History in the making: the first week of regular color TV broadcast

The 11 years of experiments, publicity blasts and court battles reached fruition in 1951 when the freckled face of Arthur Godfrey showed up on the screen in full color, "An awful thing to see in color" - he said.

For this first color telecast, Godfrey and his crew performed only in front of a 1.400 invited viewers and a handful of TV enthusiasts who have built their own color converters.

as ballerina tries to cool off, choreographer George Balaniche directs drippling-wet tv crewmen

Despite the noisy electric fans, the 120F heat and a buckled floor the show went off on schedule and while some critics didn't like it, most people agreed that color TV was the future. CBS hurriedly began producing its own color recieveing sets and other manufacturers hastened to turn out attachments which will enable owners of ordinary sets to recieve CBS's color programs in color or black and white. By january 1st 1952, CBS hopefully predicts 25.000 color recievers will be available. Meanwhile RCA was perfecting its own system of color TV which, if approved by the FCC, would need a different kind of convertor for color reception.

(left) studio troubles areise as floor buckles under the hot TV lights. Heat also plagued commercials, melting the icing on a layer cake and making cherries run out of cherrie pie.(righ) Homemade color comes to TV set of Robert Peters and Carl Weiner in South Orange, N.J. boys built converter for 31$, say "even an adult can make one".