RCA CEO David Sarnoff was a ruthless businessman. His great insight and accomplishment was seeing the potential of broadcasting as an entertainment medium and making network radio and television a reality. But Sarnoff didn’t hesitate to steal technology, as he did from Philo T. Farnsworth, and he crushed the great inventor Edwin Armstrong, who had been a close friend.
Having said that, RCA’s engineers did an exemplary job of creating the all-electronic NTSC color television system that was backwards-compatible with existing black & white sets. It was Ampex, however, that introduced b&w video tape recording in 1956. Two years later, RCA modified an Ampex deck so it could record in color, and the amazing results are in this video. If only this technology had been available during WWII, we would have an entirely different historical perception of the era.
Information on the restoration of this historic recording is at this link.