11. COLOUR TV

↓ LISTEN TO GUIDED AUDIO TOUR ↓

In 1928 John Logie Baird developed a mechanical colour television system by covering each set of holes on a three spiral disc with a different colour filtre – 1 red, 1 green and 1 blue.

In the 1940s, CBS, headed by Peter Goldmark, invented a mechanical colour apparatus based on Baird’s original design. This system was successfully demonstrated at medical conventions in 1949, and in 1950 the FCC authorized the CBS Field Sequential method as the national standard. However, with unstable picture quality, incompatibility with existing black and white sets and an overly bulky receiver, it was soon clear that the CBS device was a failure, and in 1953 the FCC dismissed the mechanical standard in favour of the new RCA electronic colour tube, which became the colour system we know today.