Article about Chromatron Tube
 

Radio-TV Experimenter December 1964 / January 1965 -
Seven-page article on the Lawrence Chromatron color tube.

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/rtve1264/rtve1264.pdf

Reminder: a large assortment of TV-related articles are posted at:
http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/tvarticles.htm

Chromatron showed great promise but have never seen one.

Could be because research funding was sponsored by "Paramount Pictures"

Yeah, Paramount would really want this to succeed & empty more theater seats to TV.

Like when General Motors started "magnanimously" buying Electric Trolley routes
and guess what happened next.

I have read that Sony secured a license in 1962 and produced about 13,000 17 inch Chromatron sets, using vacuum tubes in 1964... It was a disaster! (would love to have one of those in my collection, however)
Later, much the same target/mask structure plus the inline gun structure from GE plus an innovative focus structure yielded the Trinitron, so I guess that the Chromatron design was not really a dead end.
jr

...

Says it nearly sent Sony broke!

"The production problems were never solved, and led to increasing tension between Ibuka and Morita. In November 1966 Kazuo Iwama told Susumu Yoshida that the company was close to ruin..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromat...ny.27s_attempt

Hollywood had a hand in writing a later chapter in this saga as well. Sony received an Academy Award for the Trinitron some years later. It's kind of ironic, since Hollywood had lined its pockets with the hard-earned money of people in the radio/television industry for decades. It was both a slap in the face and a push down the road to oblivion for a proud and vital segment of our economy.

I found this Picture of Ibuka and his 1973 Emmy... did Sony get an Oscar as well?
jr

No, my mistake. it was an Emmy. Read the info at their website:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/Corpora...tory/2-14.html

Quite an honor nonetheless, for hard work and dedication to an ideal. It's a shame few know that RCA had also won the Emmy for the three-gun CRT (1956) and a videotape cartridge design (1974). Remember, it was Americans who prepared the media onslaught, along with government apathy, that delivered the one-two punch ending thousands of manufacturing jobs we still haven't replaced today.

Even fewer people know of this amazing (for its time) device:

http://www.rcaselectron.com/

A few words about the Chromatron can be found in the biography of E.O. Lawrence
entitled 'An American Genius'. Lawrence (1900-1958) was a talented applied
physicist, and he was involved with a number of other people in the development
of that picture tube. His early death, along with electromagnetic compatibility
problems, may have hampered the commercial succes of the Chromatron. Sorry
I don't remember the author's name, I believe the book was published in 1968.

Some collectible this set would be!

Patent very complex, intricate. The work of a genius in 1951
http://www.google.com/patents?id=7n9fAAAAEBAJ

But almost impossible to implement..

But one aspect did work very well - the hype
http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/rtve1264/rtve1264.pdf
This was a great journalism -
Must've got Sony excited !

Just another idea that the Japanese took and ran with Just like the early consumer video recorder developed by Ampex who went bK and sold the rights to JVC.

I used to work for a guy who was sent to Chromatic Labs in the 50's by his employer (Thomas Electronics) to learn to build the Chromatron tube. His comment to me was, "I was there two #$@%!%$ weeks and didn't see one $#@%$## good tube."

Saw this thread while Google searching the Chromatron.

Sony actually marketed a 61/2 inch color hybrid Chromatron for approximately 3 months starting July, 1968 and quickly replaced it with the first Trinitron in the US. In October, 1968.

The Chromatron was model KV 7010U and the Trintron was the model KV 7010UA.

The KV 7010U used a 3 gun inline system like the Trinitron, but instead of the Aperture grill, they used a fine wire color selection grid similar to the Original Chromatron with post acceleration, two high voltage power supplies with 3 connections to the CRT bell. Inside the set there is a label attached to the CRT, it recites "Sony Chromatron licensed under Patents of Paramount Pictures Corporation.

So the Chromatron did not die in Japan, it made it to our shores for a brief period in time with very low production numbers.

Not quite so . . . .

OK youngsters, lets review history a bit.

At the time the ABC Network was owned by Paramount Theaters and was in the process of switching to color and managed to get more shows on the air in Color than CBS did.

Officially Paramount Theaters and Paramount Pictures were separate, but unofficially both were intertwined.

Funding from Paramount brought ABC from a distant third place, to barking at CBS's heels in ratings, but not in number of stations.

Jas.

Actually, the 17 inch Chromatron went into pilot production only. The 13,000 to 17,000 Chromatron's that were sold in Japan only, had a 19 inch CRT. They sold in 1965 and 1966. It was an upright consollete.

I have two Sony KV-7010UA's but have never seen the U version. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them survive today, as they were ULTRA-expensive, and I bet people kept them in a closet when they quit working. Is there anyone here with a U?

Charles

I have one. It is a hybrid Chromatron.

I just wish that guy would send MY 7010 back to me...

PLEASE_-get some pictures of the interior for all of us!!!

Okay, hope this works. If you go this link, a lot of photos inside the set. If you have a slow Internet connection, give it time to load. You will need to scroll down to 1968 about half way down the page, more then 20 photos.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/time...e-a/page-five/

If you go to this link, you can see screen shots. Same thing, you will need to scroll down to 1968.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/time-line/

The Trinitron was a game changer for sure, even the first models deliver a picture that's superior to most later sets and certainly much better than anything else made at the time.
By comparison GE was making the Porta Color set around the same time frame, probably one of the worst color pictures ever made, but they were cheap and Sony was always a premium priced set.

This is a image of the label attached to the Sony KV 7010U CRT.

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...ype2/image.jpg

The portion blocked out reads "Licensed under Patents of Paramount Pictures Corporation" I have another photo showing that and I will try to post additional photos directly to this site.

I would NOT really consider this chromatron a "hybrid set", since only the 2 HV rectifiers are tubes, Many sets in that time period , and even later, were labeled "solid state" but still had a rectifier tube. ALL o0ther ckty. looks to be SS.

The reason I'm calling this a hybrid Chromatron is that we believe it has 3 inline beams within a single gun like the Trinitron, as the original Chromatron used a single beam. It has a fine wire selection grid visually confirmed instead of the aperture grill.

Treasonous sale of national assets to a foreign entity. Paramount spit upon all the American electronic factory workers who spent their money watching their films. Someone should have gone to jail. History is repeated with the sale of Zenith's LCD research to S. Korea. Will we ever learn?

.... And GE wanted to license the inline Porta Color CRT to Sony and Sony said no thank you, instead buying the rights of the Chromatron from Paramount whose engineers said was hopeless. I give Sony credit for trying even though they failed with the Chromatron, because after all it led in the development of the Trinitron, the most successful color CRT in history. They had a 40 year run with it and big time profits.

Then there was RCA giving up on LCD, Ampex, Eastman Kodak and te beat go's on. Yes, will we ever learn?

I doubt we will ever return to the great business minds that made America such a powerhouse in years past. We have witnessed the failure of a system that was fine-tuned to make life good for the masses. What we have today is so pitifully obedient, if Wall Street can't make a haul off it, it doesn't get to survive. If it does, a mere pittance is handed to third-world workers who barely scrape by.

I've watched a vibrant industry I was part of (biomediccal electronics) for over 20 years simply evaporate into mostly offshore production. I now work elsewhere with brilliant minds from all over the globe on innovative products that hopefully will take their place on the world market, but the model is reworked so that very little of what we buy today is produced by our own hands. It was so much easier when we just worried about our own good and let the trade tariffs that served us so well since Colonial times do their job.

What I find so fascinating about the Sony KV 7010U Chromatron is why it was even released. My research shows it was only on the market for approximately 3 months starting July, 1968 and that may be optimistic because Sony started marketing the KV 7010UA Trinitron in October, 1968, I know because I saw one in the Sony showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York at that time.

The KV 7010U is part Chromatron and part Trinitron and Sony completed development on it by Spring, 1967. I speculate they pushed it out to the market under pressure of their shareholders to market the first Sony color TV and the Trinitron was not yet ready.

What we saw wasn't so much a "failure" as the carefully planned and orchestrated destruction of a system that was designed to make life good for the masses, so that the "1%" could reap even more profit.

US manufacturing didn't "die". It was KILLED, and those responsible went on to tank the entire world economy, with no repercussions whatsoever. "Too big to fail" really means "Too Rich to Jail".

Amen to that. Not likely to change in my lifetime...

The truth of the matter is American company's lacked the foresite to see the future. They only looked at short term profits, unwilling to invest in long term projects. If American companies would listen to their engineers we would be in a different place, instead they rule by committee. I have seen it happen time and time again in my 67 years on this planet.

Sorry that the Japanese Chromatron I brought up stirred up bad feelings.

Well not General Electric (doing much better than Sony today)..
GE wisely exited television just as Sony was ramping up..:scratch2:

Americans (knowing it won't work) sell Chromatron to Sony
Sony burn through billions then ditch it for a modified shadowmask nothing like a Chromatron.

Sony boss brags in book about Japanese superiority
just before Japan slides into a 25 year recession

One of the BIGGEST blunders in tv history, was RCA giving up the rights to the lcd. They could have produced a workable B/W pocket tv by the late '60's and a COLOR tv a few years later. They would have owned the tv business by now, , bigger than Sony ever was... lock, stock and barrel!! instead...they pi**ed it all away..and they are a "nobody " now.

That pix with that engineer holding that little B/W LCD monitor with a GOOD test pattern on its screen in 1966 or so just hurts me to see.....

http://www.visions4.net/journal/time-line/
It is amazing to see an actual Chromatron picture, and yes it shows unique qualities.
Trust the Japanese to bring it to actual production no matter what the loss.

awesome links, thanks.

Here's a 1969 Popular Science article about LCD's and work to make LCD TV's: http://books.google.com/books?id=wSo...d%20tv&f=false

And a 1970 PS article on LED's: http://books.google.com/books?id=-AA...0diode&f=false

According to the 1969 article RCA could create a high resolution still image, but was totally unable to make a moving picture.

As I understand it, what finally made LCD tv a reality was the built in computers that can process the huge amount of information needed to create a moving image. Electronics of 40+ years ago were unable to process a signal and turn on and off all those tiny dots quickly enough.

Are we defending RCA or are we discussing the Chromatron, the subject of this thread?

How many Sony Chromatrons estimated today?
How Much are they known to change hands for?

The Sony KV 7010U Chromatron was marketed July, 1968 and replaced by the Sony KV 7010UA Trinitron approximately, October, 1968. Based on that and 3 known serial numbers and chassis numbers of the the two versions, best guess speculation, possibly one thousand or less Sony KV 7010U Chromatron's were produced. I could be way off though, just best guess speculation as to what we know now.

Anybody's guess as to how many survived today and the value, it's whatever the collector is willing to pay. I can say for me personally, very rare and would pay appropriately.