Color by Christmas?

After twelve years of experiments, Radio Corp. of America announced that it is ready to start commercial broadcasts of color TV and production of color sets. To prove it, RCA last week invited the House Interstate & Foreign Commerce Committee to its research center in Princeton, N.J. for a demonstration. From Manhattan, 45 miles away, RCA telecast a special 20-minute variety show (Dolores Gray, Kukla, Fran & Ollie, the Hit Parade dancers) in full color. At show's end, dazzled committeemen gave rave notices to RCA's system. "It's amazing!" said Committee Chairman Charles A. Wolverton.

"Color television has reached the stage of perfection where the public should have its benefits."

The RCA system is completely compatible (i.e., the telecast in color which the committee saw was received in black & white on regular receivers in homes in the New York area). Viewers can also control color intensity (a flick of the brightness knob can change red to pink), while those who weary of watching color can switch back to black & white by another turn of the knob.

The demonstration just about eliminated rival CBS as a competitor, even though the FCC approved CBS's whirling disk system 2% years ago (TIME, Oct. 23, 1950 et seq.) before a Government order shelved production of color sets. CBS President Frank Stanton has already indicated that to go ahead with CBS's incompatible system would be "tilting at windmills."

Colorado's Senator Edwin Johnson, one of the staunchest advocates in Congress of CBS color, recently swung to RCA, wrote Board Chairman David Sarnoff: "Your efforts in devising a compatible television system will long be remembered as a magnificent achievement of science . . . There may be those who may desire to drag their feet at this point. Please do not allow them to slow you down. Please keep up the steam."

RCA, which says it spent $5,000,000 on color TV last year (and $20 million since 1940), has no intention of letting the steam fizzle out. It has sent its tricolor tube, along with manufacturing instructions, to 177 of the nation's television set and part makers. It is already producing tubes for experimental sets earmarked for selected viewers, expects to be turning them out at the rate of 2,000 a month by midsummer. RCA will soon ask FCC to approve its system. If it does, RCA thinks it can have color receivers on the market nine to twelve months later.

All this prompted Chairman Wolverton to speculate that the U.S. might have color TV by Christmas. Actually, most TV set makers think 1954 the more reasonable goal.

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