Earliest possible color television

J.D.Ward

Donor
I know it's an obvious point, but how early a POD is allowed?

If Greco-Roman civilization has an industrial revolution, you can have colour television as early as you want.

Does "The Davidson Affair" by Stuart Jackman qualify as AH?
 
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I swear, some of you people are obsessed with butterflies. Color TV is overated. Nothing worth watching any more.
 
Color TV was demonstrated on the lab bench close to its invention in the twenties, but it was too crude to be practical. The big technical break for black and white TV came with the Farnsworth picture tube, patented in 1929. Had the economy been better, color TV may have been developed in the thirties.

Patents will be a factor in the pricing and marketability of a product. Recall how color photographs did not become the norm until the Kodacolor and Ektachrome patents expired in the sixties.
 
Butterfly away the Great Depression and World War II and you could potentially have colour television by 1945.

That is probably the most practical time estimate. In order for color TV to be practical, you need material to show: color motion pictures. In 1939 OTL, color movies like Gone With the Wind and Wizard of Oz were filmed in black and white and colorized frame by frame. Color TV any sooner would simply sit on the bench until photographic technology caught up. Of course, without a Great Depression, and the sharing of German technology with the rest of the world, 1945 is a pretty good estimate.
 
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