Black & White television sets were once changed to color by a plastic panel

From black and white to color instantly

If you, the reader, were born between 1946 and 1064, the Baby Boom/Jones Generation years, you are familiar with old-fashioned black-and-white television sets. Perhaps you might also recall a product created that was supposed to transform the B&W sets into living colors.

This was a piece of plastic that would be fitted over the screen of the black and white TV, and instantly, the images were colorized, except this was an illusion.

Only three colors

The screen only had three hues: blue at the top for the sky, red in the middle, and green at the bottom for the grass. The truth is that not every scene in a TV program shows the sky and the grass. If I recall correctly, my grandmother had what looked like multicolored tissue paper.

The images came out just like what you see on television in the cover photo, which is multicolored. As a little girl of 5 or 6, I was fascinated by the instant change, but too young to understand that my grandma had been duped.

MeTV remembers

In 2016, the website for the nostalgic television station MeTV asked if viewers remembered the days of the plastic color screen, but only one replied. There is also an episode of the popular sitcom Happy Days where Howard Cunningham (Tom Bosley) placed one of the screens over his B&W set, but the audience never got a glimpse of the screen.

Howard, Marion Cunningham (Marion Ross), Richie Cunningham (Ron Howard), and Joanie Cunningham were all shown straining their eyes and tilting their heads, attempting to enjoy this new toy, but no one knows what they saw.

The poor people's method

The color screens were a way for people who could not afford a color television set to enjoy color on the screen, and I was so young that I did enjoy the magic of the multicolored hues. Today, using such a product might be considered a ripoff and called certain derogatory names related to race and or social status like ni**er-rigged or poor White tr$sh.

Color sets were considered luxury items and cost around $350.00, which was expensive at the time. These were the days of innocence and belief in Santa, the tooth fairy, and whatever tales the adults fascinated children with. I suppose this is why those of us who had the screen considered them magical.

Who created plastic color screens?

A Mexican engineer named Guillermo González Camarena created the patent for the first color television set. Still, there is no record of who came up with the concept of plastic color screens to simulate color for black and white TVs.

Transmission of color images using mechanical scanners had been conceived as early as the 1880s. A demonstration of mechanically scanned color television was given by John Logie Baird in 1928, but its limitations were apparent even then.

Development of electronic scanning and display made a practical system possible. Monochrome transmission standards were developed prior to World War II, but civilian electronics development was frozen during much of the war. In August 1944, Baird gave the world's first demonstration of a practical fully electronic color television display. In the United States. (Wikepedia)

Modern technology has replaced children's imaginations

Today, life is different because my 10-year-old granddaughter will point out a green screen when I watch older television programs where I believe the action is taking place at a specific location. For me, this takes all the fun and mystery out of childhood, but technology has brought us to this point.

The Cunninghams on Happy Days, awaiting the magic of colorized television through a plastic screen, would not happen today. The memories of being wide-eyed, wonder-filled children waiting in anticipation and expecting something spectacular will remain with those of us who grew up that way. Sadly, modern technology has taken that away from today's boys and girls. They cannot understand the anticipation of desiring to see a Black & White television screen magically changed into living color.