First Ad for color in 4/26/1954 Life Mag.

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Originally Posted by Electronic M

Westinghouse H840CK15. I own the one that was auctioned in Portland in 2020.
Westinghouse beat the CT-100 (also have one) to market by over a month. Admiral beat them both by a decent margin, and it's possible that Raytheon was the actual first claiming you could order their color set in December of 1953 (within something like a week of NTSC color being standardized).

The one thing RCA could claim with the CT-100 is the first MASSPRODUCED color TV....They made 4-5K of them on an actual assembly line as they would a volume selling monochome set. All the other 15" 1954 color sets, and even a good chunk of NON-RCA color between 54 and 61 were hand built because a production run of 10-500 didn't warrant tooling up an entire production line.

I have two sources that say Admiral manufactured 1000 15 inch color sets in 1953-54 and in April began shipping a “second series” of sets.

Westinghouse started production of the H840CK15 on January 10, 1954. They were “producing two dozen sets a day” and in production for 6 months. Even if one halved that production rate (slow start up, and slow downs) the production would be 2160 sets.