Gerolf Poetschke's Site

German prewar color TV

COLOR TV 1938

In 1938 the German Post Office demonstrated at the Berlin Radio-Show a Color-TV-System with a 2-color disc rotating in front of a Cathode Ray Tube with 180 lines, 50 colorframes/s = 25 pics/s. During the show-demonstration the number of lines was reduced to 90 with 12,5 pics/s (why?). The scanner was only a movie-scanner, so no direct TV caps could be made. Color TV was shown on a CRT-projector with a screen of 75 x 60 cm. The system was later developed to a 3-color system but all works were canceled in 1940.

later 3-color-disc:

color range of the 2-color system:

fürther improvements were made by Otterbein from RPF and also shown (experimental) to the public 1938 in Berlin by using a electronic color filter instead of the rotating color disc. A lot of other color TV experiments were made by RPF, like a 3 color line system with 3 colors on the tube (10 lines/mm!).

Sources: 
Jahrbuch des elektrischen Fernmeldewesens 1940, pages 322-353
Goebel, Das Fernsehen in Deutschland bis zum Jahre 1945, pages 368-369


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