I have been looking for an answer to this question for 15 years. I would eternally gratefull if you were to succeed.
The question is…
Can you “see” color on a black and white TV set.
The reason behind the question goes back to about 1964 when I was 6 and black and white TV’s ruled the earth. I remember seeing a Squirt ad that said if you REALLY were thirsting for a Squirt you would see their logo in yellow and red. Sure enough I did and I really didn’t think I was lusting for one. It seemed they used a flicker frequency to acheive this effect. About 10 years ago I wrote to Squirt asking this and got a reply like "we made many commercials in the 60’s and I don’t remember…blah blah blah. I also have a friend that repairs TV’s and he swears that what I describe is not possible.
Keeping my fingers crossed,
Mark
What I have noticed, though, is that sometimes I see purple in a black-and-white commercial or old movie, on a color set. It seems to happen mostly with certain types of textures of clothing.
I suppose the “frequency shift” hypothesis is possible (out of my range of technical expertise) but it’s also possible (and perhaps more likely) that that it was an “after image” optical illusion generated if you stare at a pattern for an extended period of time, then look away, and you get a duplicate, color shifted retinal image persisting for a short time.
Thanks for the replies. It is alot further than I got with the boys at Squirt. But I don’t think we quite have it yet. Panache, watching a B/W movie on a color set, you still have the three color guns firing and I think you can pick up some color because of that. Astro, you might be barking (pardon the pun) up the right tree. But I thought those optical illusions gave you the opposite color of the spectrum which wouldn’t fly because it was a B/W TV.
Thanks for your time.
This comes from the way out wing of totally vague answers: I recall when I was studying that we had a course on visual perception. In it there was one experiment, which was first done in the late 60s (?) that enabled you to see colour from a spinning disk which had a pattern of concentric black lines on it, the trick was to hold another disk on top of the spinning one, the superior disk having only a slit in it through which to see the black and white disk. I can’t remember much more about the experiment than that (sorry) but we did it and it definately worked, it is possible to see colour from a black and white image if the conditions are right.