My folks bought their first TV in 1949, when I was four. It was a 16 inch Motorola console. I watched my very first "Howdy Doody," "Flash Gordon," and "Lone Ranger" on that set. I watched Santa Claus every day during the holiday season. I remember my mom watching "Coke Time," a fifteen minute daily show starring Eddie Fisher. He was the young popular crooner at that time. There are a lot of great memories.
I remember a few of these sets when I was a kid. My first color set was a Magnavox in a large console cabinet purchased in 1967. My Dad didn't want me to buy it, but when he saw the Cartwrights ride out on Bonanza, he was in awe. I had that set until I moved in 2000 and put it to the sidewalk. Someone picked it up within 15 minutes. It still worked, but needed a new picture tube.
Its a comfort to know that people and places like this exist out there. Very cool collection! I tossed my CRT PC monitors long ago but I have late model 27". 19", & 13" CRT TV's I'm hanging onto now for dear life, LOL
Great job Kirk and team. The TV display looks great and so much better than I might have imagined. I know there are more amazing things to come in the near future and I'm looking forward to that. Maybe a working CT100 and possibly a working Model 5 early RCA color set. Awesome!
I grew up in the 1950's/60's. Our TV was a big (it had feet!) B&W with on/off, volume and tuning knob. We did get a swell color set in 1965 that mom won at a church bazaar. After military service I settled and got my first TV. An RCA XL-100. Man-o-Manischewitz, it was boss. Nice video of "how it was". Interesting and educational, thanks.
As I'm watching this, it struck me that by dumb luck, I was wearing the shirt I got when my wife and I visited your museum a few years ago. It seems like the museum grew since then. I want to come visit again soon. BTW, I have several of those stand-alone UHF converters and am going to restore them just because. Kutztown radio swap meet, held twice a year, is a great place to visit and pick up parts. A lot of like minded company there. Thanks for all you guys do to keep this stuff alive! KC3NRA 73
I still have the family Air King tv that used the RCA TS630 chassis. It was purchased two years before I was born. It is on it's third 10BP4 tv tube. The first one went kaput in the early 50's when I grabbed the socket on the tube and twisted. The second one went out in 1961. The third one has been in since. The last time I had it plugged in was 1984. it now sits in my shed.
I have visited your museum, and have a couple of similar early television sets in my private collection in California. The first color TV I saw was in the window of the best TV store in Norwich CT when I was 12 years old. That would be in1954. That CTC-5 looks very much as I remember it, though I never got to see a color program on its display, even when there was one advertised by NBC to be in color. I think we were too far away from either New Haven or Providence RI. Much later after we moved to California, we bought used a "21" inch RCA CTC-9. I still have that set. I had the chance to purchase one of two Admiral 1950 vintage Bakelite case TVs and chose the cheaper one, which measures 6" but may have been sold as a "7" inch set, using a tailors cloth tape for the measurement to include the curve of the tube face. In 1963 I was in Tokyo courtesy of the USN, where, at Ginza and Z Street at 9 at night on a Sunday, when I heard the unmistakable Theme song for NBC's Bonanza. I ducked into that bar and there above it was a Toshiba with the round bottle of an RCA picture tube. There being no others in the world at that time. Hoss Cartright fell off of his horse as I watched screaming in a high dubbed Japanese voice " Itai!".
Great video! I am a volunteer at the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention in Bellingham, Washington. We also had an RCA CT100 color television. We had it running until the lead from the 6CD6 horizontal output tube to the flyback transformer broke.
Those old TV sets sure bring back some memories of the sets we had in the family living room when I was a kid. My uncle had a Philco Predicta similar to the one depicted in the video.
Definitely thumbs up. Thank you and your team for collecting and restoring these fantastic historical items of engineering. Great knowledgeable presentation.
Great video! Thank you for featuring the Panasonic futuristic looking portable I donated in the ‘90s. It was a gift from my mom in 1969 for making the honor roll in 9th grade; we bought it at Two Guys on the Berlin Turnpike. I remember watching the first episode of All In The Family when it originally aired. I don’t remember why, but I replaced the original slat style volume knob with one from a portable radio. I also removed the sun screen to get a brighter picture. I also had the battery pack, I don’t remember if I gave it to you. Keep up the good work. I look forward to more videos.
Thanks for the donation- that is one of the sets that put the Japanese in the forefront of Consumer Electronics in the US. The beginning of the end for us!
This was very interesting. My parents had a B & W Philco TV which they purchased in 1956 when they got married. I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo on that set. We didn't have a color set until 1969. It was a RCA portable. Thanks for posting.
I have a 1948 RCA 9t240 tv set in my basement. I saved it from a deceased neighbors house many years ago. When I plugged it in the tubes light up but no sound and no picture. My guess is the wax capacitors definitely need a replacement plus wire damage. Hope to get it restored or to the right hands one day like a museum. Also have a mid century Grundig Majestic tube radio that works perfectly fine
A nice representative collection of TVs, and well presented. I recognized several accessories on top of the sets -- signal boosters from RMS, Decimeter and Regency, a Mallory UHF converter, a Trio antenna rotator and several set-top antennas. I loved that you have the magnifiers for the early small screen sets and can demonstrate them. Interesting that 25 years later we didn't want magnifiers for the tiny portable TVs even though they had smaller screens.
Excellent presentation. I worked in the domestic TV trade in the UK in the early 1960's. We still only had monochrome 405 - line at the time. I was involved with the change to 625-line, on UHF, & then the move to colour TV in 1967. It's therefore interesting to me to see the parallels that were going on in the U.S. But you had the edge on us, being early developers of Colour, with the NTSC versions. Like you, our manufacturers suffered badly on sales, once the Japanese imports came along.
I was six months old back in 1952 when we got our first TV in Belmont N.H. it was the second unit in that town.. one station WBZ Boston.. every time a car approached the screen would jump !
I own a working Proton television and I use it for watching my videotapes and DVDs. The store owner told me it was the last year that they manufactured box TV sets. I love it!
A set that I didn’t see in your collection was a Sony trinitron tv. That was a game changer because of the one gun producing the rgb on the screen, that design was also revolutionary instead of being round dots on the shadow mask, they were vertical stripes that allowed for more color pixels per square inch instead of the round one that had wasted space between the color phosphors.
I am in the UK. I still have a working 12 inch Sony Trinitron colour tv set from around 1969/1970. It needs to be connected via a digi-box now as analogue broadcasting finished a few years since, but still gives an excellent picture. Being in the UK it was designed for PAL 625 lines UHF. It still has a tint control though, although that is not really necessary here.
The Tritron is not a one gun - despite Sony's description. It still had three independent cathodes and still needed a shadow mask. A one gun tube has one cathode and no mask. Sony ended up making such a tube for their camcorder viewfinders and a small (5"?) model at some point in the late 80s or early 90s. The original Trinitron is very similar to the PA tube GE was working on in the 50s but never really got right, but GE had the first production in-line picture tube in the 60s.
Great video. Something you might find interesting - - the NTSC standard used the phase of the color carrier to indicate color (hue). For technical reasons, it had a max bandwidth of 1.5 MHz at one color, and 0.5 Mhz for the color on the opposite side of the color wheel. So they chose to make orange the color at the 1.5 MHz position because that is the color that humans see with the maximum resolution. That is also why fog lights are orange.
The RCA technical papers about colorimetry and the development of the NTSC system. There were many considerations and the engineering details will keep one busy for weeks trying to comprehend.
I first saw a TV in 1953 - I was 2. I was thinking oh, look a box with a bunch of elves, cleaning a sink, and some guys singing Ajax the foaming cleanser. It was our neighbors’ set. A few short months later, my folks bought our first television. A 1954 Sparton.
All of this is so interesting! Living in a smaller city, I’m pretty sure my Dad said it was into the early 50’s before he even saw a TV in person somewhere else after joined the Army. But…$5000-$7000 in the late forties was for the rich. My god that was a lot of money back then. You could buy a nice car for less than that late into the 60s!!! I remember it being a big deal between him and my mom when he wanted a Curtis Mathis Color TV up in the mid-ish 70s. He wanted it because of the warranty, and I think about $400, which was a huge deal. I remember TV repairmen coming to the house too for that and other sets later on, or us taking our smaller ones to them when they broke. Even later, we had a small B&W portable from Sony he would watch ball games or whatever on out in the garage or spare room after my brother moved out. Lots of memories triggered here, thank you.
The price of TVs in the late '40s was $300-800 -- the $5000-$7000 figure is in present-day dollars. So, yes, television was a premium/prestige item, but affordable by the upper middle class or the "early adopters." Consider what you might have to pay today for a TV set with all the bells and whistles: $5000 is not unheard-of. Interestingly, TV sets have been available for the same dollar amounts from about 1949 to the present. Of course, a $150 TV in '49 was a very different product from a $150 TV now.
My grandmother use to have a TV like one of those.You had to lift up a lid on the top where presumably the buttons where.It was obviously black and white but I was very young at the time and can only vaguely remember it.
Very nice. Enjoyed your video. My parents had a 25 inch rca color tv that sat on the floor. It was bought in mid 60s after they were married. I cant remember if it had legs. My brother and I were the remotes thru 1970s. It was heavy. Dad bought a projection tv in 1981 when our neighborhood got "cable" that same year. I wanted a satellite dish (cbn had them in va beach) but I was out voted as a 12 year old. New tv had a remote though but the cable box did not. We were the remote again.
Hi Kirk! I stumbled across your museum by accident, and am thrilled to know that a museum of "radio-tv-phono-nuts" exists in our humble state of CT! I live on the Sound, but would love to come up every once in a while to aquaint each other. If you have a Facebook wall I can contact you there.
Saturdays are good. Lots of museum people there and usually there's some extra time to talk if it's not too busy. Kirk keeps different hours. You might be able to schedule something ahead of time. We also have 5 or 6 swaps per year as well. Check the website. I hope you can visit soon and often.
my parents had a beautiful Admiral 17" set - it was a blondwood cabinet and had a radio and a turntable - i remember looking in the back at the orange glowing tubes thtat, i swear, helped keep the living room warm in the winter (lol) - i'm sure we had it from the early 50's till the early 60's - must have cost my dad a fortune - lol
This video should make people realize how much technology we take for granted nowadays. Anything you want to watch is at your fingertips with streaming services and smartphones. People dont realize how relatively new TV really is. My mom was born in '53 and its crazy to think that ~5 years before she was born, most normal people didnt have TVs and depended soley on radio/records for entertainment in the home. Crazy to see how far things have come in 70 years, with 90in TVs with HD resolution with images that almost look better than what you can see firsthand with your own eyes. Also, i hate that NTSC 3.0 standard is tryibg to persuade people to pay for over the air TV signals. OTA TV was free from the beginning (as long as you owned a set) and should always be that way. Great video! If i was on that side of the continent, i would definitely stop by to see this wonderful exhibit.
Our first set was a 7" screen with a magnifier that clipped onto the back of the set. The TV sat on a cabinet that was used to store records. I don't know thw brand
Thanks! That was fascinating! I once had an ultra TV, which looked just like that predicta tube, except that they managed to get all the electrics in the same space! If I remember rightly it was dual standard 405 and 625 lines monochrome
Great Video !! Have except that belong to my grandparents I believe it's a 53 Emerson cabinet also love and have a few of the Sony micro TVs how would I get in touch with you about the Emerson tv
Excellent. My grandparents bought a color set in about 64 or 65. We received the handme downs. My uncle bought a TV in 1949. Boy were they pricey back then. In the late 60's KMart & similar had huge displays of televisions.
I remember the first color set I ever worked on as an amatuer electronics geek was an RCA CTC 12? I think. The first color set that you showed had absolutely stellar convergence compared to even many much later sets. I don't know how you did it. Now can we learn about that juke box next to the doorway?
Our family had a Sears Silvertone in the 1960s. It was black and white, with a channel dial that was a carousel that was lighted from inside. We finally got an smaller RCA color set in December 1969.
In some large department stores in 1949, the RCA Victor T100 "Anniversary Model" was paired with the new RCA 45 r.p.m. record changer, which connected to the set's amplifier by a plug-in cable. Buyers were given a choice of a dozen RCA Victor Red Seal and/or blue-label discs for the new record player. We bought ours from the F. & R. Lazarus Company in Columbus, Ohio, in early December 1949, and the picture tube was still good in 1980.
It. Was a big thrill to get a set top converter. And i saw a limited version of pay for play. Then uhf/vhf then cable/vhf/uhf then movies broad cast via cable. Mostly in swanky hotells. Rember begging for quarers. To watch movie. Getting a box of pop corn. A soft drink. And holding the schedule card wating for the show😊
One of my favorite Jack Benny episodes with Bogart Jack Benny wants a description of a suspect and Bogart says he was a curly headed guy and Jack asks what color was his hair and Bogart says he was bald,,, fast forward to the punchline,, Bogart says,, "that's right no hair just a curly head"... lol
I made 15 years ago (2009) a vintege tv set based on CT100 1954 RCA color TV, flat LCD screen was a 15" monitor/tv and shape of forniture frame same as old tv, it is curved sides and right up and down (as this footage shows). Knobs of a electric guitar, and wooden mdf wood sized. Soeaker area covered throw a fabric, very nice sort of replica. Greetings from Santiago Chile SouthAmerica 🇨🇱
I grew up on b/w tv in the 60s and 70s. Our neighbors had color but the image was always crappy looking, (reception issues?) I was not envious. It's interesting to see the direct comparison of these original tv's screen display with the advertisement's picture of what you could see.
In the early days, colour was crappy. Because of the way the colour was encoded, it was very sensitive to phase shift, which would cause the colours to change. Another change was a black mask around all the phosphor dots, which helped keep the colours separate and later on the tech improved, with comb filters, to improve the colour quality. The phase shift issue was unique to the NTSC system. The PAL system in Europe reversed the phase of alternate lines (Phase Alternate Line) so that the phase errors would cancel out.
My parents had a 1950 Lafayette 17" set that was manufactured by Automatic Radio which I remember of my Dad saying it cost $150. Our next set was a 1960 23" Philco console (NOT a Predicta) for $199. Over the years I have not run across anything about the Lafayette.
What a great video! May I humbly suggest that you add your url to the show notes as a clickable link in addition to the closing credits? I really look forward to visiting.
Even though your presentation was not perfectly polished, it was informative, understanding and excellent. Thank you.
What's interesting is that many of us were still watching black and white tvs in the early 1980s!
How wonderful a museum has been established to preserve these iconic items, as their historic significance is tremendous! 🇺🇸
Amazing vintage collection, how could anyone of a certain age not love this, I know I do, and I was a 57 baby. Thank you !
THANKS I DID TV REPAIRE IN THE 60S YOU GAVE THE BEST INFO AND PRESENTATION I.V EVER SEEN ....SO MANY THANKS
Thank You!!
That’s super cool! I remember our repair man coming over to the house as a kid. He managed to get our set to work for another 5 years.
My folks bought their first TV in 1949, when I was four. It was a 16 inch Motorola console. I watched my very first "Howdy Doody," "Flash Gordon," and "Lone Ranger" on that set. I watched Santa Claus every day during the holiday season. I remember my mom watching "Coke Time," a fifteen minute daily show starring Eddie Fisher. He was the young popular crooner at that time. There are a lot of great memories.
1949 was the year that TV "went viral"- sales skyrocketed to over 1 million-
I remember a few of these sets when I was a kid. My first color set was a Magnavox in a large console cabinet purchased in 1967. My Dad didn't want me to buy it, but when he saw the Cartwrights ride out on Bonanza, he was in awe. I had that set until I moved in 2000 and put it to the sidewalk. Someone picked it up within 15 minutes. It still worked, but needed a new picture tube.
Congratulations Sir for the amazing Tv collection.
Rio-Brasil
Thank you very much!
I still have the first TV my parents bought in 1949.Its an RCA 12 inch CRT console.12 Lp4.Had it working some years back.The CRT finally gave up.
If you ever want to fix it there are still a few 12LP4's around.
Its a comfort to know that people and places like this exist out there. Very cool collection! I tossed my CRT PC monitors long ago but I have late model 27". 19", & 13" CRT TV's I'm hanging onto now for dear life, LOL
Thanks for sharing!
Great job Kirk and team. The TV display looks great and so much better than I might have imagined. I know there are more amazing things to come in the near future and I'm looking forward to that. Maybe a working CT100 and possibly a working Model 5 early RCA color set. Awesome!
Thanks 👍
Wonderful tour of these tvs. Thank you.
I visited the museum several years ago, a great trip down memory lane! Would highly recommend.
This was a fascinating video. The sense of awe in the bw/color signal engineering portion was great.
Excellent presentation. Thank you!
I grew up in the 1950's/60's. Our TV was a big (it had feet!) B&W with on/off, volume and tuning knob. We did get a swell color set in 1965 that mom won at a church bazaar. After military service I settled and got my first TV. An RCA XL-100. Man-o-Manischewitz, it was boss. Nice video of "how it was". Interesting and educational, thanks.
As I'm watching this, it struck me that by dumb luck, I was wearing the shirt I got when my wife and I visited your museum a few years ago. It seems like the museum grew since then. I want to come visit again soon. BTW, I have several of those stand-alone UHF converters and am going to restore them just because. Kutztown radio swap meet, held twice a year, is a great place to visit and pick up parts. A lot of like minded company there. Thanks for all you guys do to keep this stuff alive! KC3NRA 73
I still have the family Air King tv that used the RCA TS630 chassis. It was purchased two years before I was born.
It is on it's third 10BP4 tv tube. The first one went kaput in the early 50's when I grabbed the socket on the tube and twisted. The second one went out in 1961. The third one has been in since. The last time I had it plugged in was 1984. it now sits in my shed.
Incredible collection... my first memories of TV's were in the 1970s black & white sets.
I have visited your museum, and have a couple of similar early television sets in my private collection in California. The first color TV I saw was in the window of the best TV store in Norwich CT when I was 12 years old. That would be in1954. That CTC-5 looks very much as I remember it, though I never got to see a color program on its display, even when there was one advertised by NBC to be in color. I think we were too far away from either New Haven or Providence RI.
Much later after we moved to California, we bought used a "21" inch RCA CTC-9. I still have that set. I had the chance to purchase one of two Admiral 1950 vintage Bakelite case TVs and chose the cheaper one, which measures 6" but may have been sold as a "7" inch set, using a tailors cloth tape for the measurement to include the curve of the tube face.
In 1963 I was in Tokyo courtesy of the USN, where, at Ginza and Z Street at 9 at night on a Sunday, when I heard the unmistakable Theme song for NBC's Bonanza. I ducked into that bar and there above it was a Toshiba with the round bottle of an RCA picture tube. There being no others in the world at that time. Hoss Cartright fell off of his horse as I watched screaming in a high dubbed Japanese voice " Itai!".
That's so wild. Those mid 50's sets look great too.
I remember how amazing color TV was even in the early-mid '70's. The average person didn't have it until the late '70's.
Slightly over 50% of all households had color TV by 1972, which was also the first year color sets outsold black and white sets
It took us until around 1981. We got a 19 Sony and it was great!
@@11sfrI think it had a lot to do with what income class you were. In my neighborhood most still hung on with their reliable old B/W TV's.
@@thermionic1234567 Yes, it was magical watching classic cartoons in color!
yes,..'79 for us,..
So glad to see this pop up in my feed, had no idea this museum existed. I'll definitely stop by next time I'm driving down through CT.
Great video! I am a volunteer at the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention in Bellingham, Washington. We also had an RCA CT100 color television. We had it running until the lead from the 6CD6 horizontal output tube to the flyback transformer broke.
Hope you can get it running again! If I am ever out that way I will stop in for sure!
Those old TV sets sure bring back some memories of the sets we had in the family living room when I was a kid. My uncle had a Philco Predicta similar to the one depicted in the video.
Definitely thumbs up. Thank you and your team for collecting and restoring these fantastic historical items of engineering. Great knowledgeable presentation.
Great video! Thank you for featuring the Panasonic futuristic looking portable I donated in the ‘90s. It was a gift from my mom in 1969 for making the honor roll in 9th grade; we bought it at Two Guys on the Berlin Turnpike. I remember watching the first episode of All In The Family when it originally aired. I don’t remember why, but I replaced the original slat style volume knob with one from a portable radio. I also removed the sun screen to get a brighter picture. I also had the battery pack, I don’t remember if I gave it to you. Keep up the good work. I look forward to more videos.
Thanks for the donation- that is one of the sets that put the Japanese in the forefront of Consumer Electronics in the US. The beginning of the end for us!
This was very interesting. My parents had a B & W Philco TV which they purchased in 1956 when they got married. I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo on that set. We didn't have a color set until 1969. It was a RCA portable. Thanks for posting.
I watched Captain Kangaroo, Romper Room and The Friendly Giant.
I have a 1948 RCA 9t240 tv set in my basement. I saved it from a deceased neighbors house many years ago. When I plugged it in the tubes light up but no sound and no picture. My guess is the wax capacitors definitely need a replacement plus wire damage. Hope to get it restored or to the right hands one day like a museum. Also have a mid century Grundig Majestic tube radio that works perfectly fine
Electrolytic capacitors are highly prone to destructive failure in such old radios and TV sets. Power up such an unrestored device at your peril.
A nice representative collection of TVs, and well presented. I recognized several accessories on top of the sets -- signal boosters from RMS, Decimeter and Regency, a Mallory UHF converter, a Trio antenna rotator and several set-top antennas. I loved that you have the magnifiers for the early small screen sets and can demonstrate them. Interesting that 25 years later we didn't want magnifiers for the tiny portable TVs even though they had smaller screens.
Very interesting excursion, thank you. I have subscribed to your channel and am eagerly awaiting new videos.
My dad won a Sony “micro tv” back in the early 1960’s that looked exactly like the one you show.
We had it and used it into the 1980’s.
I just repaired the 2 Sony micro TVs that I have.
Excellent presentation. I worked in the domestic TV trade in the UK in the early 1960's. We still only had monochrome 405 - line at the time. I was involved with the change to 625-line, on UHF, & then the move to colour TV in 1967. It's therefore interesting to me to see the parallels that were going on in the U.S. But you had the edge on us, being early developers of Colour, with the NTSC versions. Like you, our manufacturers suffered badly on sales, once the Japanese imports came along.
Excellent program! Thank you for the wonderful presentation!
Many Thanks!
Love these original tvs, having been in the TV Repair bizz for almost 40 yrs, i can almost smell the inerts of those components...
Well done...!!
Love this history ❤
This was so awesome! Thirty minutes just flew by. Great video history.
I was six months old back in 1952 when we got our first TV in Belmont N.H. it was the second unit in that town.. one station WBZ Boston.. every time a car approached the screen would jump !
LOL
Thank you for this fantastic upload!
This was a great tour. I can remember repairing a bunch of these in the 1970s.
Great video and great information. I wish I would have visited, a Connecticut native.
Very interesting tour. Thank you❤
very informative, couldn't stop watching, thank you.
I own a working Proton television and I use it for watching my videotapes and DVDs. The store owner told me it was the last year that they manufactured box TV sets. I love it!
That LG hanging on the wall is also vintage! Look at the size of that bezel!
A set that I didn’t see in your collection was a Sony trinitron tv. That was a game changer because of the one gun producing the rgb on the screen, that design was also revolutionary instead of being round dots on the shadow mask, they were vertical stripes that allowed for more color pixels per square inch instead of the round one that had wasted space between the color phosphors.
Good point- we have one (KV1710) and will get it going and out to see...."She got the house, the Caddy and the bank account- I got the Sony" hahaha
I am in the UK. I still have a working 12 inch Sony Trinitron colour tv set from around 1969/1970. It needs to be connected via a digi-box now as analogue broadcasting finished a few years since, but still gives an excellent picture. Being in the UK it was designed for PAL 625 lines UHF. It still has a tint control though, although that is not really necessary here.
The Tritron is not a one gun - despite Sony's description. It still had three independent cathodes and still needed a shadow mask. A one gun tube has one cathode and no mask. Sony ended up making such a tube for their camcorder viewfinders and a small (5"?) model at some point in the late 80s or early 90s. The original Trinitron is very similar to the PA tube GE was working on in the 50s but never really got right, but GE had the first production in-line picture tube in the 60s.
You have a fantastic facility! Thanks for the great video.
Great video. Something you might find interesting - - the NTSC standard used the phase of the color carrier to indicate color (hue). For technical reasons, it had a max bandwidth of 1.5 MHz at one color, and 0.5 Mhz for the color on the opposite side of the color wheel. So they chose to make orange the color at the 1.5 MHz position because that is the color that humans see with the maximum resolution. That is also why fog lights are orange.
The RCA technical papers about colorimetry and the development of the NTSC system. There were many considerations and the engineering details will keep one busy for weeks trying to comprehend.
Killer show thank you.
Good narration, very interesting. Thank you
Please bring something similar for your radio exhibit. Thanks!
I first saw a TV in 1953 - I was 2. I was thinking oh, look a box with a bunch of elves, cleaning a sink, and some guys singing Ajax the foaming cleanser. It was our neighbors’ set. A few short months later, my folks bought our first television. A 1954 Sparton.
All of this is so interesting! Living in a smaller city, I’m pretty sure my Dad said it was into the early 50’s before he even saw a TV in person somewhere else after joined the Army. But…$5000-$7000 in the late forties was for the rich. My god that was a lot of money back then. You could buy a nice car for less than that late into the 60s!!! I remember it being a big deal between him and my mom when he wanted a Curtis Mathis Color TV up in the mid-ish 70s. He wanted it because of the warranty, and I think about $400, which was a huge deal. I remember TV repairmen coming to the house too for that and other sets later on, or us taking our smaller ones to them when they broke. Even later, we had a small B&W portable from Sony he would watch ball games or whatever on out in the garage or spare room after my brother moved out. Lots of memories triggered here, thank you.
The price of TVs in the late '40s was $300-800 -- the $5000-$7000 figure is in present-day dollars. So, yes, television was a premium/prestige item, but affordable by the upper middle class or the "early adopters." Consider what you might have to pay today for a TV set with all the bells and whistles: $5000 is not unheard-of. Interestingly, TV sets have been available for the same dollar amounts from about 1949 to the present. Of course, a $150 TV in '49 was a very different product from a $150 TV now.
My grandmother use to have a TV like one of those.You had to lift up a lid on the top where presumably the buttons where.It was obviously black and white but I was very young at the time and can only vaguely remember it.
Great presentation. Thank you.
good stuff Kirk. Thanks for the knowledge.
You bet
Very nice. Enjoyed your video. My parents had a 25 inch rca color tv that sat on the floor. It was bought in mid 60s after they were married. I cant remember if it had legs. My brother and I were the remotes thru 1970s. It was heavy. Dad bought a projection tv in 1981 when our neighborhood got "cable" that same year. I wanted a satellite dish (cbn had them in va beach) but I was out voted as a 12 year old. New tv had a remote though but the cable box did not. We were the remote again.
18:52 What you are referring to is Chrominance and Luminance signal.
Yup-
@@kirks1959 Also the CRT whine is very noticeable through out the whole video.
Super interesting. I completely forgot this is in my home state. I'm definitely going to make time to go check this place out.
In the '60's the first time I saw a color TV "The Flintstones" was on and I never knew until then that their dinosaur dog "Dino" was purple.
Fascinating museum. I walked down memory lane in my family homes which had most of these examples except the early ones
I still have my grandpa's first TV from when he was little. It's a Motorola made somewhere in the mid 50's.
Hi Kirk! I stumbled across your museum by accident, and am thrilled to know that a museum of "radio-tv-phono-nuts" exists in our humble state of CT! I live on the Sound, but would love to come up every once in a while to aquaint each other. If you have a Facebook wall I can contact you there.
Saturdays are good. Lots of museum people there and usually there's some extra time to talk if it's not too busy. Kirk keeps different hours. You might be able to schedule something ahead of time. We also have 5 or 6 swaps per year as well. Check the website. I hope you can visit soon and often.
@@johnnytacokleinschmidt515 Thanks!
my parents had a beautiful Admiral 17" set - it was a blondwood cabinet and had a radio and a turntable - i remember looking in the back at the orange glowing tubes thtat, i swear, helped keep the living room warm in the winter (lol) - i'm sure we had it from the early 50's till the early 60's - must have cost my dad a fortune - lol
My father started out in those days sell radios and tv. Was big inn RCA and Zenith
This store reminds me of the early 60s when my dad bought a heavy black and white tv.
The owner was the actor who played Samson.
Whats really messed up is those old sets still work and my new one died after 3 yrs.
With the amount of maintenance necessary to get those old sets to work again, your TV could have been fixed to work... another 3 years.
Truly enjoyed your video. Thanks
This video should make people realize how much technology we take for granted nowadays. Anything you want to watch is at your fingertips with streaming services and smartphones. People dont realize how relatively new TV really is. My mom was born in '53 and its crazy to think that ~5 years before she was born, most normal people didnt have TVs and depended soley on radio/records for entertainment in the home. Crazy to see how far things have come in 70 years, with 90in TVs with HD resolution with images that almost look better than what you can see firsthand with your own eyes.
Also, i hate that NTSC 3.0 standard is tryibg to persuade people to pay for over the air TV signals. OTA TV was free from the beginning (as long as you owned a set) and should always be that way. Great video! If i was on that side of the continent, i would definitely stop by to see this wonderful exhibit.
Most of the youngsters are bored with these- you are absolutely right!
Our first set was a 7" screen with a magnifier that clipped onto the back of the set. The TV sat on a cabinet that was used to store records. I don't know thw brand
Thanks! That was fascinating! I once had an ultra TV, which looked just like that predicta tube, except that they managed to get all the electrics in the same space! If I remember rightly it was dual standard 405 and 625 lines monochrome
Great Video !! Have except that belong to my grandparents I believe it's a 53 Emerson cabinet also love and have a few of the Sony micro TVs how would I get in touch with you about the Emerson tv
Excellent. My grandparents bought a color set in about 64 or 65. We received the handme downs. My uncle bought a TV in 1949.
Boy were they pricey back then. In the late 60's KMart & similar had huge displays of televisions.
I remember the first color set I ever worked on as an amatuer electronics geek was an RCA CTC 12? I think.
The first color set that you showed had absolutely stellar convergence compared to even many much later sets. I don't know how you did it.
Now can we learn about that juke box next to the doorway?
Come and see if you can!
Amazing history THANKS! I sold TVs in the 1980s/90s/00s. I love the history and roots.
Very cool!
Our family had a Sears Silvertone in the 1960s. It was black and white, with a channel dial that was a carousel that was lighted from inside. We finally got an smaller RCA color set in December 1969.
I enjoyed viewing this video
In some large department stores in 1949, the RCA Victor T100 "Anniversary Model" was paired with the new RCA 45 r.p.m. record changer, which connected to the set's amplifier by a plug-in cable. Buyers were given a choice of a dozen RCA Victor Red Seal and/or blue-label discs for the new record player. We bought ours from the F. & R. Lazarus Company in Columbus, Ohio, in early December 1949, and the picture tube was still good in 1980.
That's right- our T100 has the phono input.
My first TV was a consol set with nothing inside it but a picture on a piece of paper. I would look at it for hours wishing it would move.
Did it ever move? :-)
No@@kirks1959
It. Was a big thrill to get a set top converter. And i saw a limited version of pay for play. Then uhf/vhf then cable/vhf/uhf then movies broad cast via cable. Mostly in swanky hotells. Rember begging for quarers. To watch movie. Getting a box of pop corn. A soft drink. And holding the schedule card wating for the show😊
I'm going to visit next time I'm in the Hartford area!
Very enjoyable! Thanks.
My horizontal hold won't hold
There is an interesting TV Museum in Hilliard Ohio. They even have some rebuilding equipment for old picture tubes for display.
Awesome deep dive!
Thanks!
The Philco Predictas were a marvel of futuristic design. I love them, even if they are unreliable as all get out!
Iam from morocco i like old radioa and tv and gramophone felicitations
One of my favorite Jack Benny episodes with Bogart
Jack Benny wants a description of a suspect and Bogart says he was a curly headed guy and Jack asks what color was his hair and Bogart says he was bald,,, fast forward to the punchline,, Bogart says,, "that's right no hair just a curly head"... lol
I made 15 years ago (2009) a vintege tv set based on CT100 1954 RCA color TV, flat LCD screen was a 15" monitor/tv and shape of forniture frame same as old tv, it is curved sides and right up and down (as this footage shows). Knobs of a electric guitar, and wooden mdf wood sized. Soeaker area covered throw a fabric, very nice sort of replica.
Greetings from Santiago Chile SouthAmerica 🇨🇱
Wow- sounds cool- send a picture if you ever can-Thanks!
I grew up on b/w tv in the 60s and 70s. Our neighbors had color but the image was always crappy looking, (reception issues?) I was not envious.
It's interesting to see the direct comparison of these original tv's screen display with the advertisement's picture of what you could see.
In the early days, colour was crappy. Because of the way the colour was encoded, it was very sensitive to phase shift, which would cause the colours to change. Another change was a black mask around all the phosphor dots, which helped keep the colours separate and later on the tech improved, with comb filters, to improve the colour quality. The phase shift issue was unique to the NTSC system. The PAL system in Europe reversed the phase of alternate lines (Phase Alternate Line) so that the phase errors would cancel out.
My parents had a 1950 Lafayette 17" set that was manufactured by Automatic Radio which I remember of my Dad saying it cost $150. Our next set was a 1960 23" Philco console (NOT a Predicta) for $199. Over the years I have not run across anything about the Lafayette.
Thanks for the memories - I sold Motorola console TVs, part-time, in 1970 with the "works in the drawer"
my parents were also a quasar/motorola retailer
@@thecarl168 where?
In Drummondville Québec Cabada
My father was the sales rep for Motorola in Los Angeles.
Great info!
Very cool. I’d like to stop by. I have a 1968 & 1969 RCA color tv stereo console’s with phonograph. They’re in beautiful shape.
Good talking to you the other night- Hope they find a loving home!
This brought back memories of the NBC peacock.
Hallicrafter manufactured televisions also. Some were table top models. Others had very nice wood cabinets. AL B.
We have a 1948 Hallicrafters that will be displayed soon.
Thanks for sharing.
Great video. Thanks
Looks like something is modulating that Pilot's horiz sweep - like some arcing somewhere.
It does not like the florescent lights in the museum- very poor filtering in that set- its 60 cycle
@@kirks1959 I wonder if a couple of well placed low value bypass caps added in will quell the instability?
What a great video! May I humbly suggest that you add your url to the show notes as a clickable link in addition to the closing credits?
I really look forward to visiting.