ABSTRACT
The first mention of a color television system based on the separation of incoming light into three primary colors is found in a German patent from 1904. This was very much ahead of its time, and the technology was not yet ripe for the implementation of such a system. Even a black-and-white television transmission would require 20 additional years of research and development. As early as 1928 John Logie Baird demonstrated color television pictures using the Nipkow disk as a scanning device. Just before World War II, Peter Goldmark in the United States demonstrated a field-sequential color television system with 343 lines and 20 fps. Once the war was over, the same scientist, taking advantage of the development of electronics during the war, proposed to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1949 an improved version of his system. It was again a field-sequential system, this time based on 405 lines and 24 frames. The FCC gave him permission to implement such a system, and by 1951 Goldmark started experimental broadcasts of his noncompatible color system. However, because there were already nearly ten million black-and-white receivers in the U.S. market, a noncompatible color system was doomed.
