As with radio in the first half of the century, different companies developed different television broadcast technologies, all mutually incompatible. Resolving among the different technologies to create one single standard became the job of the The National Television System Committee. They created the first black-and-white standard and almost immediately had to make another one for color TV. Ultimately they chose to go with a mix of technologies from RCA and others, and preserving viewers’ abilities to watch black-and-white programs.

On this day, December 30, in 1953, with the standard now finalized, the first color televisions began appearing on the market.

RCA and Westinghouse competed who could get the first color sets out on the market – even though there were very little color broadcasts at the time still. The famous CT-100 set was the first one from RCA, offering a dazzling array of colors on its 11-inch screen, but at a price ($1,000 – roughly equal to $8,000 today) that was half of that for a new low-end car. The same day RCA debuted their color TV they began regular color programming. The first even color broadcast in NTSC – although hardly anyone saw it in color – was the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California, on the first day of 1954.