Guillermo González Camarena (17 February 1917 – 18 April 1965) was a Mexican electrical engineer who was the inventor of a color-wheel type of color television, and who also introduced color television to the world.
González Camarena invented the “Chromoscopic Adapter for Television Equipment”, an early color television transmission system. He was only 17. A U.S. patent application (2,296,019) states, “My invention relates to the transmission and reception of colored pictures or images by wire or wireless…” The invention was designed to be easy to adapt to black-and-white television equipment. González Camarena applied for this patent August 14, 1941, and obtained the patent September 15, 1942. He also filed for additional patents for color television systems in 1960 and 1962. He sold his first set in 1954 for about $1,450.
On August 31, 1946, González Camarena sent his first color transmission from his lab in the offices of The Mexican League of Radio Experiments, at Lucerna St. #1, in Mexico City. The video signal was transmitted at a frequency of 115 MHz. and the audio in the 40-meter band.
He obtained authorization to make the first publicly announced color broadcast in Mexico, on February 8, 1963, Paraíso Infantil, on Mexico City’s XHGC-TV, a station that he established in 1952. By that time, the government had adopted NTSC as the television color system.
