1940's Science and Technology | Television

Television Technology.

Television was introduced to Americans at the 1939 New York World's Fair, but World War II interrupted its commercial development. The first color television broadcast was a private demonstration by RCA at its New Jersey Laboratories on 12 February 1940. On 1 September 1940 CBS entered the competition by demonstrating to the public a superior sequential color system based on the research of engineer Peter Carl Goldmark, who was inspired to develop a color-television system when he saw the spectacular Technicolor movie Gone With the Wind, released in 1939.

The Television Boom.

After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted standards for black and white television in 1941, RCA gave NBC leadership in the development of black-and-white technology. Because of the war, television was still a novelty, confined to a few thousand urban homes, as late as 1946. The television boom did...