“For as long as we’ve had TVs, color has been an important metric to judge the display’s quality.”
Um, no, we had TVs for quite a while before it got any colors, in the beginning it was all gray scale.
Um, no, we had TVs for quite a while before it got any colors, in the beginning it was all gray scale.
Maybe some of the later decoder chips in the late 80s and onward operated digitally but haven’t looked into it too much.
The history of colour television dates back to the mechanical era - with the first practical unit being demonstrated the same year as the first television station launched in America. Further, the first practical all-electronic colour television was developed in 1944, long before mass adoption of the technology. Finally, by the time television adoption began in earnest (1948), the FCC was developing a standard for colour television transmission.
So while it's true that for many years televisions displays lacked colour, they would have still been judged by their absence of colour by a population well aware of coming advancement.
Not even close. Black-and-white TV was the default for decades. Almost nobody judged televisions by their lack of color because hardly anyone beyond those who subscribed to Popular Mechanics even knew that color was a possibility.
The 1948 date is meaningless. Most American households didn't have a color TV until the very late 1960's, or even into the 1970's. TV stations didn't broadcast in color until the late 1960's, and even then most of the programs were in black and white. I remember when color TV broadcasts first became possible and the TV networks crowing before each color show "In color!" the way they did "In stereo (where available)!" in the 1990's.
When color TVs did become well-known and started becoming common, it was usually the parent's bedroom or the living room that had the big color TV, and all the remaining televisions in the house were back-and-white.
Personally, I didn't have a color TV until 1983, and that was only to use as a computer monitor.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3021327/the-addams-familys-livin...
EDIT: Not the Addams family part, though. That’s new to me!