Why Inventing Color TV Was So Difficult

Why Inventing Color TV Was So Difficult Many who read this will remember watching television on a black-and-white set at some point in their lives. Fewer will remember doing so because only black-and-white sets existed. Of course, your own experience will depend upon your country of origin. The United States began the transition to color television in 1953, and more than half of its population owned color sets less than twenty years thereafter. France’s stations started to change over in 1967, and the last one did so in 1983. South Korea, where I live, started its own regular color broadcasts in 1980, though at that point, those from the American Forces Network, Japan, and even North Korea could already be tuned in for years. Today we all take color TV for granted, but as the Primal Space video above explains, its invention was no simple matter. Still, it occurred much earlier than most of us would imagine. In 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird came up with the first tele

Added 4 Sept 2026