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Early Color Television

Westinghouse H840CK15

Early Television

(click on picture for high resolution image)

  • Recollections of a Westinghouse H840CK15
  • Canadian version of the H840CK15
  • Prototype H840CK15
  • Radio & Television News editorial
  • New York Times, April 2, 1954
  • Marshall Wozniak's site
  • Advertising literature
  • Technical information

This set was the first color set for sale, in March of 1954. It was priced at $1,295. Westinghouse ran a full page ad in the New York Times introducing the set, for sale at 60 stores in New York. Not one of the stores reported a single sale.

Consumer Reports reviewed the new Westinghouse in their April, 1954 issue. They concluded:

CU is as optimistic as the next man about the future of color television. But on the the basis of the evidence at hand, it appears that only an inveterate (and well-heeled) experimenter should let the advertisements seduce him into being "among the very first" to own a color TV set.

In April the price was cut to $1,110 after only 30 sets had been sold. Only 500 were built, and most were never sold, because there was very little programming in color at the time, and the set was expensive and temperamental. This is one of only a few of these sets still in existence.

We have finished the restoration of two of these sets. Both cabinets have been restored to their original condition. One set will remain with us, while the other will be placed in a museum in the Northeast.

Early Television

Early Television

A picture from the screen

Early Television

Courtesy of Marshall Wozniak

 


 
Early Television Museum
5396 Franklin St., Hilliard, OH 43026
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