[Steve D.]

I believe the "blue banana" prank occured during the 1949/50 RCA/CBS/ FCC color tv demos. RCA head David Sarnoff had put extreme deadline pressure on his engineers to complete the tri-color shadow mask picture tube. This was to be the heart of RCA's compatible color system, in competition with CBS's field sequential (color wheel) system. Seems a couple of the RCA techs decided to blow off steam by painting a banana blue and placing it in the middle of a basket of fruit. Red apples, green grapes, some oranges and the blue banana. The joke backfired and Sarnoff, needless to say, was not amused.


-Steve D.