The

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

CT-100 was an early all-electronic consumer

color television Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white t ...

introduced in April 1954. The color picture tube measured 15 inches diagonally. The viewable picture was just 11½ inches wide. The CT-100 wasn't the world's first color TV, but it was the first to be mass produced, with 4400 having been made. The world's first color TV set was the

Westinghouse H840CK15 The Westinghouse H840CK15 was the second consumer all-electronic color television set offered for sale in the United States on February 28, 1954. The set was discontinued about six months after its introduction because of larger and less expensive ...

, released in March 1954, but only 500 were made and only around 30 were sold. The RCA sets were made at RCA's plant in

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Mo ...

. The sets cost $1000, half the price of a new low-end automobile. By the end of 1954, RCA released an improved color TV with a 21-inch picture tube. The CT-100 and its Westinghouse counterpart both suffered from color fringing around the edges of objects on the image. The CT-100, which had 36

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric potential difference has been applied. The type known as ...

s in its CTC-2 chassis (known as "Merrill" to the marketing department) was the most complicated electronic device sold to the general public at the time of its release. After initial sales to early adopters, the rest sold poorly, even after a price cut. Many were donated by RCA for training purposes to trade schools and technical colleges, the source of most of today's survivors. RCA sold the CT-100 at a loss. RCA later recalled the CT-100, replacing many of them with a newer 21-inch model. RCA CT-100 screenshot

Early NBC Living Color programs included '' An Evening with Fred Astaire''. The CT-100 was created in 1954, before the

NBC Peacock The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ar ...

logo existed. RCA CT-100 sets are extremely sought-after by electronics collectors and restorers, with restorers often spending thousands of dollars to obtain or repair a set. It is believed that RCA only made 4000 CT-100 receivers. Around 150 survive, but only 30 are restored and working. The

Early Television Museum The Early Television Museum is a museum of early television receiver sets. It is located in Hilliard, a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. The museum has over 150 TV sets including mechanical TVs from the 1920s and 1930s; pre- World War II British set ...

Hilliard, Ohio Hilliard is a city in Franklin County, Ohio, United States. The population was 37,114 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb of Columbus and part of Norwich Township. Hilliard is home to the Early Television Museum (the only one of its kind in Unite ...

has a restored and working set on display, as does the

SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention (formerly the American Museum of Radio and Electricity) is an interactive museum located in Bellingham, Washington, United States, which offers educational experiences for audiences of all ages through ...

Bellingham, Washington Bellingham ( ) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies south of the U.S.–Canada border in between two major cities of the Pacific Northwest: Vancouver, British Columbia (loc ...

. One reason for the rarity of surviving sets is that the RCA-developed tri-color cathode ray tube (the 15GP22) that was used in the CT-100 was notorious for its glass-to-metal seals breaking down, causing the tube to lose its vacuum. It is extremely rare to find tubes that still work. The 15G was a glass tube, but its high voltage connection is a metal ring between the face of the tube and the glass bell or funnel. This is where the leakage often occurs.

References

Ed Reitan's CT-100 PageEarly Television Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ct-100 Products introduced in 1954 RCA brands Television sets