I saw this article in The Day paper today and thought you might find it interesting. When I was about 10 years old my family bought the first color television in our neighborhood. Everybody would plan to come to our house at the time the colored shows came on. You could only watch I think two shows that were in color. The rest were still black and white. The article tells you how the green was a sickly color and all the people had red skin. This is true but we were so excited to see color that we as little children actually claimed to be able to smell the flowers we saw. I remember the best show to watch was Bonanza. I remember my Dad would wait for the cigarette commercials to adjust the color because he knew what the cigarette pack should look like. It never did look right . It was suppose to look green but it looked almost aqua.
Can you imagine that when we had black and white TV the shows didn't come on until around 4o'clock in the afternoon. It started with Kate Smith who always sang "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain" to open her show. Then I think we watched a puppet show called Beanie and Cecil. I am not sure when the Howdy Doodie Show started but that was the big one everybody watched. We only could get one channel. Are you feeling bad for me yet? We actually played outside the rest of the time that we weren't in school.
I just wanted to share this with you. I guess maybe I have gotten old enough to be a part of a history lesson.
After 50 Years, We Still Can't Get Enough Color TV
By SIOBHAN MCDONOUGH
Published on 3/25/2004
“You can't really appreciate color television unless you know what it was like to watch black-and-white,”
On March 25, 1954, Radio Corporation of America began manufacturing color television sets at its Bloomington, Ind., plant. It built 5,000 sets with 12-inch screens, known as the model CT-100 color receiver. They sold for $1,000 each, astronomical in those days.
They didn't get much use that year, since color telecasts were so rare. But the American love affair with the tube had taken a leap forward into the hues of real life.
The effort to bring color to the home screen was no easy feat. It occupied scientists throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s at RCA laboratories in Princeton, N.J. Their eventual concoction sounded like something out of a science fiction novel — the three-beam shadow mask tube.
The struggle for a clear and true color picture was hardly over. RCA continually tweaked the technology behind it all, and soon replaced the original combination of phosphate, silicate and sulfide phosphors with a more efficient group made up entirely of sulfides.
The results: higher light output and better color balance. Even so, generations of viewers would fiddle with mysterious buttons to try to make sickly green or rashy red faces the color of flesh.
After an experimental start by CBS, NBC, a subsidiary of RCA, developed and promoted color television in the marketplace. Ten years later, NBC was broadcasting as many as 40 hours a week in color.
The first 5,000 color sets were gobbled up by consumers. In 1967, color outsold black-and-white for the first time — with more than 5.5 million sets sold — and in 1973, more than half of all households had color.
U.S. households had 248 million TV sets in 2001, or 2.4 sets each on average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, citing the latest year measured.
The Consumer Electronics Association projects that more than 18 million color sets and about 150,000 black-and-white sets will be sold this year.
TV ownership blanketed the country as far back as 1960, when 87 percent of homes had one, according to the bureau. Now they are nearly universal, in more than 98 percent of homes.
And, increasingly, in cars.
© The Day Publishing Co., 2004
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
1.We licked the beaters on the hand mixer and didn't have anyone telling us we were going to become deathly ill from eating batter with raw eggs in it.
2.At Easter time we had our dyed eggs in a nest on the counter and they sat out at room temperature for the week of Easter.We would peel one whenever we felt like it. I can't believe we made it.
3.If you lived as a child in the 40's,50's,60'sor 70's Looking back,it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have.
4.As children, we would ride in the cars with no seat belts or airbags,sometimes standing up in the middle of the front seat between Mom and Dad.
5.Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always a special treat.
6.Our cribs were covered with bright colored lead based paint.
7.We had no child proof lids on medicine bottles,doors,cabinets, and when we rode our bikes we had no helmets.Not to mention hitchhiking to town as a young kid.
8.We drank from the garden hose and not from a bottle.HORRORS
9.We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then rode them down the hill only to find out we forgot the brakes.After running into the bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.
10.We would leave home in the morning and play all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.No one was able to reach us all day.No cell phones,no pagers Unthinkable.
11.We played dodge ball and sometimes the ball would really hurt.We got cut,broke bones,broke teeth,and there were no law suits from the accidents.No one was to blame but us.Remember Accidents.
12.We had fights and punched each other and got black and blue and learned to get over it.
13.We ate cupcakes,bread,butter and drank sugar soda,but we were never overweight.We were always outside playing games,We shared grape soda with four friends,from one bottle and no one died from this.
14.We did not have Playstations,Nintendo 64,X-Boxes,video games at all,we didnot have 99 channels on cable.We did not even have cable no video tape movies,surround sound,personal cell phones,personal computers,Internet chat rooms,We had friends.We went outside and found them.
15.We rode bikes or walked to a friends home and knocked on the door or rung the bell and just walked in and talked to them.Imagine such a thing without asking a parent.By ourselves,out there in the cold cruel world.Without an guardina How did we do it?
16.We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate worms and although we were told it would happen we did not put out very many eyes nor did the worm live inside us forever.
17.Little league had tryouts and not everyone made the team.Those who didnot had to learn to deal with disappointment
18.Some students weren't as smart as others.So they failed a grade and were held back to repeat the same grade......HORRORS Tests were not adjusted for any reason.
19.Our actions were our own Consequences were expected No one to hide behind,The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.They actually sided with the law. imagine that.
20.This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers,problem solvers and inventors ever.The past 50 years has been an explosion of innovativion and new ideas,
21. We have freedom,failure,success,and responsibility and we learned how to deal with it all
And if you're one of them
CONGRATULATIONS FOR MAKING IT!
