When television finally reached Spokane, I saw my first picture in the show window of Garland Appliance on Division near the Garland intersection. I think that was the name. The physical building was still there when I checked last month when I was in Spokane. At any rate, I thought TV was in black-and-white. Nope! It was appeared black-and-blue to me. I guess the light blue phosphor was the closest to white that the technology come handle.
My mind soon adjusted such that I saw the blue phosphor as white. Television’s emergence pulled along a hysteria that TV would make everybody permanently blind! Families watched TV in a darkened room illuminated only by a “TV lamp” sitting atop the set box. These lamps emitted indirect light toward the ceiling.
Granted, the darkened room could also minimize annoying reflected glare coming from the flat protected faceplate. This was before bonded faceplates. Most people don’t even realize their cathode ray tube TV has a faceplate bonded to it. Heck, today, many people no longer even HAVE a cathode ray tube TV, but I digress.
It was not long before one enterprising fifties company manufactured a TV that was reputed to be intrinsically easier on the eyes. “Easier” implied that the reputed permanent damage to eyesight would be minimized or delayed (does anybody believe this stuff today?). The company was named “Hoffman.” They simply used a yellow – I mean “golden” phosphor to keep the supposed eye-damage demon at bay. I recall the jingle:
We’ve got a Hoffman,
Hoffman ezVision.
We like Hoffman yes we do.
Our whole family likes it too.
It’s golden lens we realize,
Protects our children’s’
precious eyes
I don’t think Hoffman made it past our Rogers years. Thirty years, later the advent of early monochrome green-screen computer terminals was accompanied by a yellow screen option that was supposedly easier on the eyes. These too, have passed.
-Ed Mauget