[Maarten]

Trinitron, being an unplanned plan B, was actually late to the market, I think in 1968. Plan A was a beam index tube using a layout vaguely similar to what was to become the more conventional Trinitron design (the 3 cathode single lens gun, the grille, the cylindrical screen and the H-STAT setting were modified remains of the original attempts). They coudn't get it to work decentlly even with years of work and must have pulled some all-nighters or even all-monthers in the end to convert the beam index design into Trinitron in time to not miss their share of the booming colour market while still retaining face and not having to pay license fees to RCA. The kludge payed out in the end, as they have retained over the years a very loyal customer base who appreciated the advantages and didn't mind the weaker points of the system. The story goes, that at some point in the mid 1970's there were talks about licensing the system to Philips as well, but Philips chose to use and produce inline (not precision inline or PIL!) tubes and the only Trinitron licensee that I know of was Standard Elektrik Lorenz who only sold their production to Sony and Wega (owned by Sony) anyway.

If the wires were horizontal, the phosphor stripes would also have to be, and the scan lines would be of alternating colours. Probably as big as a nightmare (or bigger) to get to work anywhere near decently as the beam indexing system. Or the scan lines would have to be vertical, making it incompatible with normal TV transmissions.