How an Optical Illusion Made Black and White TVs Appear to Show Color

In the late 1960s, most American households still relied on black and white televisions, with color sets being a minority. Inventor James Butterfield explored a way to create the illusion of color on standard black and white TVs. The phenomenon he leveraged, known as the Fechner color effect or subjective color, occurs because the brain processes signals from the eye’s color receptors at slightly different speeds. This mismatch can make viewers perceive color where none exists. Inspired by the Benham’s disk, a spinning toy from the 19th century that generates apparent colors from black and white patterns, Butterfield developed the ‘Color Translator,’ a camera attachment using colored filters and spinning elements synced with the camera shutter. When recorded objects were played back on a TV, certain viewers perceived the illusion of color. In 1968, a Squirt soda commercial in Los Angeles used this technique. Viewer reactions varied: some saw multiple colors, others only a few, and some saw none. Although not a reliable method, it demonstrated an early application of visual perception research in broadcasting. The concept remains notable in the study of subjective color perception and historical television technology experiments.