Television Technology.

Television was introduced to Americans at the 1939 New York World's Fair, but World War II interrupted its commercial development. The first color television broadcast was a private demonstration by RCA at its New Jersey Laboratories on 12 February 1940. On 1 September 1940 CBS entered the competition by demonstrating to the public a superior sequential color system based on the research of engineer Peter Carl Goldmark, who was inspired to develop a color-television system when he saw the spectacular Technicolor movie Gone With the Wind, released in 1939.

The Television Boom.

After the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted standards for black-and-white television in 1941, RCA gave NBC leadership in the development of black-and-white technology. Because of the war, television was still a novelty, confined to a few thousand urban homes, as late as 1946. The television boom did not begin until 1949. CBS and NBC competed fiercely to create a workable...