I've been watching old B&W TV shows on YouTube and saw some episodes of, Combat in color.

I'm trying to recall when color TV appeared. Anyone here remember? I imagine that within a couple of years, most all shows would have been in color.

Maybe about 1965?

I think it was earlier. Maybe back in the 50s. But early on it was for rich folks only. I still recall when my family first got one. Inherited from my rich great aunt in the early 70s after I was long gone. It had a sonic — air squeeze bulb with a whistle(s) — remote.

i'd say the original guess is pretty close and that this might answer your question.

Color television - Wikipedia

For those who don't want to read that whole article, I was basically correct: the first season to broadcast mainly in color was Fall, 1965.

I think all, Star Trek episodes were in color, and think that show began in 1966.

CBS was the last network to switch to color. the first season of Gilligan's Island was B&W, then it switched to color for seasons 2 and 3.

__________________
Common sense isn't so common.

My "rich" friend got one in '63 or '64.We got ours in '68 about a year after our b&w died.We were forbidden to watch until evenings

From the Wikipedia link above:

"Although all-electronic color was introduced in the U.S. in 1953,[2] high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on January 1, 1954, but over the next dozen years most network broadcasts, and nearly all local programming, continued to be in black-and-white. In 1956 NBC's The Perry Como Show became the first live network television series to present a majority of episodes in color. CBS's The Big Record, starring pop vocalist Patti Page, was the first television show broadcast in color for the entire 1957-1958 season; its production costs were greater than most movies were at the time not only because of all the stars featured on the hour-long extravaganza but the extreme high intensity lighting and electronics required for the new RCA TK-41 cameras. It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it was announced that over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that autumn. The first all-color prime-time season came just one year later."

Oh WOW! Talk about memories!

1966, I was 12 years old. There was one family in the whole neighborhood who had a color TV. I was friends with their son. In fact, that kid had a lot of friends because of that TV.
Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 6:30 a bunch of us would gather at his house to watch one of the few color TV shows at the time.
BATMAN!
It was great!

I remember that watching Bonanza was a family thing because it was in color-don't remember the year, but I think it was earlier 60's.

I was born in 1960. I remember as a small child (maybe 4-5) my family was the only one in the neighborhood with a color TV. Every kid in the neighborhood would gather at our house to watch the Charlie Brown seasonal "specials."

A funny story comes to mind. My grandparents told me they went to the hardware store in about 1955-56 to buy a new radio. The slick salesman convinced them to buy a TV instead, telling them it was just like radio, but with pictures. Soon everybody will have one, he said.

They bought one and had it delivered.

Of course, the slick salesman had failed to tell them that there were no local TV stations.

The first station in our city signed on in 1959.

__________________
Or something like that . . .

I don't remember the exact year, but it had to have been mid-60's, we'd go to my aunt and uncle's house to watch Bonanza, since they had a color TV. There would be nine of us crowded around one television.

Fast forward fifty years...

We had friends staying with us during Christmas a couple years ago. It was quite the different scene- a full living room, but each one of us on our own personal electronic device, and a fire blazing on the TV screen!

My Aunt and Uncle got theirs in the mid 50's. They were sure popular relatives for a while.

__________________
Mike
S&WCA #3065

Color didn't get universal until the mid 60's. The first 'Munster' episodes were in B&W because color cost more and it would get them less to work with on other aspects of the program. I appreciate that. I'd rather watch B&W with some content than color with crummy writing and production values. I think we got out first color set in 1965. My brother and I took over the B&W in our room, which suited me because I was used to watching black and white. Still am. If anything is in B&W my son shuts down and goes away.

"Brought to you in living color"

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

We got our first color TV in 1968 if I recall correctly. It was a Philco Ford.

__________________
Dave Brown
SWCA #3279

1965 I think I was 4 . I can rember it was on a cart with wheels. An rabbit ears

__________________
Spin The Wheel

My best friend in high school's father owned an appliance store. Back in the late 1950s he had a color TV set as a display in his window. I remember it was very expensive novelty, and even had more color programming been available, very few could have afforded to buy one. We bought our first color set in 1968, a 24" Zenith. It cost close to a month's pay. It was semi-solid state as it had both tubes and transistors, and was not very dependable.

What really kicked off color broadcasting in a big way was Walt Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" starting in 1961, even though there were earlier color programs.

Disney's Wonderful World of Color was one of the first. Followed by Bonanza Sunday night was must see.

__________________
God spelled backwards is dog.

My first color TV was one I built myself from Heathkit. It had a 21" tube and took four days to solder and wire the thing together. That was in 1968 and we used it to watch the Apollo Moon flights, but they were mostly in black & white. It worked great for over 5 years. When it did go on the fritz I would take the tubes down to Sav-On drug and use their tube tester to find the bad tube. Those were the days.........

Color was out loooong before but didn't become cheap enough till the 60s, well before my time!

I was recently watching a show on the History Channel about WW2 and they had color footage from the Nazi Olympics that were taken by a home camera. The narrator made a point of saying it was a wealthy US family on vacation using a rare home video camera with color! Thought that was pretty cool. That was 1936!!!!!

Here's another one. Anyone remember when CDs became common? Mid to late 90s. If you watch the first RoboCop movie (1987) they were already using CDs!!

GPS became common around early 00s but in the movie Nothing But Trouble (1991) Chevy Chase has a BMW with a factory equipped GPS. Which, at that time, probably ran of off CDs

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

Color TV came (sort of) to our small Nebraska town in 1956 or 57.
I remember accompanying my father to the local International Harvester dealer, who had a tent set up in the showroom.
Inside was a color TV airing a football game (Rose Bowl?).
Impressed this 9 year old for sure.

__________________
-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

When I had my first "real" job in around 1964, I worked with another guy who had a color TV set, and we palled around together for awhile. He was also single at the time (but he never did get married). It seemed to work OK for him as a babe magnet.

T.V. guide used to have a little box after a show description with a "C" to indicate a color show. I remember noticing when the "C" changed to "BW" in the mid 60s

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G920A using Tapatalk

__________________
I used to be disgusted..

I remember watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show with my family at my godparents house.They were an old German couple in their 70s
Mein Gott!!!

I remember back when "The Wizard of Oz" would be shown once a year, usually around Easter. I never knew it was in color and was totally amazed and awe struck when I saw it in color.

But, the first show I remember seeing in color was Bonanza, at some friends house. Probably in the early 60's. In the late 60's and early 70's, TV guide would indicate which shows were in color. My parents never owned a color set until I left home. My first one was one I bought in 1972. It wasn't very good. Astro turf was always blue, lol.

A 32" TV was considered huge back then. Now, I don't see how we could stand to watch something so small.

Does anyone else remember those tri-colored transparent sheets you could stick on the face of a B&W TV to get an illusion of color? Also Fresnel lenses you could put in front of a small picture tube to magnify the image?

I remember seeing some projection TVs (B&W) back in the 1950s also. They made a larger image. The very first TV we had when I was a kid (ca. 1949) was, I think, a 14" Stromberg-Carlson. I suppose the technology of manufacturing large CRTs took a while to develop. We could get one station which was located in a city about 40 miles away. Lots of snow, but we watched it anyway.

When I was real little, the first B&W station came to our corner of Nebraska.
Dad immediately purchased a set.
Remember well my parents and grandparents sitting in front of the set watching the test pattern as the engineers tuned it up the first few weeks.

__________________
-jwk-
US Army '72-'95

It was 1974 in my house. My oldest brother came from college and said to hell with this and bought us a color TV.

I remember my Mom and Dad going to the neighbor's house to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing because they had a color TV. It didn't matter that the moon landing was in black and white.

__________________
“What you got, ain’t new.”

we did not get a color t.v till 1973 , dad always bought used black and white sets before that

Remember a lot of the Superman shows were filmed in color and George Reeves died in 1959.

__________________
LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

In the late 1960's when everyone else in the neighborhood had Color TV's, we kept urging Dad to get one - he was a frugal guy. He came home from work the next day with a piece of plastic ( like DWalt described above) that was blue on top, yellow in the middle and green on the bottom and it stuck to the TV's picture tube. If the scene was of a field outdoors it was OK, but for the most part it sucked! That lasted about 2 days, we tore it off and a few months later my mother finally convinced him to splurge and get a color TV.

I remember a cousin of mine got one of the early ones. He also had one of the rooftop antennas with a rotator. He spent so much time trying to get the best picture and the best color that the program would be over before he got it the way he wanted it. The color quality was basically **** too.

Funny story in his case. He was lucky to have the TV at all. He didn't get along with his wife at the time and was going through a nasty divorce. He came home from work one day to find the house totally cleared out but the TV was still there. Apparently it was too large to move or hard to fit through the door.

I think it was mid 70s before we got color TV. I sort of remember the BW TVs had a sharper picture than the early color sets.

__________________
Common sense isn't so common.

IIRC NBC was the first network to broadcast color TV, they were closely tied to RCA. I can still see the NBC Peacock. CBS developed a superior color system but then the FCC decreed that all sets had to be able to receive all signals, the CBS system was too proprietary, so to speak. In the pre-cable era TV broadcasting-especially color-was very subject to atmospherics, people spent a lot of time adjusting the red, blue and green color adjusting knobs-remember the vertical and horizontal adjusting knobs ?

"...remember the vertical and horizontal adjusting knobs ?"

No one who lived through the early B&W period could forget rolling pictures and the knob-twisting exercise of the horizontal and vertical holds to stop them. It usually meant you needed to replace a tube.

Before the FCC "compatible color" decree, the early color broadcasting system under consideration involved using a rotating color disc in front of the picture tube. I never quite understood how that was supposed to work, but I remember that some of the late 1940s B&W TV sets had a receptacle on the back to plug the color disc apparatus into. I never saw any of those discs. Has anyone?

Naw, there was 4 of them and they weren't that old back then.