Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug
My brother sent this picture to me .is this a real Motorola color or retro fit color set put in b&w set?
Only picture. Is in art museum in denver
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I'm not sure by any means, but yes, I think this is probably in fact a Motorola color TV. The only thing I would wonder about is the round CRT, as most Motorola color sets I've seen have had up to 23" rectangular tubes. One Motorola TV I remember in particular had an indicator lamp on the front panel, which illuminated when the TV station to which the set was tuned was telecasting in color. This feature went out of style by the end of the 1960s or perhaps the early 1970s, as by then most TV networks and local stations were telecasting in nearly 100 percent color.
NBC was the first American TV network to present all its programming in color, and they made quite a big deal of it from the '60s until 1975 when they would show a full-color peacock before every color program, with an announcer proclaiming "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC." The peacock, of course, appeared in black and white on b&w televisions; I think NBC may have planned it this way from the start, so as to promote color TV and to boost the sales of color sets.
BTW, NBC did not pioneer HDTV in the 1980s, but they did have an announcement they ran for a short time (perhaps a few months or so, when HDTV was new) before every HD show they telecast at the time. I don't recall how the announcement went, but I think it was something along the lines of "The following program is presented in high definition." I don't recall if the announcer identified the network or not during this announcement; however, I don't think so. I don't recall ever having heard ". . . on NBC" mentioned at any time when the announcement ran; for that matter, I don't recall ABC or CBS making such an announcement, with or without a network ID, before an HD program.
I just saw a photo in a post to this thread, in which was shown a 1954 Motorola color TV with, yes, you guessed it, a round color CRT. Color TVs in the 1950s must have been very (even prohibitively) expensive (perhaps around $1000 or more), and most American TV networks except NBC were not telecasting much color programming at that time. Another problem may have been that not every city had TV in the 1950s, so anyone with a color set at that time may have had to erect a very large antenna on a tall tower just to get color reception; the stations these folks watched were likely 50+ miles distant, as the nearest TV station may or may not have been telecasting in color.
Color TV did not "take off", so to speak, until at least the 1960s-'70s, when prices of color sets became reasonable; however, the price of a new color TV in the '70s was still in the neighborhood of $400-$500. The prices of color sets did not come down drastically until some years later.