You had to be there

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by Carmine

The world wasn't actually in B&W back then was it? I had an ex-girlfriend who used to think that as a kid... Like somebody got up on a podium and proclaimed "Henceforth, the world shall be in COLOR!"

I don't know that I ever thought of the "old world" as being in B&W... I just used to have fun teasing my girlfriend about it! My grandparents had (1) 23" Color Zenith, bought in '68, so four years prior to my birth. However, this was the ONLY color set I knew about. My grandparents also had a "backup" B&W Admiral.

My parents had a 17" B&W Zenith and when they finally got a color set (19" Chromacolor II) we still watched a lot of stuff on the B&W set. By the 80s everything was color, but my favorite aftenoon block of shows (Leave-to-Beaver, Addams Family, Twilight Zone, Andy Griffith) were all B&W shows from the low-budget UHF channel. Evenutally, all the UHF channels turned into syndicated WB/UPN crap, the internet came along, and I pretty much forgot about watching TV in my spare time.

However, I do think I have experienced the "color shock" to some extent by watching hours of WWII footage in pretty good color on PBS. I'd wager that I know more about WWII than most people my age, but the color film certainly does make the war seem much more real... And you realize that those old guys (like my grandfather) you see now were once young.

I've also seen some very early authentic color footage of WWI! That will really blow your mind!

[bgadow]

Some distant relatives were showing us a video tape made up of old 8mm home movies. I am very far removed from the people on the screen but there was a portion that really caught my attention. They kept showing off their color tv. (looked to be early sixties) Lots of excerpts of Bonanza, the NBC Peacock, the Tonight Show...you could tell they were really proud of it. I tried getting some pics but pictures of a video of a film of a screenshot doesn't look so hot! The set, by the way, appeared to be an RCA CTC-11 or similiar. In some scenes there was a small bw sitting on top...a common scene, I suppose, with the reliablity they used to have.

[Richard D]

And all the neighbors came to see the color picture on our Admiral (with a vertical RCA chassis, the dealer boasted) and unless they came over during Disney or were lucky enough to see a color commercial the best we could do was tune to an unused channel and show them the colored snow. I guess the early sets did not have color killers.
Richard.