Colour television itself goes back to 1904 when a German patent disclosed an early proposal. In 1925, Vladimir Zworkyn, who invented the cathode ray tube, filed his own patient disclosure for an early electronic colour television system. But the battle for tint eventually came down to two major companies: RCA (which owned the NBC networks) and CBS.

Dr. Peter Carl Goodmark, who led his team to come up with a mechanical form of colour TV in 1940, guided CBS in engineering. Based on the mechanical television system invented by Britain's John Logie Baird, it featured a spinning disk with the primary colours red, blue and green; the disk would spin and the eye would capture the broadcast in vivid colour. But Goodmark's system required television to move up to the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) spectrum (channels 14 to 80), at the same time RCA and other electronic makers were perfecting all-electronic, monochrome television for the Very High Frequency (VHF) spectrum of channels 2 to 13.

Virtually all television work came to a halt for World War Two, but when the war ended, RCA quickly began work on an all-electronic colour system compatible with the black and white system of the day. But RCA's efforts came to naught during hearings before the Federal Communications Commission in 1949 and 1950. The RCA system flickered, produced poor quality pictures, and proved to be very expensive. By contrast, the CBS system-though it had its own problems-was far better than the RCA system and closer to consumer production. On September 1st, 1950, the FCC ruled in favour of the CBS "field sequential" colour system over RCA's "dot sequential" effort.
RCA sued to block the FCC decision; the US Supreme Court denied the suit.

CBS may have won the battle, but the company was about to lose the colour war. By 1950, millions of black and white sets, virtually all using the VHF frequency, were in use. Consumers showed no sign of demanding CBS colour, because it would mean scrapping their current sets. Sensing an opening, RCA Chairman David Sarnoff ordered his engineers to resume work on a better all-electronic, compatible colour system.

CBS showed off its beautiful, spinning wheel colour system in a special June 25th, 1951 broadcast to producers and advertisers. But only a handful of sets could broadcast CBS colour; other set manufacturers refused to build CBS-compatible TV's, forcing CBS to buy a second-rate television set maker and run up deficits. With a financial disaster looming, CBS asked the Truman administration to "order" the company to stop colour television production for the duration of the ongoing Korean War. The ink was barely dry on the order before CBS pulled the plug in late 1951.

Meanwhile, RCA's colour system improved to the point that the company asked the FCC for a new hearing. The RCA system was fully electronic and wouldn't force consumers to give up their current black and white sets. The colour was far better than earlier efforts, and while the price of a colour set was far beyond what the average worker could afford, it was more affordable than the earlier system. In a rare change of heart, the FCC reversed its approval of the CBS colour system and made the RCA system the American standard in 1953. Sarnoff won the battle and the war. (Ironically, CBS's spinning wheel was later used to capture the first surface pictures of the moon; the RCA colour system was deemed too bulky and heavy by the space agency NASA.)

Historians say the RCA CT 100 was the first mass-produced colour set (it began coming off the assembly lines on March 25th, 1954. Rivals Westinghouse and Admiral claimed they beat RCA to the stores with their own colour sets, but only a handful of each brand were sold. RCA, by contrast, sold about 5,000 CT 100 models, despite a price of $1000 (which translates to about $6,000 in today's dollars). Price was one obstacle. The other was programming. Only NBC made a concerted effort to provide colour programs; not surprising since it was owned by RCA-which was losing money on each colour set and wanted to get into the black as soon as possible.

NBC quickly moved to broadcast each of its prime time shows (and some daytime and news programs) in colour at least once. The network's specials became "colour spectaculars"; the first filmed colour series aired on NBC in 1955. Called "Norby", the sitcom (sponsored by film maker Eastman Kodak) lasted only 13 weeks. Colour set sales didn't budge.

In 1956, NBC launched its most famous corporate logo-the peacock. New York designer Fred Knapp designed the original logo with help from the network's art department. But it was just a card, with an announcer telling viewers the program they were about to see was being broadcast in "living colour".

One year later, the flat bird became animated, with a musical sting and announcer Ben Grauer uttering the immortal words "The following program is brought to you in living colour on NBC". The new peacock was first seen on the September 7th, 1957 instalment of the musical program "Your Hit Parade".

In the fall of 1959, NBC launched the Western drama Bonanza. It was not the first colour series, but the show's beautiful outdoor scenery drew viewers to appliance stores; some even bought a colour set.

RCA kept improving its colour receivers and lowering the prices; competitors followed suit (most US television makers used the RCA chassis and picture tube for their colour sets). 1961 brought NBC Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Colour and Saturday Night At The Movies; accelerating the number of colour programs on the air. By 1962, a revised peacock logo with new music and a new voice in NBC house announcer Mel Brandt. (It was known as the Laramie Peacock because it was first seen on the Western of the same name.) The new peacock remained on the network through 1975.

Stung by the expense and loss of its own colour system, CBS was far behind NBC in launching colour programming. Although a few programs aired in colour (including the biweekly variety series Shower of Stars), CBS was the ratings leader and felt no need to match NBC in colour programming. But as colour series began taking over the landscape, CBS had no choice but to follow suit.

A colorized version of the CBS "eye" logo was used to signal CBS' few colour broadcasts in the 1950's, but by the mid-1960's, an animated logo preceded each CBS colour show, with music accompanying the letters CBS and the eye logo. They turned from black and white to tint as the announcer told viewers "CBS presents this program in colour".

ABC, the weakest of the three US networks, simply didn't have the money to convert to colour in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Although The Jetsons was ABC's first series to be broadcast in colour (1962), most ABC affiliates lacked colour transmission equipment so viewers with colour sets saw The Jetsons in black and white.

As the 1960's progressed, colour sets became cheaper, more reliable with improved picture quality. Viewers began buying colour sets, as prices kept dropping. By 1965, it was clear that television had to convert fully to colour. NBC became the first "full colour network" in the US as it converted daytime, sports, news and children's programming to tint. CBS quickly followed suit. ABC had to borrow $25 million from corporate giant ITT so it could switch all its facilities and stations to colour broadcasting. By the fall of 1966, all three networks were fully colorized in prime time. (ABC shows either had an opening card announcing the name of the program and the words "in colour"; or an announcer would do the honours ("'The FBI'...in colour!"); sometimes even the series' star ("Hi. I'm Elizabeth Montgomery. Stay tuned for 'Bewitched'. Next. In colour.").

Viewers responded; by 1972, colour set sales exceeded those of black and white in the US for the first time ever. Today, nearly every American household has at least one colour set. But those sets will soon be far different. In December 1996, the FCC required broadcasters to switch to digital frequencies by the end of 2006, for the launch of HDTV. (The first HDTV set sold in the US was a 56 inch Panasonic model in San Diego, California-way back in August 1998.)

Today, more shows are being broadcast in high definition; prices of digital sets are falling and consumers are beginning to snap them up. As legendary baseball manager Yogi Berra once remarked, "it's déjà vu all over again".