Although it may be hard to believe, development of the color television goes as far back as the development of black and white.  In fact, the world’s first color transmission occurred in 1928, and the world’s first color broadcast occurred ten years later.  However, it would not be until nearly two decades later that color television technology advanced enough to be introduced to the general public.

On this day, February 28th, in 1954, the first color TV sets using National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standard were produced and sold to the public. Prior to developing the NTSC standard, broadcasting color television was not feasible, because it consumed three times as much bandwidth as black-and-white broadcasts.  The NTSC approved a system by RCA to solve this problem.  RCA’s all-electronic system encoded color information sportily from brightness information. To this day, the NTSC standard is considered one of the most momentous technical achievements in television history.

During the 1950s, color televisions/broadcasts were slow to gain popularity amongst consumers and networks.  The 1960s witnessed a great spike in color television sales, which was largely in part to the color broadcasting transition of 1965.  By the 1970s, color televisions were the standard and could be found in homes nationwide.