Today in History: First color TV set manufactured

Today we probably have a difficult time imagining life without our screens. While color TV's had been around for quite a while by the time I have any memory of being alive, there was a time where one of our TV's was black and white. Prior to RCA manufacturing the color television, everyone who was fortunate enough to have a television at all, did so in black and white.

Things would start to change on this day

The year was 1954

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It sported a 12.5 inch (31.75cm) screen and weighed hundreds of pounds. It took several deliverymen (it was ok to call them that back in '54) and once it got sat down in a particular place, that is likely where it was going to stay forever.

Most of the broadcasting at this time was not in color and it was RCA's backwards compatibility that appealed to the market so much. In fact, RCA was not the first to have a product ready for market, that honor went to Admiral and Westinghouse but it never saw any sort of mass production because it would only display in color, cost over $10,000 in today's money, and even rich people didn't like the idea of needing 2 televisions in their living rooms depending on if the broadcast was going to be in B&W or color.

The fact that RCA could display both formats, made it the market leader for many years to follow. It was still well out of reach for most, financially speaking, as the initial offering was for nearly $8,000 of today's money.

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It would be many years before shows were actually filmed or much less broadcast live in full color, until the early 60's. Even then the sales of color TV's didn't surpass black and white sets until the mid 70's. At this point the price of color televisions was a bit more in reach of the average person. New black and white televisions continued to be made until the 80's, which is probably where my memory of owning one as a child comes from.

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For anyone born after say, 1985, it probably seems like a crazy notion that color TV wasn't just something everyone had but as late as the mid 80's I recall motels advertising, ironically, that they had did in-fact have color tv's in every room... wow!

I sit here now typing this with a computer that has 3 color (obviously) monitors and a 50 inch LED (i think that's what it is) on the other side of the room, all of which probably weigh 1/10 what the original RCA television weighed.

This bizarre commercial was actually from the 60's but it's still kind of funny.

So it all had to start somewhere, and full market penetration is estimated to not have occurred until as late as the mid 70's. But it all began somewhere, at the hands of a company that was considered a pioneer on many fronts a mere 66 years ago.