Article about General Electric 15CL100
 

I found myself hunting for newspaper articles about early color television in Detroit and Flint, Michigan today. While my search for more information on early color locally turned up dry, I did stumble across this article about the introduction of the General Electric model 15CL100 in the Syracuse Post-Standard from Wednesday, April 7, 1954. It does seem to suggest that both the General Electric and the 15 inch Westy beat RCA to the market.

Does anyone know for sure when the first RCA CT-100s were shipped from Bloomington? Moreover, what took RCA so long to get their receiver to market? My two great-uncles, Neil and Skip, were at RCA at the time and speculated that RCA had trouble manufacturing the color specific parts (convergence transformers, the 15G yokes, the 15GP22s themselves, etc) in large enough volume, thus delaying the introduction of the CT-100. If both Westinghouse and GE were getting sets out to dealers in some sort of quantity though, I'm doubting that a shortage in color specific parts was to blame. Even if such a shortage were to exist, why would RCA fill orders from Westinghouse and GE before taking care of the demand in-house?

Anyway, I thought some of you might find this interesting....

http://s18.postimg.org/mhx9905mx/Gen...00_Cropped.jpg

I theorized that Sarnoff wanted to look like he wasn't trying another monopoly in the color tv game like he tried in monochrome tv and in radio before. Playing benevolent and allowing his licensees to get a jump on the market looked good to the industry and to the anti-trust people who were probably still staring down his neck.

I was with a TV station in WVA and we bought a new GE transmitter. They included a 15 inch GE color TV. That was in 1954. The set was a good performer. The first program in color on it was Ding Dong School, with Miss Frances.

I have heard speculation that the 15 inch sets were originally meant to be demo/monitor sets only, but Westinghouse and Ge started selling them to retail customers, so RCA released the CT 100 in response, instead of wating for the 21axp22 line to get up to speed, as originally planned. :scratch2:

jr

RCA started production of the CT-100 on March 25, 1954. The earliest date I could find for retail sale of CT-100's in NYC was May 9th 1954. I assume shipping of these sets to distributors started sometime in mid April 1954. Westinghouse advertised their 15" color set on Feb. 28, 1954.

Here's an article from RCA Radio Age April, 1954 issue:
And a very early, Dec. 31, 1953 N.Y. Times article on Admiral color TV production.

-Steve D.

I think that pretty much settles it: Westinghouse was first, GE second, RCA third. GE claims in the article to have already started shipping sets by April 7th. They must have been manufacturing them prior to March 25. No company, even giant GE, could have concieved, built, and shipped a color receiver in 13 days or less...

Just one day after the FCC announcement (December 18, 1953) approving the RCA compatible color system, the Milwaukee Sentinal reported that Admiral was already producing color sets in pilot production with plans to introduce them to its distributors on December 30, 1953 at a price more then $1,000, with production quantities increasing by the end of the second quarter 1954. A production goal of 30 thousand color sets were planned by the end of the year.

I found a newspaper article dated February 24, 1954 showing a photo of the Admiral color set in an appliance store and presumably being offered for sale. The article goes on to say it was the first public showing of the Admiral color television in the Pittsburg area. The appliance store moved and was having a grand opening of its new store.

Also found an April 8, 1954 Chicago Tribune newspaper article saying that Admiral was beinging to ship its "second series of color set at $1000, a price drop of $175 from the previous price." announced in 1953.

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http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...aper_525WP.jpg

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Based on this and other information I have, I believe the Admiral 15 inch color set was the first all electronic color TV to go on sale.

I just looked at the 15CL100 schematic and see that the Hue control is on the back of the chassis. Was this circuitry so good that the Hue did not require routine adjustment? Or did GE underestimate the need for Hue adjustment?

Edit: Steve, I did in fact miss your inclusion of the Admiral newspaper clipping. I found myself more engrossed in the Radio Age article. My apologies.

I had forgotten about the Admiral. I guess that makes the Westy, GE, and RCA, the second, third, and fourth sets respectively. The situation is further muddled by the prototypes that were sold to the general public after they were no longer useful as demo sets. I know of a Sparton prototype with the early metal cone CRT in the Detroit area that was sold at a steep discount by J.L. Hudson's in late 1954. I guess the difference here is that the Sparton sets were probably built for demonstration purposes only; what happened after their fifteen minutes of fame at Kern's or Hudson's or Smith-Bridgman's wasn't really a concern. The other sets mentioned thus far were fully intended to be sold; Mr. and Mrs. John. Q. Public just weren't interested.

Evidently Ben & etype2 skipped over my posted Dec.31, 1953 Admiral article on my post. The ongoing discussion on who first offered consumer color sets for public sale has been going on for years. Many maintain Admiral based on the early dates mentioned in newspaper articles was 1st. Some credit Westinghouse who built 500 15" sets and only sold one set in the 1st month in NYC despite heavy NYC advertising. Most favor RCA due to the much higher production run. GE also had a pilot run of sets early on. I could find no ads for GE sets. Due to the high price, a small viewing screen and very limited color broadcasts, none of these manufactures saw any real success. They lost money on every set sold. RCA, because of it's heavy advertising & promotion fared the best but quickly discounted it's price by 50% to move the sets out of dealer stocks. They later did a buy back of their CT-100 sets as the 21" color sets became available in Dec. 1954. Many other manufacturers also had limited pilot production runs given to distributors to showcase that they were able to produce color televisions. Many of these sets were on public display at high end dealers for the Jan, 1st 1954 color telecast of the Rose Parade. This in cities that were able to transmit color programs at the time. I personally believe that Westinghouse wins the prize for 1st place in offering color TV in, at least in small quantities. Their early advertising is well documented. Ads from 2-28-54:

-Steve D.

I think a good argument could be made for RCA, Westinghouse, or Admiral. Admiral because they do appear to be the first to have actually advertised a set for sale to the public, Westinghouse because they were the first to offer sets in any real quantity, and RCA because a) they built the greatest number of 15 inch color sets b) had the strongest advertising push and c) because the Model 5 is virtually identical to the CT-100 with the exception of that funky speaker grille.

Ben and Steve: I agree with you. Steve, I did not skip over your earlier post.

I would like to share more information that I found about the Admiral color set.

First two images: An advertisement/handout for Admiral color, publication date unknown, courtesy the ETF.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...s/image133.jpg

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...s/image134.jpg

(More to come as I gather up my inventory of images)

Third image: An advertisement by a service company supporting the Admiral color set, publication date unknown courtesy the internet.

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...s/image135.jpg

On page 106 of the book, Television: The Life Story of a Technology, it is stated: “Admiral Television Corporation put the first receivers (color) on the market for $1175.00 on December 30, 1953, so that it could take a deductible tax loss on its color factory investment.”

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An article where the President of Admiral claims their color set whent on sale December 19, 1953. (I think that is an ambitious claim)

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...s/image30.jpeg

In my last post, we found a newspaper article dated February 24, 1954 showing the Admiral color set in a Pittsburg appliance store for sale to the public.

Lastly, four months after the Admiral was first announced for sale, we have a newspaper article (shown in my last post) in April 8, 1954, we have Admiral announcing a price drop of $175., all of the above, strong evidence that the Admiral color set was on sale for four months and was the first all electronic color television to sell to the public.

Having said all of that, RCA deserves the most credit for pioneering color television in our country. The CRT's used in Admiral, Westinghouse and GE were RCA engineered. RCA shared their information with the other manufacturers because they knew that getting the color TV industry off the ground would be extraordinarily difficult. RCA licensed to the other manufactures.

Ben & etype,

You both make good arguments. Etype2, not to sound stubborn on this, I have yet to find an actual advertisement in any major newspaper that announces the sale of Admiral color tv's during this time period. I am familiar with the catalog sheets you posted and the Littlefuse ad. As well as the posted dealer photo. I suspect that may be a pre-production model sent to a distributor. Many of the Admiral, like GE, newspaper articles were probably more hype then substance and little more then a small pilot run occurred. Ben, I do like the fact that RCA already had a Model 5 in limited production (200) in late 1953 ahead of the Rose Parade color telecast. And with very little modification they could have probably started up the CT-100 line more quickly then they did. We may never know the reasons whether from the marketing dept. or engineering or problems at the Bloomington plant itself. Pete Deksnis, well known expert on all things CT-100 maintains that the CT-100 was the 1st NTSC consumer color tv based on production #'s alone. We agreed to disagree on this many years ago. I'll still go with Westinghouse.

-SteveD.

Depends on how you count first. From what I've seen here a good argument has been made that Admiral made the first NTSC compatible color sets meant for/intentionally available to consumers. Westinghouse was the first to sell AND market well, and RCA was the first to churn out thousands and get them into the market en mass.

Personally I think arguing that RCA was the first color TV because it was first to be mass produced is like arguing Ford made the first car because he was the first to mass produce them (and he marketed them well and contributed to their tech)...A rather dopey, but marginally valid point of view.

Steve,

I know you are one of the great archivists in our hobby, so if you haven't found it, it probably does not exist.

Can we agree that question is: which manufacture offered the first color set for sale to the home consumer?

The ad you found says "ready to ship now .... to your home ...." That's strong evidence. The February 24, 1954 article and photo shows an actual Admiral color set in an appliance store. It could be they were only taking orders or it could be the store had a limited supply in stock. We don't know. The thing is, which manufacture offered a color set for sale first. The evidence so far as I understand it is that Admiral put their set on sale December 30, 1953. When was the first color set by any manufacture delivered to a home consumer, (not professional) we don't know.

There were 7 RCA Model 5's color sets and at least 1 Admiral displaying the Rose parade in my hometown Milwaukee. Admiral said they wanted to have at least 1 color set for the distributors in the 21 cities in the color network for the Rose parade.

As for numbers of color sets sold, I think what we know is RCA was the leader. As far as who first offered a color set for sale was not RCA.

I believe Admiral was based out of Chicago. If we scour the Chicago Tribune archives, we may find an even earlier article about the Admiral color set.

I have a question for all. As far as I know, only one Admiral color set exists, am I wrong? We know of more Westinghouse sets in collectors hands. Why so few Admiral color sets?
Why haven’t more Admiral C1617A color sets been found? A theory, perhaps it’s because the set was lost in obscurity to the marketing blitz, publicity and hoopla of RCA. Most likely, Admiral watched the slow sales of color sets, not only their own but from RCA and stopped production just as RCA did with their first color set. Other speculation is Admiral produced very few color sets in 1953/54. But numbers do not disqualify who was first.

It was reported that the CBS-Columbia 12CC2 produced approximately 200 units and only sold 100 of them. The Westinghouse H840CK15 reportedly only sold 30 units in the first few months of sale and an unknown amount later. Do we erase their marks in history?

Tom,

I give RCA all the credit for engineering, marketing and creating the color television industry in our country. They lost millions, but stuck with it.

etype2, I believe there are no fewer than three extant Admiral C1617As around. Such a survival rate is a bit higher than some of the prototypes (of which perhaps a single example might exist for a given set) and about par with the survival rate of the GE set (four, perhaps a fifth in a reproduction cabinet).

I'm not so sure I'd give RCA *all* of the credit. GE and Hazeltine both held patents integral to the development of the NTSC system. I believe Philco may have held a patent on some integral part as well. The idea of separating the image into luma and chroma for transmission in order to preserve backward compatibility was known to Georges Valensi in France and patented in 1938, and was considered (mathematically anyway) by a German biophysicist in the mid-20s.

Sure, RCA poured millions into it, and sure they were color's biggest champions in those early years, but they needed quite a deal of help getting to December 17, 1953.

Then there's CBS-Hytron's big contribution: depositing the phosphor dots of a color CRT directly on the face of the CRT. It wasn't a strictly necessary development (the 15GP22s worked) but it was a major leap toward wider acceptance of color television in the 60s.

Ben,

Your points are well taken. I should amend my statement "all the credit".

I have said many times over: "RCA pioneered color television in the United States, although at times it was the corporate executives in New York who did so in a rather heavy handed manner. Farnsworth, Aiken, Philco (inventors/innovators) and others come to mind. Despite this, we have a personal fondness for RCA color televisions."

Enjoying this discussion on who was first. Not the 1st time i've engaged in this back & forth, but always great to see new information and other's point of view.
To add to the mix I am including this ad dated Jan. 21, 1954 from the Abraham Strauss Dept. Store in NYC. The ad is for their house brand AMC color receiver.
The text notes that the set was produced by The Philharmonic Radio Co. Here an ad for their 1952 TV receiver:http://www.tvhistory.tv/1952-Philharmonic-Ad.JPG.
The ad also invites customers to come in and view The Dinah Shore Show telecast in color at 7:30pm that evening. I have also included a copy of that TV listing from TV guide. The ad also invites people to place their order. I apologize
for the quality of the ad. It was copied by me at the L.A. library from the New York Times microfiche file many many years ago.

-Steve D.

Didn't many companies at first just use RCA chassises and picture tubes and install them into their own cabinets and call those their own? Until they could make their own sets.

No, many manufacturers designed and built their own chassis. In fact, GE went so far as to develop and register two new tube types for the 15CL100: the 6BU5 pentode HV shunt regulator, and the 2V2 HV rectifier.
The Westinghouse and GE demodulate along R-Y and B-Y, the RCA used the I and Q axes. The Westy, GE, and RCA all have markedly different HV sections, etc.

Nothing mattered if the pump didn't get primed. RCA today would be sued by stockholders angry at what they'd see as a boondoggle that lost money for more than a decade. Someone had to get the sets out there and break the chicken and egg issue of without programming in color and product out there it would never catch on. Most countries went to color later IIRC as the fifties were not a practical time for it from a components, economic, and business point of view.

So as far as the development of a viable *system* of NTSC color RCA gets the lion's share of the credit. Marconi and Edison get credit mostly for developing the first workable systems- they invented outright quite little, mostly they refined manufacture and reliability.

IIRC Philco's contribution was the QAM modulation scheme for chroma modulation.

Good thread. The articles were interesting reading. Thanks.
As to who threw the first punch in the 15" introduction; other than bragging rights, does it really matter? Only RCA had deep enough pockets to stay for the next several rounds.
Admiral's president seemed more interested in having his picture in the newspaper articles rather than possibly having a picture of the color TV.
And as we all know, talk is cheap.

PS
I noticed how the Radio Age article stated women installed sub circuits, aligned and soldered, and the men installed picture tubes, base assemblies, etc. into the cabinet. Today I don't think they would get by with printing that division of labor based on gender.
The article also stated that RCA revealed its color plans to seventy competing manufacturers. Do you think that was a typo??

I'm thinking it was like the rest of RCA's industrial color TV socialism- a rising tide lifts all boats, or no boats, thing. Since Dave Sarnoff was at the helm it shows he was a far-thinking visionary, swashbuckling type despite everything.

He probably had his fingers crossed when he said that.

Seventy would not have been too many.

Remember ... RCA lived off of already arranged royalty arrangements,
color would juct make them bigger.

Its exactly the same as the upcoming EXTREME increase in the
costs of air conditioners due to Obama's "climate deal".... the
royalty arrangements are in place, just that the old cheap gases
will be outlawed (in the US of course ... not in places like China or
India, until the patent runs out). This is off topic, but you get the
point. The key is "already arranged patent sharing".

Especially when you consider that many of those seventy manufacturers produced maybe a single prototype set, or extremely limited pilot run of sets (à la Zenith and Admiral), and then bailed on color TV before it even got off the ground.

IIRC, RCA continued to build color sets after the others bailed, selling chassis to other set makers.
Mainly because of the NBC network, which seemed to be the only color programming on the air. :scratch2:

They did sell complete chassis to other manufacturers. They also licensed the LB-962 circuit to other manufacturers. They'd attach their own tuner, maybe modify the audio circuit a bit, stick it in their own cabinet and then call it their own. Hoffman did this with their '55-'56 Colorcasters, the two Gilfillan prototypes use this circuit, the '56 Sentinel uses it, Emerson and Raytheon used it, etc.

Ben, what circuit does LB-962 cover?

It's a late 1954 simplified color receiver for use with the 21AXP22. The HV section is similar to that of the 21-CT-55, the color demod is narrow band R-Y B-Y similar to the CTC-4 in some ways. RCA never put it into production; they built the CTC-4 instead.

See this post from Nick's Gilfillan thread for a PDF of RCA LB-962:
http://www.videokarma.org/showpost.p...41&postcount=9

Thanks, Ben. That explains a lot.

I suspect that RCA had a patent on the color oscillator circuit which might have prompted GE to use a different circuit. GE's circuit also had a lower component count, often a design motivator.

Even at RCA parts count and cost were the PRIMARY motivators. Part of the reason my Great-Uncles left RCA in 1956 was the oppressive corporate culture, and the insistence that the cheapest possible circuitry be utilized, actual performance be damned. They were given a lot more leeway and freedom over at Sperry-Rand, mostly because they were playing with defense department money...

The brilliance of RCA corporate culture as well can't be overstated. The visionaries there saw what engineers couldn't- that performance was a red herring without a viable base of sets in use, and cost was the major barrier there in addition to the not ready for primetime capacitors and other components economically available. The other companies' me-too projects were essentially stunts not expected to make money done for marketing/bragging rights. The color demodulation section used in the CTC100 was likely bigger than Madman Muntz would want for an entire B&W set :)

I would agree (and if Neil and Skip were alive, I'm sure they would too) up to a point: as soon as performance suffers in a way that is totally objectionable you're now stunting sales of the product you're trying to push. The CTC-5 Super chassis is a pretty infamous example of taking cost cutting way too far, and unfortunately, RCA didn't really have a large enough base of sets in use when the CTC-5 was rolled out.
This is speculation on my part, but I'm sure that more than a few people saw a CTC-5 in operation, made up their mind that color TV was a dog, and then decided to wait to purchase a set when the technology matured more. The sad part is, mature color TV *was* there. A CTC-4 produces a gorgeous color picture, as does the LB-962 circuit...

Admiral didn't bail. I can't speak for other manufactures. They stopped production of their 15 inch color set about June, 1954, about the same time RCA stopped production of the CT 100. Then RCA had limited quanties of the 21CT55 in time for Christmas delivery, 1954 and Admiral had their equivalent 21 color set in dealers showrooms by January 5, 1955, again with an RCA 21APX engineered CRT.

I stand corrected. I had forgotten about the ugly 21 inch Admirals. Regardless, by 1958 RCA was left standing alone for the most part. Zenith wouldn't start manufacturing a color set until 1962, and GE and Motorola, while continuing to offer sets, were selling next to nothing.

I happen to really like the looks of the 21" admirals...A green face with a mahogany cabinet or black face with blond cabinet and two simple top controls like Zenith monochrome sets of the time...It just looks really clean and nice to me.