Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena
Color Television

Guillermo González Camarena was a Mexican engineer born in Guadalajara, Mexico in February, 1917.  When Camarena was two years old, his family moved to Mexico City, where he began to display true creativity and a gift for electronics.  As a young boy, Camarena made electrically propelled toys and by the age of twelve had built his first amateur radio.
    In 1930, Camarena   graduated from the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico and within two years obtained his first radio license.  An avid stargazer, Camarena built his own telescope during this time and became a regular member of the Astronomical Society of Mexico.  In 1932, after two years of studies, Camarena left the mechanical-electrical engineering program at the National Polytechnic Institute to work as an operator at the radio station of his country's Department of Public Education.

    Displaying rare ingenuity, Camarena built his first monochromatic television camera from scrap materials he purchased from flea markets.   Shortly thereafter, Camarena invented and received a patent for color television transmission system known as the Chromoscopic adapter for television equipment.  His invention related to the transmission and reception of colored pictures or images by wire.  The invention was designed to be easy to adapt to black-and-white television equipment. Camarena also filed for additional patents for color television systems in 1960 and 1962.
    On August 31, 1946, 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 and color television as we know it today, was born.  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, Paraiso Infantil, on Mexico City's XHGC-TV, a station that he himself established in 1952.  
    Tragically, Camarena was returning from an inspection of a television transmitter in Las Lajas, Veracruz when he was involved in a fatal car accident that ended his life.  This brilliant Latin American, without even reaching the age of 50 and working entirely in his own country of Mexico, managed to excel in a field traditionally reserved for scientists in first world countries.