The RCA Tri – Color Vidicon Camera: 1953

The RCA Tri – Color Vidicon Camera: 1953

Although RCA poured millions into this experimental project from ’53 till ’55, in the end they had to let it go. It worked, but not as well as they had hoped. Here are the details on the Tri – Color Vidicon.

This is a single tube capable of generating all three primary colors. The heart of the tube is a unique and intricate color sensitive target consisting of nearly 900 fine verticle strips of red, green and blue color filters covered by three sets of semitransparent signal conducting strips.

The signal strips, connected to corresponding to a given color, are all connected to a common output terminal and insulated at the same time from the strips of the other two colors. As the target is scanned by a single electron bean at the rear of the tube, the color sensitive filters permit the signal strips to produce electrical signals corresponding to the light and color of the image being scanned. Since the beam strikes all of the color sensitive strips at each scanning, three simultaneous color signals are generated.

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