CT-100

RCA's first NTSC color set, built from March 1954 The clever part of American color was not this set but the standard behind it. The NTSC specifications the FCC approved on December 17, 1953 were compatible: color did not make the millions of existing black-and-white sets obsolete, while new sets showed color. The CT-100 was RCA's first color set built to that standard in quantity, with a 15-inch picture, and only about 4,000 left the Bloomington, Indiana, line. That small run hints at the catch: color stayed a luxury for years. But the compatible approach became the template that later color systems abroad refined.