most famous NBC "Miss Color TV" had dark auburn hair that was specifically noted as difficult to reproduce well as camera circuits drifted.

I need a more thorough read of this report, obviously, but I wonder if they give equal time to the difficulties of rendering blond hair without a green tinge in live broadcasts?