Although the first public television broadcasts in colour were made in the United States, the first proposal was made as far back as 1904, although the first patent filed was in 1925, when the electronic television pioneer Zworykin came up with a scheme.
Baird strikes again
But it was the Scot generally seen as the father of modern television, John Logie Baird, who demonstrated the first practical television transmission system in 1928. He used his rotating disc system to produce a low-definition picture, but one which was, without a doubt, in colour.
By the time colour television was being taken seriously, black-and-white television was already well established. The broadcasters realised that they would become extremely unpopular with their audiences if they introduced colour TV transmissions that could not also be seen in black and white. So the search was on for compatible colour TV systems.
America's National Television Systems Committee finally accepted the system which came to be known as NTSC (which the unkind said stood for 'Never The Same Colour'). Shortly afterwards the French (and Russians) adopted the SECAM system and finally, Britain and Germany announced they were going to use the PAL system. (You can read about the physics behind PAL colour tv at Bath university's site; http://www.maths.bath.ac.uk/~pjw/NOTES/g... ). All three systems were, of course, largely incompatible. The Europeans were more than ten years behind the Americans in finally beginning transmissions in colour in 1967.
Canada's CBC gives Canadian readers a look back at how colour television arrived there at http://www.cbc4kids.ca/general/time/hist... . The site is supposed to be for kids, but, hey, we're all kids at heart....
Early colour TV sets used valve technology and generated enough heat to warm a room quite nicely. In fact, after a series of house fires were allegedly started by colour TV sets, the BBC began warning British viewers they should stay in the same room as the TV for an hour after they had switched it off the make sure that it didn't burst into flames. An article on the spotty history of colour TV in Britain can be seen at http://welcome.to/htw/ .
New technology made the sets smaller as transistors and integrated circuits reduced the physical size of the circuitry involved. The introduction of Liquid Crystal display technology reduced the size of the screens until it was eventually possible to pack a working colour TV into something the size of a family pack matchbox.
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