Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. "And Now—Color": Early Color Systems  11
2. Natural Vision Versus "Tele-Vision": Defining and Standardizing Color  34
3. Color Adjustments: Experiments, Calibrations, and Color Training, 1950–1955  86
4. Colortown, USA: Expansion, Stabilization, and Promotion, 1955–1959  127
5. The Wonderful World of Color: Network Programming and the Spectacular Real, 1960–1965  176
6. At the End of the Rainbow: Global Expansion, the Space Race, and the Cold War  217
Conclusion  251
Notes  259
Bibliography  293
Index  303

Winner of the 2019 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, presented by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

"Bright Signals is an important, engaging study that helps readers understand media history and anticipate developments going forward." — Linda Levitt, PopMatters

"[An] important intervention into television history." — Phil Ellis, Leonardo

"What makes Bright Signals distinguishable from others on the subject is the detailed historical and cultural analysis of why color television did not replace black-and-white television until the 1960s. . . . Recommended. All readers." — C.L. Clements, Choice

"A joy to read: it is meticulously researched, rhetorically lucid, and refreshingly jargon free. Beyond the book’s delightful illustrations, the text of Bright Signals paints a vivid picture of the personalities and corporate campaigns most responsible for introducing color to the small screen. . . . Murray’s work should appeal to television studies generalists (especially those specializing in the network era), midcentury-media historians, and scholars of new media and technological transformation." — Catherine Clepper, Film Quarterly

Winner of the 2019 Katherine Singer Kovács Book Award, presented by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

"Bright Signals is an important, engaging study that helps readers understand media history and anticipate developments going forward." —Linda Levitt, PopMatters

"[An] important intervention into television history." —Phil Ellis, Leonardo

"What makes Bright Signals distinguishable from others on the subject is the detailed historical and cultural analysis of why color television did not replace black-and-white television until the 1960s. . . . Recommended. All readers." —C.L. Clements, Choice

"A joy to read: it is meticulously researched, rhetorically lucid, and refreshingly jargon free. Beyond the book’s delightful illustrations, the text of Bright Signals paints a vivid picture of the personalities and corporate campaigns most responsible for introducing color to the small screen. . . . Murray’s work should appeal to television studies generalists (especially those specializing in the network era), midcentury-media historians, and scholars of new media and technological transformation." —Catherine Clepper, Film Quarterly

“What a terrific, innovative book! In this pioneering study of the development of color television, Susan Murray brilliantly intertwines the technological evolution of the device with prevailing notions about how people perceive color and its affective impact on our subjectivity and how we view the world. Murray breaks new ground by tracing how an understanding of the human eye was built into the technology from the very start. Highly original, engaging, and, yes, eye-opening.” — Susan J. Douglas, Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan

“In Bright Signals Susan Murray tells a critical and previously untold story in the history of television—the advent of color television—and does so in an innovative way that will disrupt established theories of visual culture, media historiography, the cultural analysis of standards, and television-as-technology.” — Jonathan Sterne, author of, MP3: The Meaning of a Format

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought