Color television is part of the history of television, the technology of television and practices associated with television's transmission of moving images in color video.

In its most basic form, a color broadcast can be created by broadcasting three monochrome images, one each in the three colors of red, green and blue (RGB). When displayed together or in rapid succession, these images will blend together to produce a full color image as seen by the viewer.

One of the great technical challenges of introducing color broadcast television was the desire to conserve bandwidth, potentially three times that of the existing black-and-white (B&W) standards, and not use an excessive amount of radio spectrum. In the United States, after considerable research, the National Television Systems Committee^[1] approved an all-electronic system developed by RCA which encoded the color information separately from the brightness information and greatly reduced the resolution of the color information in order to conserve bandwidth. The brightness image remained compatible with existing B&W television sets at slightly reduced resolution, while color televisions could decode the extra information in the signal and produce a limited-resolution color display. The higher resolution B&W and lower resolution color images combine in the eye to produce a seemingly high-resolution color image. The NTSC standard represented a major technical achievement.

Although introduced in the U.S. in 1953,^[2] only a few years after black-and-white televisions had been standardized there, high prices and lack of broadcast material greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. Although the first national colorcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on January 1, 1954, it was not until the late 1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in some part to the color transition of 1965 in which over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that fall, and the introduction of GE's Porta-Color set in the Spring of 1966 which would bring the first all-color primetime season beginning that fall.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s though, color sets had become standard, and the completion of total colorcasting was achieved when the last of the daytime programs converted to color and joined with primetime in the first all-color season in 1972.

Color broadcasting in Europe was not standardized on the PAL format until the 1960s, and broadcasts did not start until 1967. By this point many of the technical problems in the early sets had been worked out, and the spread of color sets in Europe was fairly rapid.

By the mid-1970s, the only stations broadcasting in black-and-white were a few high-numbered UHF stations in small markets, and a handful of low-power repeater stations in even smaller markets such as vacation spots. By 1979, even the last of these had converted to color and by the early 1980s B&W sets had been pushed into niche markets, notably low-power uses, small portable sets, or use as video monitor screens in lower-cost consumer equipment, in the television production and post-production industry.

Color bars used in a test pattern, sometimes used when no program material is available.

Development[link]

The human eye's detection system in the retina consists primarily of two types of light detectors, rod cells that capture light, dark, and shapes/figures, and the cone cells that detect color. A typical retina contains 120 million rods and 4.5 million to 6 million cones, which are divided among three groups that are sensitive to red, green and blue light. This means that the eye has far more resolution in contrast, or "luminance", than in color. However, post-processing in the optic nerve and other portions of the human visual system combine the information from the rods and cones to re-create what appears to be a high-resolution color image.

The eye has limited bandwidth to the rest of the visual system, estimated at just under 8 Mbit/s.^[3] This manifests itself in a number of ways, but the most important in terms of producing moving images is the way that a series of still images displayed in quick succession will appear to be continuous smooth motion. This illusion starts to work at about 16 frame/s, and common motion pictures use 24 frame/s. Television, using power from the electrical grid, tunes its rate in order to avoid interference with the alternating current being supplied – in North America, some Central and South American countries, Taiwan, Korea, part of Japan, the Philippines and a few other countries this is 60 video fields per second to match the 60 Hz power, while in most other countries it is 50 fields per second to match the 50 Hz power.

Early television[link]

Experiments in television systems using radio broadcasts date to the 19th century, but it was not until the 20th century that advances in electronics and light detectors made development practical. A key problem was the need to convert a 2D image into a "1D" radio signal; some form of image scanning was needed to make this work. Early systems generally used a device known as a "Nipkow disk", which was a spinning disk with a series of holes punched in it that caused a spot to scan across and down the image. A single photodetector behind the disk captured the image brightness at any given spot, which was converted into a radio signal and broadcast. A similar disk was used at the receiver side, with a light source behind the disk instead of a detector.

A number of such systems were used experimentally starting as early as the 1920s, the best-known being John Logie Baird's system that was broadcast for a time in Britain. In spite of these early successes, all mechanical television systems shared a number of serious problems. Being mechanically driven, even slight differences in syncing between the signal and disk motor resulted in major image distortion. Another problem was that the image was captured in a roughly rectangular area of the disk, covering only a small portion of its face; making a larger display required increasingly unwieldy disks. Additionally, the resolution of the system was limited by the number of holes that could be punched into the disk, which was normally under 100, although there are rare examples with as many as 200 holes in them.^{[citation needed]}

It was clear to a number of developers that a completely electronic scanning system would be superior, and that the scanning could be achieved in a vacuum tube via electrostatic or magnetic means. Converting this concept into a usable system took years of development and several independent advances. The two key advances were Philo Farnsworth's electronic scanning system, and Vladimir Zworykin's Iconoscope camera. The Iconoscope, based on Kálmán Tihanyi's early patents, superseded the Farnsworth-system. With these systems, the BBC began regularly scheduled black-and-white television broadcasts in 1936, but these were shut down again with the start of World War II in 1939. In 1941 the first NTSC meetings produced a single standard for US broadcasts. US television broadcasts began in earnest in the immediate post-war era, and by 1950 there were 6 million televisions in the United States.^[4]

All-mechanical color[link]

The basic idea of using three monochrome images to produce a color image had been experimented with almost as soon as black-and-white televisions had first been built.

Among the earliest published proposals for television was one by Maurice Le Blanc in 1880 for a color system, including the first mentions in television literature of line and frame scanning, although he gave no practical details.^[5] Polish inventor Jan Szczepanik patented a color television system in 1897, using a selenium photoelectric cell at the transmitter and an electromagnet controlling an oscillating mirror and a moving prism at the receiver. But his system contained no means of analyzing the spectrum of colors at the transmitting end, and could not have worked as he described it.^[6] It would be over a hundred years later before technology led his principle to be developed into the Digital micromirror devices used in the DLP televisions we know today. Another inventor, Hovannes Adamian also experimented with color television as early as 1907.

John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first color transmission on July 3, 1928, using scanning discs at the transmitting and receiving ends with three spirals of apertures, each spiral with filters of a different primary color; and three light sources at the receiving end, with a commutator to alternate their illumination.^[7] Baird also made the world's first color broadcast on February 4, 1938, sending a mechanically scanned 120-line image from Baird's Crystal Palace studios to a projection screen at London's Dominion Theatre.^[8]

Mechanically scanned color television was also demonstrated by Bell Laboratories in June 1929 using three complete systems of photoelectric cells, amplifiers, glow-tubes, and color filters, with a series of mirrors to superimpose the red, green, and blue images into one full color image.

Hybrid systems[link]

As was the case with black-and-white television, an electronic means of scanning would be superior to the mechanical systems like Baird's. The obvious solution on the broadcast end would be to use three conventional Iconoscopes with colored filters in front of them to produce an RGB signal. Using three separate tubes each looking at the same scene would produce slight differences in parallax between the frames, so in practice a single lens was used with a mirror or prism system to separate the colors for the separate tubes. Each tube captured a complete frame and the signal was converted into radio in a fashion essentially identical to the existing black-and-white systems.

The problem with this approach was there was no simple way to recombine them on the receiver end. If each image was sent at the same time on different frequencies, the images would have to be "stacked" somehow on the display, in real time. The simplest way to do this would be to reverse the system used in the camera; arrange three separate black-and-white displays behind colored filters and then optically combine their images using mirrors or prisms onto a suitable screen, like frosted glass. RCA built just such a system in order to present the first electronically scanned color television demonstration on February 5, 1940, privately shown to members of the US Federal Communications Commission at the RCA plant in Camden, New Jersey.^[9] This system, however, suffered from the twin problems of costing at least three times as much as a conventional black-and-white set, as well as having very dim images, the result of the fairly low illumination given off by tubes of the era. Projection systems of this sort would become common decades later, however, with improvements in technology.

Another solution would be to use a single screen, but break it up into a pattern of closely spaced colored phosphors instead of an even coating of white. Three receivers would be used, each sending its output to a separate electron gun, aimed at its colored phosphor. Although obvious, this solution was not practical. The electron guns used in monochrome televisions had limited resolution, and if one wanted to retain the resolution of existing monochrome displays, the guns would have to focus on individual dots three times smaller. This was beyond the state of the art at the time.

Instead, a number of hybrid solutions were developed that combined a conventional monochrome display with a colored disk or mirror. In these systems the three colored images were sent one after each other, in either complete frames in the "field-sequential color system", or for each line in the "line-sequential" system. In both cases a colored filter was rotated in front of the display in sync with the broadcast. Since three separate images were being sent in sequence, if they used existing monochrome radio signaling standards they would have an effective refresh rate of only 20 fields, or 10 frames, a second, well into the region where flicker would become visible. In order to avoid this, these systems increased the frame rate considerably, making the signal incompatible with existing monochrome standards.

The first practical example of this sort of system was again pioneered by John Logie Baird. In 1940 he publicly demonstrated a color television combining a traditional black-and-white display with a rotating colored disk. This device was very "deep", but was later improved with a mirror folding the light path into an entirely practical device resembling a large conventional console.^[10] However, Baird was not happy with the design, and as early as 1944 had commented to a British government committee that a fully electronic device would be better.

In 1939, Hungarian engineer Peter Carl Goldmark introduced an electro-mechanical system while at CBS, which contained an Iconoscope sensor. The CBS field-sequential color system was partly mechanical, with a disc made of red, blue, and green filters spinning inside the television camera at 1,200 rpm, and a similar disc spinning in synchronization in front of the cathode ray tube inside the receiver set.^[11] The system was first demonstrated to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on August 29, 1940, and shown to the press on September 4.^{[12][13][14][15]}

CBS began experimental color field tests using film as early as August 28, 1940, and live cameras by November 12.^[16] NBC (owned by RCA) made its first field test of color television on February 20, 1941. CBS began daily color field tests on June 1, 1941.^[17] These color systems were not compatible with existing black-and-white television sets, and as no color television sets were available to the public at this time, viewing of the color field tests was restricted to RCA and CBS engineers and the invited press. The War Production Board halted the manufacture of television and radio equipment for civilian use from April 22, 1942 to August 20, 1945, limiting any opportunity to introduce color television to the general public.^[18][19]

Fully electronic[link]

As early as 1940, Baird had started work on a fully electronic system he called the "Telechrome". Early Telechrome devices used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor plate. The phosphor was patterned so the electrons from the guns only fell on one side of the patterning or the other. Using cyan and magenta phosphors, a reasonable limited-color image could be obtained. He also demonstrated the same system using monochrome signals to produce a 3D image (called "stereoscopic" at the time). A demonstration on August 16, 1944 was the first example of a practical color television system. Work on the Telechrome continued and plans were made to introduce a three-gun version for full color. However, Baird's untimely death in 1946 ended development of the Telechrome system.^[20][21]

Similar concepts were common through the 1940s and 50s, differing primarily in the way they re-combined the colors generated by the three guns. The Geer tube was similar to Baird's concept, but used small pyramids with the phosphors deposited on their outside faces, instead of Baird's 3D patterning on a flat surface. The Penetron used three layers of phosphor on top of each other and increased the power of the beam to reach the upper layers when drawing those colors. The Chromatron used a set of focusing wires to select the colored phosphors arranged in vertical stripes on the tube.

FCC color[link]

In the immediate post-war era the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was inundated with requests to set up new television stations. Worrying about congestion of the limited number of channels available, the FCC put a moratorium on all new licenses in 1948 while considering the problem. A solution was immediately forthcoming; rapid development of radio receiver electronics during the war had opened a wide band of higher frequencies to practical use, and the FCC set aside a large section of these new UHF bands for television broadcast. At the time black and white television broadcasting was still in its infancy in the U.S., and the FCC started to look at ways of using this newly available bandwidth for color broadcasts. Since no existing television would be able to tune in these stations, they were free to pick an incompatible system and allow the older VHF channels to die off over time.

The FCC called for technical demonstrations of color systems in 1948, and the Joint Technical Advisory Committee (JTAC) was formed to study them. CBS displayed improved versions of its original design, now using a single 6 MHz channel (like the existing black-and-white signals) at 144 fields per second and 405 lines of resolution. Color Television Inc. demonstrated its line-sequential system, while Philco demonstrated a dot-sequential system based on its "Apple" tube technology. Of the entrants, the CBS system was by far the best-developed, and won head-to-head testing every time.

While the meetings were taking place it was widely known within the industry that RCA was working on a dot-sequential system that was compatible with existing black-and-white broadcasts, but RCA declined to demonstrate it during the first series of meetings. Just before the JTAC presented its findings, on August 25, 1949, RCA broke its silence and introduced its system as well. The JTAC still recommended the CBS system, and after the resolution of an ensuing RCA lawsuit, color broadcasts using the CBS system started on June 25, 1951. By this point the market had changed dramatically; when color was first being considered in 1948 there were fewer than a million television sets in the U.S., but by 1951 there were well over 10 million. The idea that the VHF band could be allowed to "die" was no longer practical.

During its campaign for FCC approval, CBS gave the first demonstrations of color television to the general public, showing an hour of color programs daily Mondays through Saturdays, beginning January 12, 1950, and running for the remainder of the month, over WOIC in Washington, D.C., where the programs could be viewed on eight 16-inch color receivers in a public building.^[22] Due to high public demand, the broadcasts were resumed February 13–21, with several evening programs added.^[23] CBS initiated a limited schedule of color broadcasts from its New York station WCBS-TV Mondays to Saturdays beginning November 14, 1950, making ten color receivers available for the viewing public.^[24][25] All were broadcast using the single color camera that CBS owned.^[26] The New York broadcasts were extended by coaxial cable to Philadelphia's WCAU-TV beginning December 13,^[27] and to Chicago on January 10,^[28][29] making them the first network color broadcasts.

After a series of hearings beginning in September 1949, the FCC found the RCA and CTI systems fraught with technical problems, inaccurate color reproduction, and expensive equipment, and so formally approved the CBS system as the U.S. color broadcasting standard on October 11, 1950. An unsuccessful lawsuit by RCA delayed the first commercial network broadcast in color until June 25, 1951, when a musical variety special titled simply Premiere was shown over a network of five East Coast CBS affiliates.^[30] Viewing was again restricted: the program could not be seen on black-and-white sets, and Variety estimated that only thirty prototype color receivers were available in the New York area.^[31] Regular color broadcasts began that same week with the daytime series The World Is Yours and Modern Homemakers.

While the CBS color broadcasting schedule gradually expanded to twelve hours per week (but never into prime time),^[32] and the color network expanded to eleven affiliates as far west as Chicago,^[33] its commercial success was doomed by the lack of color receivers necessary to watch the programs, the refusal of television manufacturers to create adapter mechanisms for their existing black-and-white sets,^[34] and the unwillingness of advertisers to sponsor broadcasts seen by almost no one. CBS had bought a television manufacturer in April,^[35] and in September 1951, production began on the only CBS-Columbia color television model, with the first color sets reaching retail stores on September 28.^[36][37] But it was too little, too late. Only 200 sets had been shipped, and only 100 sold, when CBS discontinued its color television system on October 20, 1951, ostensibly by request of the National Production Authority for the duration of the Korean War, and bought back all the CBS color sets it could to prevent lawsuits by disappointed customers.^[38][39] RCA chairman David Sarnoff later charged that the NPA's order had come "out of a situation artificially created by one company to solve its own perplexing problems" because CBS had been unsuccessful in its color venture.^[40]

Compatible color[link]

While the FCC was holding its JTAC meetings, development was taking place on a number of systems allowing true simultaneous color broadcasts, "dot-sequential color systems". Unlike the hybrid systems, dot-sequential televisions used a signal very similar to existing black-and-white broadcasts, with the intensity of every dot on the screen being sent in succession.

In 1938 Georges Valensi demonstrated an encoding scheme that would allow color broadcasts to be encoded so they could be picked up on existing black-and-white sets as well. In his system the output of the three camera tubes were re-combined to produce a single "luminance" value that was very similar to a monochrome signal and could be broadcast on the existing VHF frequencies. The color information was encoded in a separate "chrominance" signal, consisting of two separate signals, the original blue signal minus the luminance (B'–Y'), and red-luma (R'–Y'). These signals could then be broadcast separately on a different frequency; a monochrome set would tune in only the luminance signal on the VHF band, while color televisions would tune in both the luminance and chrominance on two different frequencies, and apply the reverse transforms to retrieve the original RGB signal. The downside to this approach is that it required a major boost in bandwidth use, something the FCC was interested in avoiding.

RCA used Valensi's concept as the basis of all of its developments, believing it to be the only proper solution to the broadcast problem. However, RCA's early sets using mirrors and other projection systems all suffered from image and color quality problems, and were easily bested by CBS's hybrid system. But solutions to these problems were in the pipeline, and RCA in particular was investing massive sums (later estimated at $100 million) to develop a usable dot-sequential tube. RCA was beaten to the punch by the Geer tube, which used three B&W tubes aimed at different faces of colored pyramids to produce a color image. All-electronic systems included the Chromatron, Penetron and "Apple" tube that were being developed by various companies. While investigating all of these, RCA's teams quickly started focusing on the shadow mask system.

In July 1938 the shadow mask color television was patented by Werner Flechsig (1900–1970) in Germany, and was demonstrated at the International radio exhibition Berlin in 1939. Most CRT color televisions used today are based on this technology. His solution to the problem of focusing the electron guns on the tiny colored dots was one of brute-force; a metal sheet with holes punched in it allowed the beams to reach the screen only when they were properly aligned over the dots. Three separate guns were aimed at the holes from slightly different angles, and when their beams passed through the holes the angles caused them to separate again and hit the individual spots a short distance away on the back of the screen. The downside to this approach was that the mask cut off the vast majority of the beam energy, allowing it to hit the screen only 15% of the time, requiring a massive increase in beam power to produce acceptable image brightness.

In spite of these problems in both the broadcast and display systems, RCA pressed ahead with development and was ready for a second assault on the standards by 1950.

Second NTSC[link]

The possibility of a compatible color broadcast system was so compelling that the NTSC decided to re-form, and held a second series of meetings starting in January 1950. Having only recently selected the CBS system, the FCC heavily opposed the NTSC's efforts. One of the FCC Commissioners, R. F. Jones, went so far as to assert that the engineers testifying in favor of a compatible system were "in a conspiracy against the public interest".

Unlike the FCC approach where a standard was simply selected from the existing candidates, the NTSC would produce a board that was considerably more pro-active in development.

Starting before CBS color even got on the air, the U.S. television industry, represented by the National Television System Committee, worked in 1950–1953 to develop a color system that was compatible with existing black-and-white sets and would pass FCC quality standards, with RCA developing the hardware elements. RCA first made publicly announced field tests of the dot sequential color system over its New York station WNBT in July 1951.^[41] When CBS testified before Congress in March 1953 that it had no further plans for its own color system,^[42] the National Production Authority dropped its ban on the manufacture of color television receivers,^[43] and the path was open for the NTSC to submit its petition for FCC approval in July 1953, which was granted on December 17.^[44] The first publicly announced network demonstration of a program using the NTSC "compatible color" system was an episode of NBC's Kukla, Fran and Ollie on August 30, 1953, although it was viewable in color only at the network's headquarters.^[45] The first network broadcast to go out over the air in NTSC color was a performance of the opera Carmen on October 31, 1953.^[46][47]

Adoption[link]

North America[link]

Canada[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Color television in Canada was launched simultaneously in English and French at 12:01 am on July 1, 1966, ^[48] at the beginning of Canada's 100th year as a nation. Broadcasts were not widely available until September 1966, and fewer than 1% of Canadian households had a color television set at the time. ^[49] Color broadcasts from the United States had been available since the mid-1950s. Full-time color transmissions started in 1974.

United States[link]

NBC made the first coast-to-coast color broadcast when it telecast the Tournament of Roses Parade on January 1, 1954, with public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers by manufacturers RCA, General Electric, Philco, Raytheon, Hallicrafters, Hoffman, Pacific Mercury and others.^[50] A color model from Westinghouse H840CK15 ($1,295, or $11.2 thousand in today's^[51] dollars) became available in the New York area on February 28, 1954 and is generally agreed to be the first production receiver using NTSC color offered to the public;^[52] a less expensive color model from RCA (RCA-CT100) reached dealers in April 1954.^[53] Television's first prime time network color series was The Marriage, a situation comedy broadcast live by NBC in the summer of 1954.^[54] NBC's anthology series Ford Theatre became the first network color filmed series that October.^[55]

Early color telecasts could be preserved only on the black-and-white kinescope process introduced in 1947. It was not until September 1956 that NBC began using color film to time-delay and preserve some of its live color telecasts.^[56] Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958, which NBC used to tape An Evening With Fred Astaire, the oldest surviving network color videotape.

Several syndicated shows had episodes filmed in color during the 1950s, including The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, My Friend Flicka, and Adventures of Superman. The first two were carried by some stations equipped for color telecasts well before NBC began its regular weekly color dramas in 1959, beginning with the Western series Bonanza.

NBC was at the forefront of color programming because its parent company RCA manufactured the most successful line of color sets in the 1950s, and by 1959 RCA was the only remaining major manufacturer of color sets.^[57] CBS and ABC, which were not affiliated with set manufacturers, and were not eager to promote their competitor's product, dragged their feet into color.^[58][59] CBS ceased all regular color programming between 1960 and 1965 (including at least one of their shows, The Lucy Show, which was filmed in color, beginning in 1963, but continued to be telecast in black and white through the end of the 1964–65 season), while ABC delayed its first color series until 1962.^[60] The DuMont network, although it did have a television-manufacturing parent company, was in financial decline by 1954 and was dissolved two years later.^[61] Thus the relatively small amount of network color programming, combined with the high cost of color television sets, meant that as late as 1964 only 3.1 percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set. NBC provided the catalyst for rapid color expansion by announcing that its prime time schedule for fall 1965 would be almost entirely in color.^[62] ABC and CBS joined the bandwagon and over half of their combined prime-time programming also was in color that season. All three broadcast networks were airing full color prime time schedules by the 1966–67 broadcast season, and ABC aired its last new black-and-white daytime programming in December 1967.^[63] Public broadcasting networks like NET, however, did not use color for a majority of their programming until 1968. The number of color television sets sold in the U.S. did not exceed black-and-white sales until 1972, which was also the first year that more than fifty percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set.^[64] This was also the year that "in color" notices before color television programs ended^{[citation needed]}, due to the rise in color television set sales, and color programming having become the norm.

Color broadcasting in Hawaii started in September 1965, and in Alaska a year later.^{[citation needed]}

Cuba[link]

Cuba in 1958 became the second country in the world to introduce color television broadcasting, with Havana's Channel 12 using the NTSC standard and RCA equipment. But the color transmissions ended when broadcasting stations were seized in the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and did not return until 1975, using equipment acquired from Japan's NEC Corporation, and SECAM equipment from the Soviet Union, adapted for the NTSC standard.^[65]

Mexico[link]

In Mexico, Guillermo González Camarena invented an early color television transmission system. He received patents for color television systems in 1942 (U.S. Patent 2,296,019), 1960 and 1962. The 1942 patent (filed in Mexico on August 19, 1940)^[66] was for a synchronized color filter wheel adapter for monochrome television, similar to the field sequential color receiver demonstrated by Baird in England in July 1939^[67] and by CBS in the United States in August 1940.

On August 31, 1946 González Camarena sent his first color transmission from his lab in the offices of The Mexican League of Radio Experiments at Lucerna St. No. 1, in Mexico City. The video signal was transmitted at a frequency of 115 MHz. and the audio in the 40 metre band. He obtained authorization to make the first publicly announced color broadcast in Mexico, on February 8, 1963, of the program Paraíso Infantil on Mexico City's XHGC-TV, using the NTSC system which had by now been adopted as the standard for color programming.

A field-sequential color television system similar to his Tricolor system was used in NASA's Voyager mission in 1979, to take pictures and video of Jupiter.^[68]

Europe[link]

European color television was developed somewhat later and was hindered by a continuing division (and nationalistic bias) on technical standards. Having decided to adopt a higher-definition 625-line system for monochrome transmissions, with a lower frame rate but with a higher overall bandwidth, Europeans could not directly adopt the U.S. color standard. This was widely perceived as inadequate anyway because of its hue error problems, which became particularly acute with the introduction of videotape recorders in the late 1950s. There was also less urgency, since there were fewer commercial motivations, European television broadcasters being predominantly state-owned at the time.

As a consequence, although work on various color encoding systems started already in the 1950s, with the first SECAM patent being registered in 1956, many years had passed when the first broadcasts actually started in 1967. Unsatisfied with the performance of NTSC and of initial SECAM implementations, the Germans unveiled PAL (phase alternating line) in 1963, technically similar to NTSC but borrowing some ideas from SECAM. The French continued with SECAM, notably involving Russians in the development.

The first full-specification PAL receivers ("PAL-D") relied on a precision ultrasonic glass delay line, which in the early days was estimated would make up about a third of the cost of the receiver. PAL stood for Phase Alternated Line. It was basically a 625-line version of NTSC, with phase inversion of alternate numbered scan lines. Therefore, for example, a HUE or TINT (phase) error on line 22 would be offset by an opposite HUE or TINT error on line 23. The two phase errors would cancel each other in the optical presentation as interpreted by the human eye. The TINT control required by NTSC was therefore obviated. Other color encoding systems had already been proposed which would overcome the tint problems of NTSC using such a delay line, but PAL was unique in that an economy receiver (known as "PAL-S" for "simple PAL") could also be built without using a delay line, with a performance no worse than, and in most cases better than, an equivalent NTSC model.

SECAM did not require such precision for its delay line, and could use much cheaper magnetostrictive metal types. Ironically, by the time PAL broadcasts commenced in 1967, advances in glassmaking techniques had dropped the cost of precision PAL delay lines so much that hardly any simple-PAL receivers were built commercially, and virtually all SECAM receivers used the same type of delay line as PAL receivers. By the end of the 20th century, glass delay lines had been completely replaced by all-electronic equivalents.

The first regular color broadcasts in Europe were by the United Kingdom's BBC2 beginning on July 1, 1967 (PAL). West Germany's first broadcast occurred in August (PAL), followed by the Netherlands in September (PAL), and by France in October (SECAM). Norway, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Austria, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary all started regular color broadcasts before the end of 1969.

The PAL system spread through most of Western Europe and on into the territories of the old British, Portuguese, Belgian, Dutch, Austria, Ottoman and Chinese Empires.

In Italy there were debates to adopt a national color television system, the ISA, developed by Indesit, but that idea was scrapped. As a result, Italy was one of the last European countries to officially adopt the PAL system in 1977, after long technical experimentation.^[69]

France, Luxembourg and most of the Eastern Bloc along with their overseas territories opted for SECAM. SECAM was a popular choice in countries with a lot of hilly terrain, and technologically backward countries with a very large installed base of monochrome equipment, since the greater ruggedness of the SECAM signal could cope much better with poorly maintained equipment. However for many countries the decision was more down to politics than technical merit.

A drawback of SECAM for production is that, unlike PAL or NTSC, certain post-production operations of encoded SECAM signals are not really possible without a significant drop in quality. As an example, a simple fade to black is trivial in NTSC and PAL: you just reduce the signal level until it is zero. However, in SECAM the color difference signals, which are frequency modulated, need first to be decoded to e.g. RGB, then the fade-to-black is applied, and finally the resulting signal is re-encoded into SECAM. Because of this, much SECAM video editing was actually done using PAL equipment, then the resultant signal was converted to SECAM. Another drawback of SECAM is that comb filtering, allowing better color separation, is not possible in TV receivers. This was not, however, much of a drawback in the early days of SECAM as such filters did not become readily available in high-end TV sets before the 1990s.

The first regular color broadcasts in SECAM were started on October 1, 1967, on France's Second Channel (ORTF 2e chaîne). In France and the UK color broadcasts were made on UHF frequencies, the VHF band being used for legacy black and white, 405 lines in UK or 819 lines in France, till the beginning of the 1980s. Countries elsewhere that were already broadcasting 625-line monochrome on VHF and UHF, simply transmitted color programs on the same channels.

Some British television programmes, particularly those made by or for ITC Entertainment, were shot on color film before the introduction of color television to the UK, for the purpose of sales to U.S. networks. The first British show to be made in color was the drama series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956–57), which was initially made in black and white but later shot in color for sale to the NBC network in the United States. Other British color television programmes include Stingray (1964–1965), which was the first British TV show to be filmed entirely in color, Thunderbirds (1965–1966) and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967–1968). However, most UK series predominantly made using videoptape, such as Doctor Who (1963–89; 2005–present) did not begin color production until later, with the first color Doctor Who episodes not airing until 1970.

Asia and the Pacific[link]

In Japan, NHK introduced color television, using a variation of the NTSC system (called NTSC-J), on September 10, 1960, making it the first country in Asia to introduce color television. The Philippines (1966) and Taiwan (1969) also adopted the NTSC system. Other countries in the region instead used the PAL system, starting with Australia (1967, but not fully implemented until 1975), and then Hong Kong (1970), China (1971), New Zealand (1973), Singapore (1974), Thailand (1975) and Indonesia (1978), with India not introducing it until 1982. South Korea did not introduce color (using NTSC) until 1980, although it was already manufacturing color television sets for export.

Middle East[link]

Nearly all of the countries in the Middle East use PAL. The first country in the Middle East to introduce color television was Iraq in 1967. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar followed in the mid-1970s, but Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus continued to broadcast in black and white until the early 1980s. Israeli television even erased the color signals using a device called the mekhikon.

Africa[link]

The first color television service in Africa was introduced on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, in 1973, using PAL. At the time, South Africa did not have a television service at all, owing to opposition from the apartheid regime, but in 1976, one was finally launched. Nigeria adopted PAL for color transmissions in 1974 in the then Benue Plateau state in the north central region of the country, but countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe continued with black and white until 1984.

South America[link]

In contrast to most other countries in the Americas, which had adopted NTSC, Brazil began broadcasting in color in PAL-M. Its first transmission was on February 19, 1972. However Ecuador was the first South American country to receive color TV, using NTSC. Its transmission was on November 5, 1973. Some countries in South America, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Peru and Venezuela, continued to broadcast in black and white until the late 1970s.

Color standards[link]

There are three main analog broadcast television systems in use around the world, PAL (Phase Alternating Line), NTSC (National Television System Committee) and SECAM (Séquentiel Couleur à Mémoire—Sequential Color with Memory).

The system used in North America is NTSC. Western Europe, Australia, Africa and Eastern South America use PAL. Eastern Europe used SECAM, but switched to PAL after the change of the political regimes there. France still uses SECAM. Generally, a device (such as a television) can only read or display video encoded to a standard which the device is designed to support; otherwise, the source must be converted (such as when European programs are broadcast in North America or vice versa). Because a tint control is unnecessary in PAL, NTSC has jokingly been said to stand for Never The Same Color or Never Twice the Same Color.^[70]

This table illustrates the differences:

Digital television broadcasting standards, such as ATSC, DVB-T, DVB-T2, and ISDB, have superseded these analog transmission standards in many countries.

See also[link]

• Triniscope

Television portal

References[link]

External links[link]

• Television in Color, April 1944 one of the earliest magazine articles detailing the new technology of color television

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Iranian language family tree

The Iranian languages (also called Iranic languages) form a subfamily of the Indo-Iranian languages which in turn are a subgroup of the Indo-European language family. The speakers of Iranian languages are known as Iranian peoples.

The Iranian languages are considered in three stages of Old (until 400 BCE), Middle (400 BCE – 900 CE), and New (since 900 CE). From the Old Iranian languages the better understood and recorded ones are Old Persian (a language of Achaemenid Iran) and Avestan (the language of Zarathushtra). Middle Iranian languages included Middle Persian (a language of Sassanid Iran) and Parthian (a language of Arsacid Iran). There are many Iranian languages, the largest amongst them are Persian, Pashto, Kurdish, and Balochi.

Today, there are an estimated 150–200 million native speakers of Iranian languages.^[1] The Ethnologue lists 87 Iranian languages.^[2] Persian has about 65 million native speakers, Pashto about 50 million, Kurdish about 18 million, Balochi about 7 million, and Lurish about 2.3 million.

The term[link]

The term Iranian language is applied to any language which is descended from the Proto-Iranian parent language.^[3] While unattested, Proto-Iranian was first spoken by presumably people/tribes in Central Asia sometime in the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BCE. The area in which Iranian languages, i.e. descendants of Proto-Iranian, have been spoken stretches from western China to western Europe. Proto-Iranian was related to, also unattested, Proto-Indic. Proto-Indic gave birth to the various northern Indian languages over time.^[3] Taken together all Iranian, Indo-Aryan, and Nuristani^[4] languages form the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family.^[3]

The term Iranian was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen,^[5] followed by Wilhelm Geiger and his Grundriss der Iranischen Philologie (1895) whereas Friedrich von Spiegel in 1859 preferred the term Eranian.^[6] Robert Needham Cust, however, used the term Irano-Aryan as early as 1878.^[7] Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller also differentiated between Irano-Aryan and Indo-Aryan. Grierson also uses the term Eranian.^[8] Some recent scholarship - primarily in German - has revived of the term Irano-Aryan in analogy to Indo-Aryan.^[9][10] The linguist Ahmad Hasan Dani uses the term and asserts Iranian is short for Irano-Aryan.^[11] The linguist Gilbert Lazard, specialist for Persian, has been using the term consequently in his publications,^[12] whereas Mohammad Djafar^[13] suggests to establish Aryan for the branch.^[14] Still, Iranian remains the standard term used by the vast majority of English-language linguists.

Classification[link]

Indo-European language family tree.

Soon after postulating an Indo-European family in the 19th century, the Iranian languages (Avestan, Old Persian, Pahlavi) together with Indic (Sanskrit, Prakrit) were recognized by works of the linguist Rasmus Rask in 1826 as the eastern branch of Indo-European languages.^[15] The Armenian language was also considered as an Iranian language but was very soon (in 1875 effectively) established as a separate language in the Indo-European group of languages.^[15]

Iranian languages are divided into Eastern and Western subfamilies, totalling about 84 languages (SIL estimate). Of the most widely-spoken Iranian languages, Kurdish, Persian, and Balochi are all Western Iranian languages, while Pashto is an Eastern Iranian language.

Proto-Iranian and Old Iranian languages[link]

Historical distribution in 100 BC: shown is Sarmatia, Scythia, Bactria and the Parthian Empire

Together with the other Indo-Iranian languages, the Iranian languages are descended from a common ancestor, Proto-Indo-Iranian. The Indo-Iranian languages are thought to have originated in Central Asia. The Andronovo culture is the suggested candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture ca. 2000 BC.

It was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia (and present-day Kazakhstan). It was in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family, like Thracian, Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the steppes of southern Russia to the north of the Caucasus), according to the reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European.

Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after Proto-Indo-Iranian break-up, or the early second millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe, the Iranian plateau, and Central Asia.

Avestan, mainly attested through the Avesta, a collection of sacred texts connected to the Zoroastrian religion, is considered to belong to a central Iranian group,^[16] where only peripheral groups such as southwestern (represented by Old Persian) and northeastern Sogdian and Sakan language (Scythian) had developed. Among the less known Old Iranian languages is Median, spoken in western and central Iran, which may have had an “official” status during the Median era (ca. 700–559 BC). Apart from place and personal names, some words reported in Herodotus' Histories and some preserved forms in Achaemenid inscriptions, there are numerous non-Persian words in the Old Persian texts that are commonly considered Median. Some of the modern Western and Central Iranian dialects are also likely to be descended from Median.^[17]

Other such languages are Carduchi (the predecessor to Kurdish) and Parthian (which evolved into the language of the later empire).^[18]

Middle Iranian languages[link]

What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages can be classified into two main families, Western and Eastern.

The Western family includes Parthian (Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian, while Bactrian, Sogdian, Khwarezmian, Saka, and Old Ossetic (Scytho-Sarmatian) fall under the Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic-derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script, though Bactrian was written using an adapted Greek script.

Middle Persian (Pahlavi) was the official language under the Sasanian dynasty in Iran. It was in use from the 3rd century CE until the beginning of the 10th century. The script used for Middle Persian in this era underwent significant maturity. Middle Persian, Parthian and Sogdian were also used as literary languages by the Manichaeans, whose texts also survive in various non-Iranian languages, from Latin to Chinese. Manichaean texts were written in a script closely akin to the Syriac script.^[19]

New Iranian languages[link]

Dark green: countries where Iranian languages are official.
Teal: regional co-official/de facto status.

Following the Islamic Conquest of Persia (Iran), there were important changes in the role of the different dialects within the Persian Empire. The old prestige form of Middle Iranian, also known as Pahlavi, was replaced by a new standard dialect called Dari as the official language of the court. The name Dari comes from the word darbâr (دربار), which refers to the royal court, where many of the poets, protagonists, and patrons of the literature flourished. The Saffarid dynasty in particular was the first in a line of many dynasties to officially adopt the new language in 875 CE. Dari may have been heavily influenced by regional dialects of eastern Iran, whereas the earlier Pahlavi standard was based more on western dialects. This new prestige dialect became the basis of Standard New Persian. Medieval Iranian scholars such as Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa (8th century) and Ibn al-Nadim (10th century) associated the term "Dari" with the eastern province of Khorasan, while they used the term "Pahlavi" to describe the dialects of the northwestern areas between Isfahan and Azerbaijan, and "Pârsi" ("Persian" proper) to describe the Dialects of Fars. They also noted that the unofficial language of the royalty itself was yet another dialect, "Khuzi", associated with the western province of Khuzestan.

Geographic distribution of modern Iranian languages.

The Islamic conquest also brought with it the adoption of Arabic script for writing Persian, Pashto and Balochi. All three were adapted to the writing by the addition of a few letters. This development probably occurred some time during the second half of the 8th century, when the old middle Persian script began dwindling in usage. The Arabic script remains in use in contemporary modern Persian. Tajik script was first Latinised in the 1920s under the then Soviet nationality policy. The script was however subsequently Cyrillicized in the 1930s by the Soviet government.

The geographical areas in which Iranian languages were spoken was pushed back in several areas by newly neighbouring languages. Arabic spread into some parts of Western Iran (Khuzestan), and Turkic languages spread through much of Central Asia, displacing various Iranian languages such as Sogdian and Bactrian in parts of what is today Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Sogdian barely survives in a small area of the Zarafshan valley east of Samarkand, and Saka (as Sariqoli) in parts of southern Xinjiang as well as Ossetic in the Caucasus. Various small Iranian languages in the Pamirs survive that are derived from Eastern Iranian.

Comparison table[link]

See also[link]

• Indo-Iranian languages
• List of Iranian languages
• Iranian peoples

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Bailey, H. W. (1979). Dictionary of Khotan Saka. Cambridge University Press. 1979. 1st Paperback edition 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-14250-2.
• Schmitt, Rüdiger (ed.) (1989) (in German). Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum. Wiesbaden: Reichert. ISBN 3-88226-413-6. 
• Sims-Williams, Nicholas (1996). "Iranian languages". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. pp. 238–245. 
• Yarshater, Ehsan (ed.) (1996). "Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v13f2/v13f2024.html. 
• Frye, Richard N. (1996). "Peoples of Iran". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v13f3/v13f3004a.html. 
• Windfuhr, Gernot L. (1995). "Cases in Iranian languages and dialects". Encyclopedia Iranica. 5. Costa Mesa: Mazda. pp. 25–37. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v5f1/v5f1a008.html. 
• Lazard, Gilbert (1996). "Dari". Encyclopedia Iranica. 7. Costa Mesa: Mazda. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/v7f1/v7f131.html. 
• Henning, Walter B. (1954). "The Ancient language of Azarbaijan". Transactions of the Philological Society 53 (1): 157. DOI:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1954.tb00282.x. http://www.azargoshnasp.net/languages/Azari/henningazari/henningazari.htm. 
• Rezakhani, Khodadad (2001). "The Iranian Language Family". http://www.iranologie.com/history/ilf.html. 
• Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 13. 
• Skjærvø, Prods Oktor (2006). "Iran, vi. Iranian languages and scripts". Encyclopaedia Iranica. 13. http://www.iranica.com/newsite/articles/unicode/v13f4/v13f4001a.html 
• Cheung, Johnny (2007). Etymological Dictionary of the Iranian Verb. Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series, 2. Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-15496-4. http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=227&pid=24857. 
• Mallory, J. P.; Adams, Douglas Q. (2006). The Oxford introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European world. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929668-2 

External links[link]

• Society for Iranian Linguistics
• Iranian EFL Journal
• Audio and video recordings for over 50 languages spoken in Iran
• Iranian language tree at Ethnologue
• Iranian language tree = Russian, identical with above classification.

v t e Countries with Iranian-speaking populations Balochi Afghanistan Iran Pakistan Farsi Afghanistan Australia Bahrain Canada Denmark France Germany Iran Iraq Kuwait New Zealand Netherlands Norway Qatar Sweden Tajikistan Turkey United Arab Emirates United Kingdom USA Uzbekistan Kurdish Armenia Azerbaijan Australia Georgia Germany Iran Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan) Kazakhstan Syria Sweden Turkmenistan Turkey USA Ossetic Hungary (Jassic people) Ossetia Russia (North Ossetia–Alania) Georgia (South Ossetia) Turkey Pashto Afghanistan Pakistan Talysh Azerbaijan Iran Tat Azerbaijan Iran Israel Dagestan Zazaki Germany Netherlands Sweden Turkey More information: [1]

Janis Joplin
Background information
Birth name	Janis Lyn Joplin
Also known as	Pearl Mary Jane
Born	(1943-01-19)January 19, 1943 Port Arthur, Texas, United States
Died	October 4, 1970(1970-10-04) (aged 27) Los Angeles, California, United States
Genres	Blues rock, soul, psychedelic rock, acid rock, country, folk, hard rock, jazz blues
Occupations	Singer, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, auto-harp, harmonica, piano, percussion
Years active	1962–1970
Labels	Columbia
Associated acts	Big Brother and the Holding Company Kozmic Blues Band Full Tilt Boogie Band Grateful Dead

Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer and songwriter from Port Arthur, Texas. As a youth Joplin was ridiculed by her fellow students due to her unconventional appearance and personal beliefs. She later sang about her experience at school through her song "Ego Rock". Early in her life, Joplin cultivated a rebellious and unconventional lifestyle, becoming a beatnik poet. She began her singing career as a folk and blues singer in San Francisco, playing clubs and bars with her guitar and auto-harp.

Joplin first rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of the psychedelic-acid rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, and later as a solo artist with her more soulful and bluesy backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band. She was one of the more popular acts at the Monterey Pop Festival and later became one of the major attractions to the Woodstock festival and the Festival Express train tour.

Janis Joplin only charted five singles in her life but her hits and other popular songs from throughout her short four year career include "Down On Me", "Bye, Bye Baby", "Coo Coo", "Summertime", "Piece of My Heart", "Turtle Blues", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)", "Maybe", "To Love Somebody", "Kozmic Blues", "Work Me, Lord", "Move Over", "Cry Baby", "A Woman Left Lonely" "Get It While You Can", "My Baby", "Trust Me", "Mercedes Benz", "One Night Stand", "Raise Your Hand" and her only number one hit, "Me and Bobby McGee".

Joplin was well known for her performing abilities and her fans referred to her stage presence as electric. At the height of her career, she was known as "The Queen of Rock and Roll" as well as "The Queen of Psychedelic Soul" and became known as Pearl amongst her friends. She was also a painter, dancer and music arranger.

Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004,^[1] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.^[2]

Early life: 1943–1961[link]

Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on (1943-01-19)January 19, 1943,^[3] to Dorothy (née East) Joplin (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family attended the Church of Christ.^[4] The Joplins felt that Janis always needed more attention than their other children, with her mother stating, "She was unhappy and unsatisfied without [receiving a lot of attention]. The normal rapport wasn't adequate."^[5]

As a teenager, she befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by African-American blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer.^[6] She began singing in the local choir and expanded her listening to blues singers such as Odetta, Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton.

Primarily a painter while still in school, she first began singing blues and folk music with friends. While at Thomas Jefferson High School, she stated that she was mostly shunned.^[6] Joplin was quoted as saying, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I didn't hate niggers."^[5] As a teen, she became overweight and her skin broke out so badly she was left with deep scars which required dermabrasion.^[5][7][8] Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak" or "creep."^[5] Among her classmates were G. W. Bailey and Jimmy Johnson.

Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer^[7] and later the University of Texas at Austin, though she did not complete her studies.^[9] The campus newspaper The Daily Texan ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares To Be Different."^[9] The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin."^[9]

Singing career: 1962-1965[link]

Joplin's house at 122 Lyon Street in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, California. She lived there in the 1960s with her boyfriend Country Joe McDonald.^[10]

Cultivating a rebellious manner, Joplin styled herself in part after her female blues heroines and, in part, after the Beat poets. Her first song recorded on tape, at the home of a fellow student in December 1962, was "What Good Can Drinkin' Do".^[11] She left Texas for San Francisco ("just to get away from Texas," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"^[12]) in January 1963, living in North Beach and later Haight-Ashbury. In 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, further accompanied by Margareta Kaukonen on typewriter (as a percussion instrument). This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble In Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy" and "Long Black Train Blues", and was later released as the bootleg album The Typewriter Tape.

Around this time, her drug use increased, and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin use.^[3][6][7] She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite beverage was Southern Comfort.

In early 1965, Joplin's friends, noticing the physical effects of her amphetamine habit (she was described as "skeletal"^[6] and "emaciated"^[3]), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur, Texas. In May 1965, Joplin's friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return home.^[3] Back in Port Arthur, she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, began wearing relatively modest dresses, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as a sociology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her year at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to perform solo, accompanying herself on guitar. One of her performances was reviewed in the Austin American-Statesman. Joplin became engaged to a man who visited her, wearing a blue serge suit, to ask her father for her hand in marriage, but the man terminated plans for the marriage soon afterwards.^[8]

Just prior to joining Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin recorded seven studio tracks in 1965. Among the songs she recorded was her original composition for her song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995 titled This is Janis Joplin 1965 by James Gurley.

Big Brother and the Holding Company: 1966–1968[link]

Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company, circa 1966 – 1967.

In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, a band that had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Helms brought her back to San Francisco and Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966.^[13] Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. In June, she was photographed at an outdoor concert that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drug use for several weeks, enjoining bandmate Dave Getz to promise that using needles would not be allowed in their rehearsal space or in her apartment or in the homes of her bandmates whom she visited.^[8] When a visitor injected drugs in front of Joplin and Getz, Joplin angrily reminded Getz that he had broken his promise.^[8] A San Francisco concert from that summer was recorded and released in the 1984 album Cheaper Thrills. In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. They often partied with the Grateful Dead, who lived less than two miles away.

On August 23, 1966,^[14] during a four week engagement in Chicago, the group signed a deal with independent label Mainstream Records.^[15] Joplin relapsed into drinking when she and her bandmates (except for Peter Albin) joined some "alcoholic hipsters," as Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn described them, in Chicago. The band recorded tracks in a Chicago recording studio, but the label owner Bob Shad refused to pay their airfare back to San Francisco.^[6] Shortly after four of the five musicians drove from Chicago to Northern California with very little money (Albin traveled by plane), they returned to Lagunitas. It was there that Joplin relapsed into intravenous drug use. Nancy Gurley was an enabler.^[6] Three years later, Joplin, by then using a different band, was informed of Gurley's death from an overdose.^[6]

The Mantra-Rock Dance promotional poster featuring Big Brother and the Holding Company.

One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.^[16][17][18]

In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months.^[3][15] Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington and Vancouver, British Columbia, the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California.^[15]

Monterey and breakthrough[link]

The band's debut studio album, Big Brother and the Holding Company, was released by Columbia Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival.^[12] The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby," "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo," all of which Joplin sang lead vocals on.

Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey were filmed. "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball 'n' Chain" appear in the DVD box set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary Monterey Pop released by The Criterion Collection. The film captured Cass Elliot, of The Mamas & the Papas, seated in the audience silently mouthing "Wow! That's really heavy!" during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain".^[6] Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the film that was released to theaters nationwide in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend Monterey Pop saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the box set.

After switching managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen in 1966, the group signed with top artist manager Albert Grossman, whom they met for the first time at Monterey Pop. For the remainder of 1967, Big Brother performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968,^[19] the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater.^[3][6] On April 7, 1968, the last day of their East Coast tour, Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the "Wake for Martin Luther King, Jr." concert in New York.

Live at Winterland '68, recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month later, Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968, was recorded by Owsley Stanley.

In early 1968, Joplin and Big Brother made their nationwide television debut on The Dick Cavett Show, an ABC daytime variety show hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape. Over the next two years, she made three appearances on the primetime Cavett program, and all were preserved. By 1968, the band was being billed as "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company",^[15] and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band.^[15] The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip," while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them.^[15]

Time magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement," and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of Vogue magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock... she slinks like tar, scowls like war... clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener."^[5]

[edit] Cheap Thrills

For her first major studio recording, Janis played a major role in the arrangement and production of the recordings that would become Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, Cheap Thrills. During the recording, Joplin was said to be the first person to enter the studio and the last person to leave. Footage of Joplin and the band in the studio shows Joplin in great form and taking charge during the recording for "Summertime". The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb. Although Cheap Thrills sounded as if it consisted of concert recordings, like on "Combination of the Two" and "I Need a Man to Love", only "Ball and Chain" was actually recorded in front of a paying audience; the rest of the tracks were studio recordings.^[3] The album had a raw quality, including the sound of a cocktail glass breaking and the broken shards being swept away during the song "Turtle Blues". Cheap Thrills produced very popular hits with "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime". Together with the premiere of the documentary film Monterey Pop at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on December 26, 1968,^[20] the album launched Joplin's successful, albeit short, musical career.^[21]

Cheap Thrills reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart eight weeks after its release, remaining for eight (nonconsecutive) weeks.^[21] The album was certified gold at release and sold over a million copies in the first month of its release.^[8][15] The lead single from the album, "Piece of My Heart", reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the fall of 1968.^[22]

The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night final gig together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to honor and exult in the last official night of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The lead-in groups for this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana. Janis gave one last performance with Big Brother at a Family Dog benefit on December 1, 1968.^[3][6]

Solo career: 1969–1970[link]

Kozmic Blues Band[link]

After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians as well as Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays.^[3][6][8] The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a more bluesy, funky, soul, pop-oriented sound than most of the hard-rock psychedelic bands of the period.

By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day,^[7] although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!. Gabriel Mekler, who produced the Kozmic Blues, told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that the singer had lived in his house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends.^[8]

Joplin's performance with The Kozmic Blues Band in Frankfurt was released in cinemas around this time. The film shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and also includes her interviews from the Royal Albert Hall and on a bus. Most of the performances from this concert were later used in the 1975 film Janis: The Way She Was and is considered one of her best with the Kozmic Blues Band. No security was used so by the end of the concert the stage was so packed with people the band could not see each other. Another film was released of the band's performance in Stockholm featuring Joplin's interpretation of Summertime.

The Kozmic Blues Band performed on many television shows with Joplin. On the Tom Jones television show, they performed "Little Girl Blue" and "Raise Your Hand", the latter with Jones singing a duet with Joplin. On one episode of The Dick Cavett Show, they performed "Try (Just A Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't get down. She also revealed that she was a big fan of the then unknown Tina Turner, saying that she was an incredible singer, dancer and show woman. Joplin and Turner also performed together on at least one occasion at Madison Square Garden.

[edit] I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!

The Kozmic Blues album, released in September 1969, was certified gold later that year, but did not match the success of Cheap Thrills.^[21] Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the recording quality and engineering of the record as well as the musicianship were considered superior to her previous releases and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Janis' sensational vocal talents. Janis wanted a horn section similar to Chicago Transit Authority (band) and her voice had the dynamic qualities and range to not be overpowered by the brighter horn sound. Some music critics, including Ralph J. Gleason of the San Francisco Chronicle, were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and that Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother...(if they'll have her)."^[3] Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post generally ignored the band's flaws and devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. In general the press concentrated more on her leaving Big Brother rather than the qualities of the new recording.

Columbia released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at #41 on the Billboard Hot 100, and a live rendition of Raise Your Hand was released and became a top ten hit. Containing other hits like Try (Just a Little Bit Harder), To Love Somebody and Little Girl Blue, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! reached No. 5 on the Billboard 200 weeks after its release.

Joplin performs with Tom Jones on his television show in late 1969.

Woodstock[link]

Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band toured North America and Europe throughout 1969, appearing at Woodstock in the late hours of Saturday, August 16. She performed until the early morning hours of Sunday, August 17. Her friend Peggy Caserta claimed in a 1973 book that she encouraged Joplin to perform at the festival. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. When she and the band were flown in by helicopter with Joan Baez from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd she instantly became incredibly nervous and giddy. The documentary film of the festival that was released to theaters the following year includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward her dressing room tent.^[23] By most accounts, Woodstock was not a happy affair for Joplin.^[3][6][7]

Faced with a ten hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, she shot heroin^[6][7] with Caserta and was drinking alcohol, so by the time she hit the stage, she was "three sheets to the wind."^[3] On stage her voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy and she found it hard to dance. Throughout her performance she frequently spoke to the crowd. She pulled through, however, and the audience was so pleased they cheered her on for an encore, to which she replied and sang Ball and Chain. Her performances of Kozmic Blues and Work Me, Lord at Woodstock are notable, though her voice breaks while she sings.

Joplin was ultimately unhappy with her performance and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included in the documentary film or the soundtrack, Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More, although the 25th anniversary director's cut of Woodstock includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". Joplin however remained at Woodstock for the rest of the festival.

Laura Joplin said in an interview that Janis went straight home to Port Arthur following Woodstock. She was incredibly vibrant and happy after coming home and really loved the festival.

Madison Square Garden[link]

In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman claimed to have witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during a concert by The Rolling Stones at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman described Joplin during this performance as "so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent with mania."^[8]

During a Garden concert where she got solo billing on December 19, some observers believed she tried to incite the audience to riot.^[8] For part of this concert she was joined onstage by special guests Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield.

Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton, the audience watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes."^[15] In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture. At the time of this June 1970 interview she already had performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time.

Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother without her. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was at Madison Square Garden in New York City on the night of December 19–20, 1969.^[3][15]

Full Tilt Boogie Band[link]

In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969. Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off."^[24] Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro.^[15] Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time."^[6] Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her, "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks."^[6] Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about George was that he wasn't into drugs."^[6]

Joplin began using heroin again when she returned to the United States. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because of his witnessing her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California, her romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and her refusal to take some time off work and travel the world with him.^[6][25] Around this time she formed her new band, the Full Tilt Boogie Band.^[3][6][8] The band was composed mostly of young Canadian musicians and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie Band than she did with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's my band. Finally it's my band!"^[3]

The Full Tilt Boogie Band began touring in May 1970. Joplin remained quite happy with her new group, which received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics.^[3] Prior to beginning a summer tour with Full Tilt Boogie, she performed in a reunion with Big Brother at the Fillmore West in San Francisco on April 4, 1970. Recordings from this concert were included in an in-concert album released posthumously in 1972. She again appeared with Big Brother on April 12 at Winterland where she and Big Brother were reported to be in excellent form.^[6] It was around this time that Joplin began wearing multi-coloured feather boas in her hair. By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased.^[6]

Festival Express[link]

From June 28 to July 4, 1970, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie joined the all-star Festival Express train tour through Canada, performing alongside Buddy Guy, Rick Danko and The Band, Ten Years After, Grateful Dead, Delaney and Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia.^[6] They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary.^[6][15] Janis jammed with the other performers on the train and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest.

Joplin convinced The Band, who originally did not want to perform, to come telling them it was going to be a great party.

Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, Janis took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. She told the audience how great the tour was and presented the organisers with a case of Tequila. She then burst into a two hour set, starting with Tell Mama. Throughout this performance, Janis went into several banters where she spoke about her failed love life. She finished the night with long versions pf Get It While You Can and Ball and Chain.

Footage of her performance of the song Tell Mama in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s and the sound was included on the 1982 Farewell Song album. The audio of other Festival Express performances was included on that 1972 Joplin In Concert album. Video of the performances was included on the Festival Express DVD. Her full performances of Festival Express exist and have been released on bootlegs but all footage has yet to be released. In the Tell Mama video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in the May 1968 issue of Vogue), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin.^[3][6]

During the Festival Express tour, Joplin was accompanied by Rolling Stone writer David Dalton, who later wrote several articles and a book on Joplin. She told Dalton:

I'm a victim of my own insides. There was a time when I wanted to know everything ... It used to make me very unhappy, all that feeling. I just didn't know what to do with it. But now I've learned to make that feeling work for me. I'm full of emotion and I want a release, and if you're on stage and if it's really working and you've got the audience with you, it's a oneness you feel.^[15]

[edit] Pearl

Among her last public appearances were two broadcasts of The Dick Cavett Show. In a June 25, 1970, appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high-school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state."^[26] In the August 3, 1970, Cavett broadcast, Joplin referred to her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, on August 6, 1970.

Joplin attended the reunion on August 14, accompanied by fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and her sister Laura, but it reportedly proved to be an unhappy experience for her.^[27] Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. Interviewed by Rolling Stone journalist Chet Flippo, she was reported to wear enough jewelry for a "Babylonian whore."^[6] When asked by a reporter during the reunion if Joplin entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles."^[3][3][5] Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the people who'd humiliated her a decade earlier in high school.^[3]

Joplin's last public performance, with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston, Massachusetts. A positive review appeared on the front page of The Harvard Crimson newspaper despite the facts that Full Tilt Boogie performed with makeshift sound amplifiers after their regular equipment was stolen in Boston.^[8]

During late August, September and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, who had produced recordings for The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was still enough usable material to compile a long-playing record.

The result of the sessions was the posthumously released Pearl (1971). It became the biggest selling album of her career^[21] and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson's Me and Bobby McGee. Kristofferson had been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970.^[28] The opening track Move Over was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of the a cappella Mercedes Benz, written by Joplin, Bob Neuwirth and beat poet Michael McClure. The track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. The track Buried Alive In The Blues, to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental. In 2003, Pearl was ranked No. 122 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.