In pre-electronics, patents on mechanically scanned color systems exist since 1889 in Russia. The color TV pioneer John Logie Baird demonstrated the world's first RGB color transmission in 1928, and also the world's first color broadcast in 1938, in London. In his experiments, scanning and displaying were made by mechanical means through spinning colorized wheels.

The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) began experimental RGB field-sequential color system in 1940. Images were electronically scanned, but it still used a moving part: the transparent RGB color wheel rotating at above 1,200 rpm synchronized in front of both the monochromatic camera and the cathode-ray tube (CRT) receiver counterpart.

The modern RGB shadow mask technology for color CRT displays was patented by Werner Flechsig in Germany in 1938.