The discovery by T. Eaton Co., a Canadian department store chain, that two of its floor-model television sets had permanent imprint burns, received widespread publicity.
The two sets, both black-and-white models were operated 12 hours a day for five weeks. Although the Eaton disclosure did not hurt sales, it triggered a probe into ion burn damage from prolonged operation by the Federal Trade Commission. It also prompted some stores, including Eaton's and some manufacturers to issue warnings against operation at full brightness or full contrast over extended time periods.
The first home TV game system to accommodate replaceable cartridges was introduced by Fairchild Camera and Instrument in August, 1976. The unit has hockey and tennis built in. The key to its versatility, however, is its capability to accept a never-ending number of new cartridges as they are developed.
Each Videocart cartridge contains a semiconductor memory programmed to reproduce specific games on the television screen in full color. The game console uses a Fairchild F8 microprocessor and four semiconductor random access memories to provide the basic game system electronics. For sports games, the score and elapsed time are displayed continuously at the bottom of the screen.
Scheduled to follow Fairchild into the plug-in-game business is RCA, which has developed a microprocessor-based system using the 1802. The RCA unit will combine keyboard console control with read-only-memory cartridge game inputs. Bowling is among the games being offered by the RCA system.
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