In all these 15 years of research, I have never found this whole black and white promotional film from RCA until just yesterday! This amazing film titled “Color Television; an NBC Documentary” shows some of the most advanced science of the day as we are taken behind the scenes not only at The Colonial Theater which was the very first color studio, but to RCA’s laboratories and factories in Princeton and Camden NJ and more.

There are many places to stop and ogle here, but I’ll point out a few highpoints for me, as they show us the prototype RCA TK40s AND the prototype of the first color camera (14:38) and the experimental Tri Color camera (19:11).

We get our first look inside The Colonial at 3:45 and our host is NBC’s Chairman, Pat Weaver. At 6:45 we see a novice actress who’s starred in NBC’s closed circuit color daily test broadcasts for two years, but by 1949 will have a TONY Award…Nanette Fabray!

At 8:40 we move to the Colonial control room with NBC Chief Engineer O.B. Hanson. No RCA promo would be complete without a few words from The General, and at the end (27:05) we get another look at the TK40 prototypes. This is just full of great, rare video of things and places we all often wondered about.

To help all of this flow better, I am including the 1953 RCA special promotional, color television magazine that covers a lot of what we see in the film that I think is also from 1953 or early ’54. By the way, notice the TK40s are mounted on the RCA friction heads that were made to hold the 90 pound TK30s of the day…not the 340 pound TK40. The good news is that Houston Fearless had just delivered to RCA their first cradle heads for the TK30s and were immediately put to work on the larger version for these great cameras. Thanks to Simon Crawshaw for the illusive video! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee