Home Made Color Converters

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Early Color Television

Home Made Color Converters

Build Your Own Color TV Converter	My TV Set Sees Color Pictures
Circuit Changes Involved in Converting to Color	PS Reader Makes Own Color TV
Conversion to Color is Simple and Easy	TV Color 'Sampler' Costs Only $8
Convert Your TV Set for Color Reception	Your 7-incher Can Catch Color Telecasts
Homemade Color Converter

Early Television

Forrest Killy's homemade color converter and wheel

(Life Magazine Photos by Walter Sanders)

From Time Magazine, January 30, 1950:

One big stumbling block to color TV is the cost of converting existing black & white sets. By last week ingenious amateurs were showing TV engineers how to get around it. One such was a Roselle, N.J. electrician named Forrest Killy who converted his set to color with 30 cents worth of red, blue and green Cellophane.

CBS engineers, making daily experimental color telecasts from Washington, found that Killy had set up a Cellophane wheel, driven by an old phonograph motor, before his TV screen. Once the wheel was synchronized with the transmitted signal he got a six-inch color picture. "Anyone can do it," said Killy of his makeshift converter. "All the technical stuff you need is to know how to hook up an adaptor switch and regulate the speed of the color wheel." Killy's opinion of color TV itself: "I think it's easier on your eyes."

Early Television

Robert Peters (L), inventor of TV color converter, and Carl Weiner, watching TV color program with others. South Orange, New Jersey, July 1951

(Life Magazine photograph by Carl Mydans)

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