A history of color television displays

During the first half of the 50-year period covered by this paper, the color television display progressed from crude mechanical methods and rudimentmy cathode-ray-tube ideas to a more sophisticated combination of these with a rotating color disk in front of a black-and-white picture tube. By 1950, the need to make practicable a compatible color system resulted in an intensive program to develop something better. The result was the shadow-mask color tube, which has since been greatly improved and has been outstandingly successful. Although other cathode-ray approaches succeeded techinical, they have not supplanted the shadow-mask tube commercially. For larger screen applications, projection methods are employed, both with light valves and with projection cathode-ray tubes. The future will undoubtedly see major changes, particularly in the direction of paneltype displays.