The Water Engine

[wandy]

52. And some things get lost to history with good reason. Early Color TV.

Dr. Peter Goldmark, had developed, some years before, a color television system for remote viewing of operating room procedures in hospitals. The principle was childishly simple: a rotating disk, approximately three times the diameter of the face of the kinescope, and divided into three segments, each with a transparent filter in one of the primary colors, would be placed between the kinescope and the viewer. A similar disk, placed in front of the camera lens, would rotate in synchronism with the display disk. Thus, a red field presented to the camera produced a red field to the viewer’s eyes: because of retention of vision, the rapidly-spinning disk, flashing the scene in the three primary colors one after the other—one complete revolution of the disk per frame of the action created the illusion of full color.

http://www.davidsarnoff.org/jac-maintext.html

Originally developed by Peter Goldmark for five-inch kinescopes, this approach has serious technical problems when used with larger picture diameters. For example, the horsepower needed to drive a disk rises nearly as the fifth power of the diameter; the control circuitry for maintaining synchronism becomes vastly more complex for more massive disks and drives; the sheer size of the disk becomes mind-boggling: a 19” picture requires a nearly five-foot diameter disk, driven by a ten-horsepower motor.

Imagen having that bast on you're desk for a PC monitor.