Guadalajara - Mexico paid homage to Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena, the genius engineer who invented color television, on Friday, in celebration of the pioneer's birthday centenary.

Camarena was born Feb. 17, 1917, a date later declared Day of the Inventor in tribute to Camarena's monumental legacy.

When he was just 23 years old, the Guadalajara-born engineer patented the "chromoscopic adapter for television equipment," a device used to turn black and white televisions into color TVs.

Concerned the technology would only be available to the upper class, Camarena later presented the more affordable Simplified Bicolor System.

"He was not only a great engineer, but also a person with a profound social sensibility and entrepreneur," Salvador Ricardo Meneses Gonzalez, head of the Department of Engineering in Telecommunications and Electronics at ESIME Zacatenco - the same school Camarena studied at - told Dossier Politico.

Camarena rejected U.S. funding and instead encouraged Mexicans to take advantage of his newly-patented invention. In 1963, he successfully made the first color broadcast and in 1964, the technology became internationally known through the transmission of the Olympic Games.

As well as helping to invent color television, Camarena also made important contributions to radio, literacy programs and even composed the hit song "Rio Colorado."

In the face of disparaging attacks from the new U.S. administration, Camarena's 100th birthday celebration is also being used as a reminder of Mexico's great scientific and engineering capabilities.

"Mexico is capable of developing its own technology and not depending on other countries," Mexican journalist Antonio Cruz wrote in Dossier Politico.

"Knowing that we have this capability is very important given the situation Mexico finds itself in today, where we are constantly hounded by the new U.S. president."