Home » Discussion Forums » Talk » Dawn of color TV
| Dawn of color TV [message #13565] |
Wed, 25 March 2009 04:22  |
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I was contemplating the black&white e-ink screen of my Cybook e-reader, which is perfectly functional and fine with me. However, I suspect many people born since 1980 consider an electronic device without color to be unthinkable. Which brought me to considering color TV.
For those who remember its introduction, was it a memorable enough experience that you can still say what you first watched in color?
I vividly remember two experiences. I babysat for our upstairs neighbors, who had a newfangled color set, as well as a very young baby who generally obligingly slept all the time I was there, leaving me free to watch. Once, The Mouse That Roared was broadcast, and I phoned my brother to come upstairs so he could enjoy it in color too. And then some antic of Peter Sellers was so funny that we laughed so loud we woke up baby Stiles, and I had to miss the next half hour or more, cuddling him back to sleep.
Even more memorable was the civic educational trip our Scout troop took to the state capitol. Our troop leader, an Air Force wife, managed to arrange for us to stay overnight on the nearby Air Force base, parceled out among the married officers. My two best friends and I were indulgently allowed by our hosts to watch The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and we were absolutely agog to see our heroes in color. And then the episode turned out to be the pilot for The GIRL from U.N.C.L.E., and Napoleon and Ilya appeared for a grand total of maybe two minutes, while this stupid woman with glow-in-the-dark lipstick hogged the rest of the show! Now, if she had actually been a girl, some exceptional teen-age spy, that might have been interesting. But the woman from uncle was a total waste.
Obviously my attention was not caught at the time by any shows of great philosophical or social importance! But hey, I was maybe 15. Anybody else remember when we started watching TV in color?
Abigail
[Updated on: Wed, 25 March 2009 04:27]
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #13567 is a reply to message #13565 ] |
Wed, 25 March 2009 05:48  |
 Susan in Melbourne
Messages: 184
Registered: October 2008
Location: Melbourne |
Senior Member |
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I'm not sure if this is accurate or not, but when I hitch-hiked around New Zealand for three months in the summer of 1974-75, colour tv was appearing there then, whereas it had yet to appear in Australia. I stayed occasionally with friends I'd made at a camp a couple of years previously, in between the Youth Hostels, so I THINK I got to see colour tv then. One of many instances of NZ being ahead of the field, with Australia trailling.
Mind you, I didn't have the habit of tv, as we didn't have one at home until I'd finished high school. My father occasionally hired a tv for the summer to watch the cricket, but it always went back to the shop when school started, as Dad had strong feelings about its distracting influence, and my known lack of self-discipline when it came to reading, so what would a tv do??!. My parents bought a tv when I started university, but I was hardly ever home then, so didn't get to see it much.
Assuming this isn't all a figurement of my imagination (I can't remember what happened five minutes ago, let alone over 30 years ago!), I have absolutely no recollection of any particular shows.
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #13568 is a reply to message #13567 ] |
Wed, 25 March 2009 06:17 |
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| Susan in Melbourne wrote on Wed, 25 March 2009 04:48 |
Mind you, I didn't have the habit of tv, as we didn't have one at home until I'd finished high school.
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Ha. I had felt somewhat deprived because we didn't have a TV till I was in grade school, while my school-friends and also my cousins had all watched Captain Kangaroo and the other Saturday-morning shows as toddlers. Now I learn that even our family was advanced compared to other places.
For a while in my thirties and I spent several hours a day watching. Now I no longer own a set, and I can't imagine how my friends who chatter about their favorite shows ever get anything done. Time's a'wasting, and I surely can't afford to spend it in front of the tube anymore. Of course, I make up for it in front of the computer ...
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #13603 is a reply to message #13565 ] |
Wed, 25 March 2009 20:36 |
skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
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I don't remember when I first saw color TV ... it was someone else's, that much I know.
I also know that I never saw UNCLE or Star Trek in color. Seeing them in VHS was a very strange experience, as they lived in a black and white world as far as I knew.
When I was really little ( pre 1952) we were the only family on our street who had a TV.
We were also the first to have hi-fi and stereo (my Dad built his own in those days).
Later Dad decided that TV was awful and we didn't have one until something about football or baseball drove him to get another. I think that perhaps it was a sporting event I first saw in color. I had moved out by that time. I was not impressed. I still am not impressed. Reading works best for me.
Soon after my brother settled down to a real job etc. he became a recycler of nearly dead TV sets. Eventually he had four, with only the one on the top of the stack working.
Thirty years later he has developed a habit of winning the company golf tournament, and the prize is always a TV! Now he's gotten into the habit of being the one to give them away. I think he eventually gave my school four.
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #13715 is a reply to message #13603 ] |
Fri, 27 March 2009 15:02 |
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Does it count that I remember seeing my first color _computer_ screen? I started in two tone, orange on black. I used that half way through University. I recycled it in 1990, long after color was 'the thing'. But hey, I didn't have internet or viruses on Old Faithful and he always booted up.
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14416 is a reply to message #14365 ] |
Tue, 07 April 2009 03:53 |
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| Blogmom wrote on Mon, 06 April 2009 10:10 |
-- Karen "I remember punchcards. And DOS." Blogmom
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When I was maybe a sophomore at Pomona College, the Botany Department was the proud owner of a Hewlett Packard calculator that was the size of a typewriter, and made stacks of punch-cards for complex calculations. I don't remember, it may have been like an adding machine with paper tape for simple arithmetic.
A couple of years later, my brother was the center of fascinated attention from me and all my cousins at Christmas, with an HP pocket-sized calculator, that did all the things that desk-size unit could do, plus it could store sixty-four steps! of program in its internal memory!
Abigail
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14501 is a reply to message #14365 ] |
Wed, 08 April 2009 09:44 |
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Susan from Athens
Messages: 817
Registered: October 2008
Location: Athens, Greece |
Senior Member |
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| Blogmom wrote on Mon, 06 April 2009 18:10 |
-- Karen "I remember punchcards. And DOS." Blogmom
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I remember punchcards. I remember my father's lab at the University of Athens had a computer that was the size of a huge room. Their used punch cards (a few stacks of which we still have) were the re-usable paper notecards / drawing material / listmaking stationery of my childhood and continued to be used for a very long time. Hey I was a re-user re-cycler before it was fashionable.
I remember my father's HP calculator with the 10-programmable steps. I still have it and, funnily enough, it still works. Then in the early eighties my brother had a ZX Spectrum computer.
I did, at one stage in my life learn to programme in Basic and Fortran (don't ask me - I don't remember a thing) and I still have the occasional nightmare in which DOS makes an appearance.
I remember when we first saw colour TV. It was in England, where we were visiting my grandmother and rented a set for the duration of our visit. The green of the cricket pitches was shocking. Colour TV only arrived in Greece in 1977, and it took a further 9 years before it made an appearance in our household. But black and white was fine. We saw a lot of old films at that time and they were never in colour, in any case. I love the silvery shades of vintage Laurel and Hardy, and silent shorts.
We cling to our old appliances in my family, with a vigour that few others could understand. My mother still cooks with the old English Electric cooker she bought when she got married in 1963. It works just fine, so we've had no reason to replace it 
“I have always imagined heaven to be a kind of library.” –Jorge Luis Borges
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14549 is a reply to message #14501 ] |
Wed, 08 April 2009 20:53 |
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| Susan from Athens wrote on Wed, 08 April 2009 08:44 |
We cling to our old appliances in my family, with a vigour that few others could understand. My mother still cooks with the old English Electric cooker she bought when she got married in 1963. It works just fine, so we've had no reason to replace it
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Oh, I understand!
In the eighties, my mother and I went together to buy a sewing machine that did various zigzag stitches and other acrobatic things like that. But neither of us really liked it, and it languished. She much preferred the little old green Elna that all my clothes were made on till I left for college, and many even after. It was her machine since before I can remember, and probably since before I was born, and that was 58 yrs ago. As you say, it still works fine.
The old Revere pressure cooker has retired, however. They no longer make rubber gaskets to fit it.
According to my cousin, her older brother once made a remark about "growing up in the Depression." His mother said, "What Depression did you grow up in?" He replied, "The same one you did."
Good bit of truth in that.
Abigail
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14550 is a reply to message #13565 ] |
Wed, 08 April 2009 21:28 |
skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
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When I was in high school we were in a very high tech area ... Bell Labs, various pharmaceutical and chemical cos. ... in New Jersey and we got huge cartons of the punched out bits from punch cards to use as confetti at football games. Those sharp little edges could hurt.
Many years later mylar tape was the thing used to control machine tools and living in a town with many machine tool companies used tape was easy to come by. I used it to keep the deer out of my garden.
I would never have believed that there were computers in my future.
Does anyone else remember seeing the ENIAC on TV?
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14902 is a reply to message #13567 ] |
Thu, 16 April 2009 05:10 |
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| Susan in Melbourne wrote on Wed, 25 March 2009 22:48 |
I'm not sure if this is accurate or not, but when I hitch-hiked around New Zealand for three months in the summer of 1974-75, colour tv was appearing there then, whereas it had yet to appear in Australia.
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I hope this doesnt make you feel old Susan, but this concurs with my memory of when I first remember seeing colour TV, except I was 5 in 1974!
But yes, here in NZ we got our first colour TV when I was 5 or 6 I think, it was a PYE vidmatic, and back in those days we only had 2 channels.
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #14936 is a reply to message #14902 ] |
Fri, 17 April 2009 02:47 |
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| BlueRose wrote on Thu, 16 April 2009 04:10 |
and back in those days we only had 2 channels.
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But what was ON those two channels was probably as good quality (not in special effects but in "worth spending time on") as the total of any twenty channels today.
Maybe that's just a self-righteous "sour grapes" comment. But I no longer have a working TV, and I miss it not at all.
Abigail
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| Re: Dawn of color TV [message #15344 is a reply to message #13565 ] |
Sat, 25 April 2009 20:21 |
ferndale1910
Messages: 15
Registered: December 2008
Location: Northern California |
Junior Member |
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OK guys..I was born---long, long ago, but in our own galaxy. My father worked for General Electric so we always had a T.V. (And a dishwasher.) I watched "Mighty Mouse" on Saturday mornings, and Had to tell my older brother when "American Bandstand" started. Those were black-and-white days. However, I do remember having the neighbors over to watch something IN COLOR! I thought it was the "Wizard of Oz", but my mother seems to think it was something else. Whatever. 1959, Longview, Washington.
"Far and few, far and few, are the lands where the Jumblies live." Edward Lear
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