1962: In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station's technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.
Comments
Listed in chronological order. Newest comments at the end.

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He he. I remember dad running around trying to find moms pantyhose to pull over our set. Remember the old TV:s? They were big monsters and he ripped all of them and when he finally got a pair over the set....nothing happened and dad told me and my brother that he was probably to late. And then he swore us to secrecy so mom would not find out what happened to her pantyhose. Now i have to call my brother and have a laugh at old times.
Posted by Kim  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  04:16 AM

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wow..haha..what a good one. NOT. WHAT A BUNCH OF STUPID SWEDEN PEOPLE
Posted by Jack Liu  in  Langley  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  11:03 AM

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This was a joke 40 years ago in the early tv-history. Don´t blame the Swedish people of today for that old shit...
Posted by krille  in  sweden  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  11:46 AM

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:):):):):):):)hellllllllllllllllllllloooooooooo
sweedon tututututut
this is sum gal
how can u fall for that
i wud pros like
Posted by kate lala rikku  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  01:20 PM

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of course they fell for it, it was new tech and no one understod how it worked, i bet some people thought it simply was magic
Posted by mr mister  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  01:31 PM

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Since we had already known it was a hoax, we tend to think that those Swedish people were stupid. I wonder how many people we would fall for that if we were to do a same poll today in the US?

But seriously, this may not be so far fetched in a couple of years from now. According to Dr. Eric van Stryland, dean of CREOL (Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers, http://www.creol.ucf.edu, the first college of optics and photonics in US) at University of Central Florida, a research group at CREOL has been doing exactly the same research for over a year now with a grant of $23M from a defense contractor. With state-of-the-art nanotechnology, carbon nano tubes can be aligned so well in a thin sheet of substrate that the “buried” information in a black-and-white image can be retrieved and converted to its original color image. A prototype that converts b/w photo to 16-color image was demonstrated two weeks ago and champagne were opened to celebrate this “one of the milestones in the history of modern optics” and “certainly a major breakthrough in the 20-year history of CREOL.” The goal of the 3-year grant is to achieve 256-color image conversion and the 10-year phase 2 plan is to achieve 32-bit color conversion. The applications of this technology includes not only defense industry but also computer industry since a lot more information can be stored in media with low “resolution.” A commercial application that we all like to have is to burn 8-GB movies on a 700MB audio CD instead of DVD.
Posted by Albert  in  Orlando  on  Sat Apr 01, 2006  at  08:00 PM

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you can view the clip here: http://svt.se/svt/road/Classic/shared/mediacenter/index.jsp?d=43499&a=477101

the whole thing worked partly because that guy gave a rather lengtht technical description. the nylon socks where said to devide the white light, like a prisma, resulting in coloUr.
Posted by jonas  on  Sun Apr 02, 2006  at  01:33 AM

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Yep, my mum has admitted to falling for it. She is not more stupid than the next Norwegian but I think she found Mr. Stensson a very attractive man.

Joke aside, I think the story says something about how you tend to believe things you see on TV. Maybe more so in the 60's.

Great web site by the way.
Posted by King Kongsson  on  Mon Apr 03, 2006  at  06:28 AM

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Ok, so this wasn't really a Practical Joke.


The fleshtoned nylon stockings do in fact offer a felshy hue to the tv screens.

I would be more concerned on how much the price of stockings were at the period of time, and how many pairs of stockings were ruined.


It's not much beer you driink, for I am much more concerned with much beer I spill.
Posted by someone who understood this article.  in  USA  on  Mon Apr 03, 2006  at  02:22 PM

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I've seen a recording of that joke. The man, Kjell Stensson, did a very good job in explaining how the nylon stocking worked from a physical point of view - how white light is composed of all colors, he used facts about optical gratings and dispersion to explain how different colors are split up etc.
Posted by Jake  in  Somewhere  on  Wed Apr 05, 2006  at  01:52 AM

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http://svt.se/podd-tv/oppetarkiv
its call Nylonstrumpan

use this rss and see it, problem its in swedish so you must have a norveigen to translate it .
Posted by Ingvarfa  on  Wed Apr 05, 2006  at  05:29 AM

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Though this WAS a hoax, my father worked at WJW TV 8 in Cleveland Ohio in the early 60's, and he managed to figure out a way to broadcast color OVER a B&W set, using a device called a Benjamin Wheel. This was a wheel with alternating B&W stripes that provided the illusion of color when spun. The station actually gave it a try over the air, and the results were pretty impressive. It would NOT provide a full color picture, but might be used to color, say, a logo if masked over the disk.
Posted by dll932  on  Sun Apr 30, 2006  at  09:47 AM

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OOPS! It's actually called a Benham's Wheel:
http://redwood.ucdavis.edu/phil/demos/disk/disk.htm
This page has a nice little demo program you can download.
Posted by dll932  on  Sun Apr 30, 2006  at  10:01 AM

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OOPS! It was actually called a Benham's Wheel.
http://redwood.ucdavis.edu/phil/demos/disk/disk.htm
See page for demo.
Posted by dll932  on  Sun Apr 30, 2006  at  10:04 AM

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HA! Trust Sweden
Posted by Harry  in  Perth  on  Sat Oct 21, 2006  at  06:47 PM

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This is similar to an April Fool's joke that I played on the Western Australia Mac User's Group.

Their next meeting was on April 1st. I was in charge of typesetting the group's magazine. On the front cover, I put a white square with a thin black border. Inside the magazine, I wrote an article about a "new advance in printing technology" involving "photographic ink".

The person had to hold the front cover (which was supposedly treated with this ink) up to a computer monitor, with the other side facing them. After a couple of minutes, their picture would appear on the cover.

At this next meeting on April 1st, I put together a couple of covers of the magazine, substituting the blank square with some grainy pictures of people. Many people came to the meeting having been fooled by the magazine... and then they saw the fake covers I'd put together. After the meeting there were still a couple of people trying to get it to work with the group's computers!
Posted by Chris Lees  in  Australia  on  Thu Nov 02, 2006  at  09:30 PM

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I have heard of this hoax and im a swede. You have to remeber that this is in the beginning of the 60s.
Posted by ess  in  sweden  on  Sun Mar 04, 2007  at  02:17 AM

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i dont get it................................
how do you fall for sumthing that is soo.....
DUMB.
you have 2 use socks not nylons.
a durr....
Posted by Lacizzle  in  hastings, MN  on  Sun Mar 25, 2007  at  08:18 AM

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i dont think thats very funny but very stupid and who would fall for that except thousands of people in Sweden not me i mean thats like saying if you put a blanket over you you'll be cold
Posted by sydney  in  phila,pa  on  Sun Apr 01, 2007  at  03:40 AM

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The thing is that this guy, Kjell, was a relly serious person and no one would expect him to do this kind of thing. He was almost like a politician, so people wouldn't think twice about what he said. That joke is legendary in Sweden nowadays, there is no 1 april without you hearing about it like 20 times!!

Have a great day!

P.S. My dad had red food colouring in the pancakes and tricked me and my sis that he had a nosebleed...
Posted by Simon  in  Sweden  on  Sun Apr 01, 2007  at  04:00 AM

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