Oldest Color Videotape Recording (1958)

This is sample footage of the earliest surviving color videotape recording which is the DWIGHT EISENHOWER inaugural address to WRC-TV on May 22nd, 1958.

The first 15 minutes of this event were shot in black and white which you see the President arriving to the building and the news reporter giving details of the event, then about nearly 15 minutes in ROBERT SARNOFF hits the color switch and on comes the color.

For the remaining 15 minutes ROBERT SARNOFF, DWIGHT EISENHOWER and DAVID SARNOFF speak about the station and the color television technology while being recorded in living color.

The whole program is available for download in DVD quality here.

The United States started broadcasting color in late 1953 and color TV sets were available to the public in 1954 at an expensive price.

Color videotaping began in the United States in 1958 and this footage is the earliest known to exist and it has been successfully transferred to digital for preservation.

It is totally awesome to know that some color programs from the late 1950s have survived on color videotape as they show to us younger generations how good color television really was back in its earliest days.

[Those RCA TK-41 cameras gave brilliant pictures back in the day.]