You had to be there

[oldtvman]

Although it's admirable to see some of these young guys out there restoring a prrt of history, it's still got to be hard for them to understand the passion of some of the old guys who lived through the era. After all color was about as out of place in the 50's as air conditioning in the 1900's. I think growing up as a kid in that era was just about the best thing ever.

[Sandy G]

I agree. I remember seeing my 1st color set when I was 7 or 8-WOW !! Now, THIS is really sumpin', I recall thinking. Still get that "tingly" feeling whenever I see a restored roundie to this day...The long-buried little boy wakes up in wild amazement again...!st time I saw a rectangular color set, seems like the magic was gone. Roundies were wild, exotic things, kinda like the kid next block over who had a pet monkey. When they went to rectangular, shit, he got rid of the monkey & got him a dumb old dog, just like everybody else...Sic Transit Gloria...

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

Although it's admirable to see some of these young guys out there restoring a prrt of history, it's still got to be hard for them to understand the passion of some of the old guys who lived through the era. After all color was about as out of place in the 50's as air conditioning in the 1900's. I think growing up as a kid in that era was just about the best thing ever.

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!"

[Fisherdude]

I remember when our family knew lots of folks that didn't have a tv yet. Our first one was a tall, floor model console with the little 9" or so b&w roundie screen.

Well, it wasn't really black & white. More like dark gray & light gray!

Whenever I hear the theme music for the Walt Disney tv show, I still get goosebumps.

[oldtvman]

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!"

Yes Carmine, back then just about everything was B & W. The first time I saw color was about 1957. It's an image that is still burned into my memory.


The wonderful world of color was credited for really starting the color revolution in 1961. Until we got color in 1963 one could only imagine the pictures you saw in glorious living color!!!!!!!

[fujifrontier]

the title of this thread reminds me of a 1983 KCRA promo, "you've just got to be there"

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

Yes Carmine, back then just about everything was B & W. The first time I saw color was about 1957. It's an image that is still burned into my memory.


The wonderful world of color was credited for really starting the color revolution in 1961. Until we got color in 1963 one could only imagine the pictures you saw in glorious living color!!!!!!!

Man, there must have been a lot of seriously piss-off'ed guys who thought they were buying a 3-tone grey car, only to find years later, on the day of color, that it was pepto-pink!

[Dave S]

Originally Posted by Carmine

The world wasn't actually in B&W back then was it?

Well, the real world may not have been but the world on TV certainly was. I was eighteen years old before I realized what the joke was when the guy in the Wizard of Oz told Dorothy "That's the horse of a different color!"

--Dave

[Arkay]

The world used to be different, indeed. When I was little, our TV was a B/W roundie, and our car had a funny bullet nose and weird fin things on the back, sort of like a rocket ship. I wondered where it might have been, before it became our car. Mars, like the rockets in the picture books? Yes, there had to have been a mysterious time in the past when everything had shifted from black-and-white to color... but you could still see the before-shift world on the round television, as the TVs hadn't made the shift yet. It was just one of those things, like how kids at some mysterious future point in their lives (around teenage years) would become grown-ups. Presumably at that same time they would get to choose whether they would become men or women.

Just being able to see things from far away while sitting right there in the living room was magical. I remember when we changed to a square screen; it wasn't a square thing to do, back then, but modern and cool. Color? Yes, TVs had it then, but it was new, expensive and fancy! Having a color set was something to brag about, something for friends to come over and "ooh" and "aah" at and be jealous of.

Someone tried to help update the old B/W days, once... they called it "colorized". It didn't quite work...

Yep, the world was different then. In those days having a "woodie" meant you had a car with wooden panel trim on the sides, being "gay" meant being happy, and "bad" was the opposite of good, not a synonym for it. Things were cool, not kewl, and being fat just meant you were that way, just like some people were short or had red hair. "Phat" didn't exist... although perfectly hot and tempting women were certainly around. Metal, wood, leather and cloth were used to make things... a little bakelite (which was already a little old fashioned) and plastic, too, but plastic wasn't all that strong so it wasn't used that much. The world had its problems, sure, but for the most part seemed simpler and cleaner. Most people believed that good was good and bad was bad, and most things were one or the other, instead of everything being muddled up in the middle. They lived that way, most of the time.

Gee, I sound like an old guy already....

[Captain Video]

Originally Posted by Carmine

Man, there must have been a lot of seriously piss-off'ed guys who thought they were buying a 3-tone grey car, only to find years later, on the day of color, that it was pepto-pink!

I'm very young to be able to grasp the full impact the appearance of color TV may have had on older genearations, but I was, too, one of the persons who, when I was a kid, I looked at black and white photos and films and thought that the world before the 1970's was in black and white... I didn´t realize that the technology of taking pictures and shooting films was in black and white!

By the way Carmine, that's a car I would love to have...that car is Flash Gordon's rocketship with class and style!

[Duane]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

Although it's admirable to see some of these young guys out there restoring a prrt of history, it's still got to be hard for them to understand the passion of some of the old guys who lived through the era. After all color was about as out of place in the 50's as air conditioning in the 1900's. I think growing up as a kid in that era was just about the best thing ever.

There's no doubt that we who grew up during that time saw what was the beginning of the tv generation.I can remember listening to radio programs before we had a television. I do not specifically recall which set my parents had in the early 50's,but it was small one.Admiral comes to mind.Grew up in the outskirts of St. Louis and know that there were only a handfull of channels,all were B&W.Would rush home from school to catch the Mickey Mouse club.Had a crush on Annette...ahhhh!
The color transition for us happened in the 60's.I remember vividly the NBC programs,most notable Bonanza.But to my recollection,the best color to me was the Tonite Show.It sure was an eye opener.I've been fascinated with the concept of TV my entire life.
I'd jump back in time,if for nothing else,than to watch some of the best performances,shows,news casts that we saw in those days.Today's crap is just that....Yeah,we have HD,but what is there to watch?

[Eric H]

I didn't get a color set till 1979!
Of course I had seen color before that but we had a B&W set till then.

[polaraman]

Carmine,

Looks like WPC region or national meet.

Look at all the beautiful colors. Better than todays bland monotone car colors. Vanilla must also be the flavor of todays electronics. Plain Vanilla!! Can't tell a Zenith from an RCA or a Sanyo. YUCK-O

polaraman

[Aussie Bloke]

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!"

Hahahaha, I have to admit I thought the same when I was a little boy at the age of 10/11, I use to think the real world was B&W prior to decimal currency in Australia in 1966 (Australia actually had B&W TV until late 1974) even though I saw the 1939 famous colour film "Wizard Of Oz" countless number of times as I never knew the date of it at the time and my mum told me she saw it in B&W when she was a kid and said it was colourized later on (so she thought hehehe) when it was originally in colour hehehehe. Anyways yeah as a kid our imaginations and lack of understanding of reality makes us think things like that. But yeah as I got older I understood that was never the case at all and as I studied TV history I thought "Wow, colour television started in 1954!!!" And even after finding that out, up until a few years ago I use to think live colour and B&W television back prior to the 60s was of scratchy film quality until I found out that in those days up until the late 50s all shows were kinescoped to film using a control monitor and film camera chain and videotape recording started in the fall of 1956, and researching into what videos exist of the 50s, a few B&W and colour tapes still survive and have been restored to digital medium and when I found out about the "An Evening With Fred Astaire" show from late 1958 colour videotaped and saw the trailer on Kris Trexler's site, I thought "WOW colour was really THAT good back then", and of course a few years later I got a bootleg DVD copy of all 3 Fred Astaire specials on Ebay which were recorded from the Disney Channel and seeing them, I have to say living colour back then looks practically almost to as good as living colour today but with much more interesting style of colour tones from the 3 tube IO RCA TK-41 cameras and the purple halos on the spotlights look awesome!!! So yeah your quote has made me blab on about my experience of learning about colour television history and my thrill of seeing early live colour shows like the Fred Astaire specials and that last episode of Howdy Doody is like looking through a window of time seeing what reality looked like almost 50 years ago, when it comes to experiencing historical time travel, early colour shows videotaped in colour gives you the most realistic experience opposed to films, it's just awesome!!! Lastly, what also really amazed me was that video effects technology was also there in the 50s as on the 1958 Fred Astaire special blue screen chromakey effects were used and also on that Howdy Doody colour special from 1960 Clarabell had the "magic blue paint" which videos get keyed into it and also that show used the picture ripple effect too. The television technology boom was all there in the 50s!!!

Cheers
Troy

[Aussie Bloke]

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!"

Hahahaha, I have to admit I thought the same when I was a little boy at the age of 10/11, I use to think the real world was B&W prior to decimal currency in Australia in 1966 (Australia actually had B&W TV until late 1974) even though I saw the 1939 famous colour film "Wizard Of Oz" countless number of times as I never knew the date of it at the time and my mum told me she saw it in B&W when she was a kid and said it was colourized later on (so she thought hehehe) when it was originally in colour hehehehe. Anyways yeah as a kid our imaginations and lack of understanding of reality makes us think things like that. But yeah as I got older I understood that was never the case at all and as I studied TV history I thought "Wow, colour television started in 1954!!!" And even after finding that out, up until a few years ago I use to think live colour and B&W television back prior to the 60s was of scratchy film quality until I found out that in those days up until the late 50s all shows were kinescoped to film using a control monitor and film camera chain and videotape recording started in the fall of 1956, and researching into what videos exist of the 50s, a few B&W and colour tapes still survive and have been restored to digital medium and when I found out about the "An Evening With Fred Astaire" show from late 1958 colour videotaped and saw the trailer on Kris Trexler's site, I thought "WOW colour was really THAT good back then", and of course a few years later I got a bootleg DVD copy of all 3 Fred Astaire specials on Ebay which were recorded from the Disney Channel and seeing them, I have to say living colour back then looks practically almost to as good as living colour today but with much more interesting style of colour tones from the 3 tube IO RCA TK-41 cameras and the purple halos on the spotlights look awesome!!! So yeah your quote has made me blab on about my experience of learning about colour television history and my thrill of seeing early live colour shows like the Fred Astaire specials and that last episode of Howdy Doody is like looking through a window of time seeing what reality looked like almost 50 years ago, when it comes to experiencing historical time travel, early colour shows videotaped in colour gives you the most realistic experience opposed to films, it's just awesome!!! Lastly, what also really amazed me was that video effects technology was also there in the 50s as on the 1958 Fred Astaire special blue screen chromakey effects were used and also on that Howdy Doody colour special from 1960 Clarabell had the "magic blue paint" which videos get keyed into it and also that show used the picture ripple effect too. The television technology boom was all there in the 50s!!!

Cheers
Troy