Westinghouse K840CK15 Restoration

[old_tv_nut]

"My question is, did the engineers that developed 1954 NTSC color, actually see the full color gamut on an advanced display, or is the specification just mathematical? The phosphors must have been stimulated in some fashion to output light."

I'm not sure what you mean by "advanced display."
In 1954, the 15GP22 CRTs did display the full NTSC color gamut, and the cameras did produce it.

Your set can also produce the full gamut, but the new catch is that all current sources other than specific wide color gamut (WCG) ones limit the gamut to sRGB in the first place.

To get things really proper for viewing on your set, you need a WCG source of the program material, and a digital to NTSC converter that does the math to convert color space properly. A way to approach this would be to hook up your set to your computer and treat it as a monitor, profiling it with a colorimeter or spectrophotometer just as you would any monitor, then play a WCG source through the computer using software that does the same sort of color management as Photoshop does for stills, converting accurately from WCG source to your set. (I am not familiar with PC movie/video editing software, maybe Adobe Prmier Pro can do this, but I have not used it and don't know.)