Color

Who invented the color TV? The question "when was color television first invented" is somewhat more complicated than it may seem. If you want to go back as far as possible to the first thing that could be called a kind of color TV, then you could say that the first color TV was invented or the first color television was made in the year 1951. The inventor of color television by this answer is Peter Goldmark, who worked at CBS Laboratories. While this may have been the first color TV, color television wasn't really invented yet at this point, as the kind of color TV that Goldmark invented used a spinning color wheel in the back, a moving part that would be troublesome to keep running and would break down easily in time.

The first system basically identical to what we call color TV today was invented by RCA. The first color television program was broadcast on this system that was developed in early 1954 by a team of engineers. How does color television work? Under the analog system of television transmission which has worked for decades, color information is encoded on phase-modulated sub carriers. This was a technical solution that made it possible to keep the basic operating principles of television the same (i.e. it would be compatible with the black and white television signal but it would also have the color information that could be picked up by color TVs). This would be the first step in a long line of inventions such as the portable color TV, the 12 volt color TV, the Quasar mini color TV and the supersonic color TV radio.

What year was the color television invented? If you do not count the inventions above (including the second one, which is really the kind of television that we consider when we think about color television today), you can say that the color TV was first invented by Guillermo Camarena. Camarena built a color television in 1934 and patented it in his native Mexico as well as the United States. The first ever color transmission was sent in 1946. Both Guillermo Camarena and RCA sent and received color transmissions that year and the first one to succeed was Camarena. Therefore, going by the strictest interpretation of what makes a color television set, Guillermo Camarena was the first to invent one and the first to send and receive a color television picture.