|
The history of Japanese color tv manufacture is very interesting. Toshiba was an OEM supplier for Sears in the 1960's for color sets, this included some early color portables (not really portable by todays standards!). Competing with Toshiba in domestic Japan, at that time, was Sony. Sony was not yet a household name in America. Sony battled with Toshiba for market share. This forced Sony to push their Chromatron color tv technology which became a technical flop and almost sent them into bankcruptcy in the late 1960's. Toshiba, on the other hand, was licensing RCA color technology to manufacture tv's in domestic Jaoan and for export to the USA....that is until Sony starting marketing the Trinitron in 1968 (Sony almost signed a licensing agreement with RCA - but backed out in favor of Trinitron development).
Toshiba was sneaky becuase it didn't have the technology to develop their own color CRT's. So, to beat Sony in the '60's they purchased 21FJP22 electron guns from RCA and attached them to smaller Japanese glass bottles back in Japan. The cost to domestic Japanese was reasonable since the CRT's were assembled in Japan locally. But, the export version back to the the good 'ol USA cost a lot more to ship. I have an early Toshiba color set with a 15" rectangular screen built this way. It does produce an excellent color picture and convergence errors are minimal. Strange set but it works great and has nice color. Yes, it too is very very ugly ...a large grey steel box with a tiny color picture and weighs a ton! No beauty awards for this one.
|