August 29, 1940…CBS Color System First Demonstrated
August 29, 1940…CBS Color System First Demonstrated
In the rare photos below, we see the first incarnation of the CBS Field Sequential color system, with none other than Charlie Chaplin (silver hair) taking a look. Creator, Peter Goldmark (with glasses) and CBS Program Director, Gilbert Seldes (elbow on the deck) are explaining the system to their famous visitor.
Goldmark was the technical head of the CBS Television effort that started in 1939. On a belated honeymoon to Canada in March 1940, Goldmark and his bride decided to see the Technicolor movie, “Gone with the Wind”.
At the time, color movies were few and far in between and Goldmark was awed by the beauty and richness of Technicolor. Immediately, approaches to achieving television in color started spinning in his brain. Returning to New York he approached his supervisors to support experiments in developing a system.
By June 1940 he was able to show still pictures from a color slide on a 5-inch color monitor. In this photo, we see the slide projector lower left, and the 5-inch monitor with the external spinning color wheel in front of it. The slide projector is sending an image into a Farnsworth Image Dissector tube, which you can see attached to the monitor’s left side. The picture transmitted that day was a 343 line image broadcast over W2XAB on a 25 Watt transmitter. The broadcast came from the experimental color studio at CBS HQ, at 485 Madison Avenue. The first demonstration to the press came on September 4, 1940.
It has been quoted many times that the mechanical Field Sequential color system developed by Goldmark rivaled the quality of the Technicolor Process for films. Pictures published in Life Magazine in 1941 and 1950 comparing Kodachrome photographs of the original subject and photographs of a CBS color receiver show excellent color fidelity of even this earliest color television system. Enjoy and share. -Bobby Ellerbee
My father was in the printing business, and knew good color reproduction. (4 color litho a specialty.) Admiral was one of his clients in the 50s. He saw the CBS system in some early demos and was very impressed with the color. Merely anecdotal, sure.
A motorized color wheel synchronized with the frame rate. Too cool!
From my copy of the Sept. 21, 1941 Life Mag. article on CBS color TV.
It’s interesting that Goldmark, et al would think the guy who held out against talkies for 13 years, would be interested in color. Charlie did not do a color film until 1967 and it was his last film (A Countess from Hong Kong), released two years after CBS went all-color using the RCA system.
I’m surprised no one tried to ‘film’ the results, especially when CBS broadcast a fair amount of color in the early 1950s.
NASA kept this technology alive for decades. They got better resolution but it was the same principle.
Here is another shot of the set up which shows the Image Dissector housing attached to the side of the 5-inch monitor.