It was exactly 10:57 AM on August 25, 1967. The air inside the Berlin exhibition halls was thick with anticipation. Willy Brandt, then the Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, stood before a crowd of press, engineers, and curious onlookers. In his hand was a button. It was about the size of a fist. Red. Prominent.
He pressed it.
The result was instant. Across West Germany, living rooms that had been monochrome for over a decade suddenly bloomed with hue. The first official image to hit screens wasn’t a landscape or a news anchor. It was a close-up of Brandt’s thumb resting on that same red button. A hush rippled through the exhibition halls. The experiment had worked. West Germany, and indeed most of Europe, had officially entered the age of color television.
The camera panned away from the thumb to capture the room. There was Walter Bruch, the engineer credited with inventing the PAL system that made this all possible. He stood amidst the promotion, a quiet man behind a loud technological leap.
The Race to Go Color
The broadcast day didn’t end with the ceremony. At 2:30 PM, the ARD and ZDF networks went on air together. Their first color test? A French film called Cartouche der Bandit (Cartouche the Bandit). It was a crude test, but it proved the signal could carry color without collapsing into static.
The real test came later that evening. The ZDF took the lead here, broadcasting the 25th episode of Der Goldene Schuss, a 90-minute game show, at 8:00 PM. It was the first time viewers could watch a live entertainment program in color. The ARD wasn’t far behind. They followed up the next day with their own live color debut: the “Gala Evening of the Record” (Gala-Abend der Schallplatte), featuring Vivi Bach and Dietmar Schönherr. For the first time, audiences could see the glitter of sequins and the blush of makeup in true color.
Why PAL Won the Continent
This wasn’t just a German novelty. It was a continental shift. West Germany became the first European nation to adopt the PAL (Phase Alternating Line) system. It was superior to what others were using, or planning to use.
The world split into camps. The German system, PAL, would eventually be adopted by most of Europe and much of the world. It handled color signals in a way that was more forgiving of transmission errors. Meanwhile, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), France, and several Eastern Bloc countries stuck with the SECAM system. PAL won out not just by local decree, but by technical robustness.
The switch changed how people watched the world. Suddenly, the green of a football pitch was green. The blue of the sky was blue. The beige walls of a living room were no longer just shades of gray. It seemed like a small thing, a tweak to an old technology. But the moment Brandt pressed that button, the grayscale era ended.
We take color for granted now. We barely notice it. Back then, it was a shock to the system. A sudden injection
