The transition to colored TV from black and white was a gradual process that took place over several decades. The beginning of the end of black and white television began in the 1930s, with the first television broadcasts being in black and orange due to the orange color of the neon gas in the lamps used in the first TV sets. However, it wasn't until the 1960s that the shift to color television became more widespread.
The end of black and white broadcasting was on the horizon as early as the 1950s, with limited color telecasts beginning in 1953. The television networks gradually shifted to color in the mid-1960s, and by the 1970s, color television had become the standard. The last major US television set maker, Zenith, sold its first black and white TV set in 1948, but by the end of 1987, it had stopped producing them. Despite the widespread availability of color TVs, there are still a small number of black and white TVs in use today, with an estimated 8,000 left in the US according to recent figures from TV Licensing. The shift to color television transformed the way Americans saw the world and the world saw them, and it marked the end of an era in television history.