1953 British Color TV Experiments
 

The following posts appeared on the AudioKarma discussion group site in the U.S.:

******************
...I came across a book titled "The 1950s" by
Edith Horsley
Domus Books
A Bison Book

Edith M. Horsley
U.S.A./Quality Books
Copyright 1978 Bison Books Limited
ISBN 0-89196-015-5
Printed in Hong Kong
Prduced by Bison Books Limited
4 Cromwell Place, London, England
Published by Quality Books Inc.

This book is written apparently in American English (e.g. "color," not "colour"), but has a great deal (perhaps majority) of English events as well as American and international.

On page 91, in the 1953 chapter, it has a couple of color illustrations attributed to Radio Times Hulton Picture Library. These photos purport to show

1. a cameraman and subject experimenting with color TV in 1953
2. a family watching an experimental color set (no date).

So, my question is, what can we find out about what these pictures are really showing and their likely real dates are?

The studio camera is too compact to be a simultaneous color camera of that time, but could conceivably be a field-sequential camera.

Anybody have any knowledge of this particular camera model?

The color receiver looks like a mock-up or publishing cut and paste. Rectangular screen and too compact to be a round shadow mask tube, also definitely not a field-sequential color-wheel set.

Despite all the doubtful features, the photos are in color, indicating perhaps that color was important to the original purpose.

This site discusses the BBC television coverage of the 1953 coronation. A single paragraph is devoted to the experimental closed circuit color broadcast. I agree that it was possibly a field sequential system. Here's the paragraph:

"As befits the coming generation, two hundred children saw the Coronation procession by the TV of the future - in colour. They were at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. By closed-circuit they received pictures from three TV colour cameras overlooking Parliament Square"

And the site: APTS 2 June 1953 - Coronation Day

I remember reading about that on a BBC engineer's web site, which is sadly now gone. It was a color sequential system, complete with color wheel and it was supposedly transmitted the coronation via a closed-circuit post office line to an orphan's home, or children's hospital, or something like that.

It had to be field sequential because of the size of the camera. Because of the rectangular shape of the receiver screen, it was a projection type receiver, with a small color wheel, similar to the GE/CBS receiver design Here


At the resolution at which we can access the photograph, it appears to be a professional shot including a real fire in the fireplace. Except for the centre of the flame, the 'color TV' picture is the brightest element of the picture. It probably got that way for one of two reasons: it was latrer stripped in by the '50s graphics department; or it is an 11 by 14 transparency in front of a diffusion filter in front of a lamp?
My guess is those people were looking at a blank hole in that cabinet, itself perhaps a figment of some designer's concept of television cabinets (what are those three lower-left knobs for?).

Does anyone know more about this? I'll pass on anything that is posted to the AudioKarma thread.

Re: 1953 British Color TV Experiments
 

Here's a point of history, not connected with the above, but nevertheless still a 'British Color TV Experiment' and from the same year, 1953...

Grant Dixon, ex-president of the NBTVA and a lifelong Quaker, who died not long ago, told me that he was the first amateur in Great Britain to produce a complete working colour television system in that year. More details I don't know.

Didn't Pye produce a colour system around that time which was used for training surgeons in hospitals ?

Steve

Re: 1953 British Color TV Experiments
 

Not sure about the background to the article, but that set certainly has the look of a backlit transparency about I'd say.

Re: 1953 British Color TV Experiments
 

Could be like the experimental Philips K1 which was a projection set, apparently incorporating 3 little MW6-2 tubes. (A friend of mine has an MW6-2 with red phosphors.) The MW6-2 tubes were certainly about in 1953 (and Philips made projection tubes much earlier than that anyway). The cabinet certainly looks very Pye-esque and the flat square-ish screen looks like it could be for some kind of a projection system.

Re: 1953 British Color TV Experiments
 

The Pye set bears a passing resemblance to this White Ibbotson projection set. (Model number unknown.)