Thomson-CSF system

The Thomson-CSF system is named after the company that produced it in 1980, a company which has a long and tangled history starting as the French subsidiary of an American electronics company. The American company merged into what became General Electric (GE), but the French company had its own history of merging, splitting, being nationalized and privatized, and changing its name, business partnerships, and lines of business. It is now named Technicolor, and has as one of its subsidiaries the American-based company responsible for the color in many movies.

The system in question is a transmissive video disc system (not reflective like other systems). The discs were thin, 12 inches in diameter, and could be read on both sides without flipping them. They were only manufactured from 1980 to 1981.