Thiis has gotta be the lowest budget documentary there ever was............and that's what's so cool about it. The guy explains things in such a way that it makes complicated stuff simple and obvious. Wish there were more of these types of show's around.
Remember the earlier Doctor Who shows which had limited set budgets and no special effects ! What they did have was excellent storylines and brilliant actors leaving your imagination to take off and enhance the overall experience.
Did you sense something was about off? A little? Doesn't the tv need a video camera and doesn't a video camera need a tv? I guess film just ran into the plugged grid, idk. Something is way off though
Until it was dumbed down, the National Museum of Film, Television and Photography in Bradford showed this episode on permanent loop in its gallery about how television works.
@@tommcewan7936 Yep! 👍👍 If one doesn't know how a phonograph works, They cannot ever understand a CD player or an MP3 Player! No one can understand digital photography if they don't understand chemical photography. The old tech is HOW we got to where the NEW tech IS. Hell, DIGITAL communications began with the TELEGRAPH. A telegraph electrically employs an "on" and "off" electrical state (a binary 1 or 0). I always am baffled by people who say "radio is dead" because they listen to Spotify on their phone. Yeah, That's STILL radio., With Bluetooth it's radio TWICE, LOL.🤷
I would bet that I have watched a dozen programs that tried to explain television and this is the only one that made it completely clear. I like it we need more programs like this today.
@@sockington1 Because He Invented Television "first". Just as Westinghouse is admired for being First to mass produce electricity to cities in DC (Which failed) yet Tesla perfected AC! And He is less respected (Which is wrong)
Programmes like this is dangerous be cause it educates people now they use a dumbing down process having a bright public is not good for the few if the public to educated there be no cannon fodder
10:10 - that's an EMI 2001 camera on the left (with an autocue affixed to the front), dating from around 1968-1972 (which is when they were made). Many British TV companies used them and they were the workhorse of the British TV industry throughout the 1970s. The BBC were the biggest customer (indeed, it was designed primarily to fit the BBC's needs and requirements), along with about half of the ITV companies (the "big five" - Thames, LWT, ATV/Central, Granada and Yorkshire TV - along with HTV in Cardiff and Bristol and Anglia TV in Norwich). The BBC phased them out slowly, with the first being taken out of service in 1976 and the last in 1991! The aforementioned ITV companies each began replacing theirs between 1979 and 1986, with Granada being the first (throughout 1979) and Central being the last (most of theirs had been taken out in 1984, but a pair remained for use with continuity and presentation purposes until 1986). Yorkshire TV were the last ITV company to use them for regular programme use, replacing theirs in 1985, and donated them to BBC Leeds for spare parts because parts were becoming scarce by that point!
I adored this show as a kid in the 1980s - watched it on public TV channel. I remembered all the episodes but forgot the name - I did all sorts of searches with key words to find it but none came up. Finally asked someone on TH-cam by describing the show and that it had animotronics and primitive animation and now I am watching the again!
@@nivlick No, it was failing before that. The 240 lines as opposed to the 405 lines of the EMI system, having to run the film through a chemical bath to develop it between the studio and the transmitter and the poor overall quality of the Baird-only sets and camera/ studio equipment all meant that fully electronic TV was the only way forward. The fire was just the last nail in the coffin. Whatever you think of big business and its anti-social, even psychopathic, behaviour over the years, if you're launching a new technology like television from scratch, sometimes you need some proper technical and investment heft rather than just being a shoestring operation based on backwards- looking technology.
@John Ashtone yes it absolutely was. I didn't even know it was there until i stumbled across it. Ahhh back in the day when we could actually go places and do things.
As cheesy as they are I love the animations in this show and think they are absolutely hilarious (the cat flying into the ship for it raining cats and dogs). 😂😂
There's an old, probably apocryphal story from the Cold War about American engineers first getting a close look at a Soviet military aircraft, and scoffing at it because it still used thermionic valves in its electronics instead of being all solid-state. That is, until someone pointed out that in the event of a massive electromagnetic pulse from a thermonuclear bomb going off, the instruments in the Russian plane would have been more likely to keep working whilst the solid-state electronics in its counterpart fried. By the end of the vacuum-state era, some valves ("Nuvistors") were as small as discrete canned transistors - I've seen a few TV sets that used them - and now, things are coming full circle with the recent development of the nanoscale vacuum-channel transistor...
Here we are in 2023 and I can assure you that not a singke viewer will be watching this on anything other than a high definition TV , tablet or smart phone.
@@tommcewan7936 I worked for General Motors in London Ontario in 1994 on their LAV light armored vehicles division. The engineers deliberately designed them with robust analog mechanicsl switches for exactly the reason you mentioned. Most of the varients which were created for battle conditions had foam injecgion systems built in to suppress any fire hazard. If only the engineers at NASA had thought of that when the Apollo testing was being done on the liftoff pad. Perhaps those three astronauts would have been spared that horrible death. White, Chafey and Guss Grisham. RIP.
I worked in a television shop when I was in high school and college in the 70's. Those old vacuum tubes, CRT's were a royal pain to work on. Today, most televisions are "disposable". They stop working, you toss them because it is cheaper to buy a new one, than to have it repaired.
i have to admit it was the intro music that got me into this series.for those that dont know the music,this version is the russians are coming by val bennet,witch i have on 45 by the way,originally its a jazz tune called take 5.this particular programme helped me out when i was studdying electronic servicing,as i used to fix the old cathode ray tv's
Those times we were not concern about burning down a bunch of old TV sets with lead, plastics and other pollutants. Fun times indeed. Today I would get beaten by my neighbours.
I used to avidly read Tim Hunkin's cartoon strip in The Observer every Sunday, The Rudiments Of Wisdom. It did something very few people can do - it made complex things simple. Our country will be a lot more successful once we start doing this on a large scale in schools. People like me got lost on the second day of every subject, never to understand it again. We are the overlooked ones, not because we are dim, but because teaching was only ever for intelligent kids, and not for the average or below average kid like me. If only Tim Hunkin were minister for education.
The same with learning maths ! Our maths teachers were so bland and un inspiring that I fell asleep during class. When I was in my twenties I watched a Disney cartoon which shone light on all the wonderfull things you could do with mathmatics. But in a fun way which drew me in, not turn me off.
@@den264 Extraordinary mate, yet it appears few people in the teaching profession are allowed to stray from the syllabus in order to engage the entire class, before continuing with the hogwash of quadratic equations and those snot-gobbling logarythms.
21:59 onwards - that colour set is one using one of the *excellent* ITT CVC chassis (somewhere between a CVC5 and CVC9, dating it to between 1972 and 1977). That is using one of the delta gun CRTs I referred to in another comment below. Of all the TVs to go in that fire pile at the end, this ITT certainly didn't deserve to end like that!
i used to have 3 of the cvc5/8/9 series sets, plus a cvc30, and a cvc45? i think, all worked pretty well, the cvc30 being used as our main tv , with no back cover, previous owner lost it, !!, for several years in the early to mid 90s,
0:53 - I have that same model of TV in my collection. In fact, I have two, one awaiting restoration and another that's in such poor condition it's only fit for parts. That model dates from about 1975 and it uses the Thorn 9000 chassis, introduced the same year. It was Thorn's first TV to use the Precision-in-Line ("slot mask") colour CRTs and it was the second in Britain to use that type of tube, Rank-Bush-Murphy just pipping Thorn to the post when they introduced their Z718 chassis in late 1974. The P-i-L colour CRT replaced the earlier delta-gun ("shadow mask") colour CRT that had reigned supreme in colour TV sets (apart from Sony, which used their own Trinitron tubes) from the introduction of colour TV in Western Europe in the late 1960s until being phased out in the latter half of the 1970s. Ironically, it was Thorn who were also the last to use delta gun tubes, in their sets using their 9800 chassis, made from 1978 to 1980.
Some years ago I met Gerald Wells with my brother, he would not allow transistor sets in his house however he made an exception in our case and we took a video camera to his house and made a complete program about him that has never been seen
he did have some transistor sets, a few portables, in the 'radio shop recreation' room 😉 i visited a few times in the 1990s, last time in 1998, he passed away a few years ago and i've heard pretty much all the stuff in the house has been moved into the sheds out the back, with a lot sold off due to lack of space and money..
Philo Farmsworth was the inventor of electronic television. It's maddening that he's always overlooked. Zworkin's television was a very crude mechanical system.
Yes there is currently a great TH-cam movie on his life and career. It illustrates hiw ruthless the American businessman can be when it comes to killing off a competitors career and life in the case of poor Philo !
This program was great, except for the fact that the history part was almost completely wrong. Zworykin never was able to get a working system up and going and the patent was eventually awarded to Farnsworth who, not even mentioned here, was actually the first person in 1927 to show a fully functional system. RCA bought Zworykin and his parents and then proceeded to try to erase Farnsworth from history, while copying his work. They ended up loosing the patent case, but it seems they were successful in changing history, at least on this show.
In the 70s as a kid on Halloween, I remember a house with 3 witches. My folks must have known them, it was a small town. Anyways they had a camcorder, vcr set up and I remember freaking out seeing them on TV then in person at the same time. I've forgotten a million things in 53 yrs but I'll never forget the first time I seen the magic lol
Fun Fact: Vladimir Zworykin once lived on the same street as my one-time girlfriend in Swissvale, Pennsylvania. Of course, that was 40 years before either of us were born. LOL. (Swissvale is a close by suburb of Pittsburgh. Zworykin was employed by Westinghouse.)
Today, most televisions no longer have tubes; CRT or otherwise. Now its all LCD, LED & Plasma displays. Nowadays, less people are getting Cable TV subscriptions in exchange for viewing complete TV episodes, movies & videos on the internet.
I think the real breakthrough which led to tv was the fundamental idea of ‘scanning’ an image, quite different to photography. Pity it wasn’t mentioned as such. Enjoyed the old-fashion approach.
I really enjoy you posting these and thank you for that. main problem is the audio is so low, I can barely hear it on my lap top. need to use amplified speakers to hear it. do not need this with other videos, just yours. It would be much more enoyable if audio was at a normal level. thanks
RCA and it's engineers have to given credit for bringing tv into our homes. The RCA system of transmission and especially their system of transmitting color. The problem with the color system was finding a way that the B&W sets at the time could also receive a program that was being broadcast in color.
Indeed, they solved this problem in an ingenious way. The black and white analog signal remained, with a chroma or chrominance signal added to the carrier. This way, the telly knew what colour to add to the image.
And now in 2023 I am looking at the history of CRT television, on an LCD display, which is already obsolete being replaced by OLED, for even better image quality
@MichaelKingsfordGray Then why didn't they mention it, then? In 1990, the closest you would have got to LED technology in TV sets were the small backlights used on those colour pocket TVs that used LCD screens.
@MichaelKingsfordGray It was a rhetorical question. However... Thinking back to 1990, the reason may be threefold: - The lack of availability of information about what was happening in TV technology outside of Britain until said technology was mature enough to become a mass-market product in Britain, mainly due to patriotism on the part of TV trade publications like Practical Television magazine and the annual large, thick, ruby-red Newnes TV servicing books.The researchers would have been subject to this ignorance on the part of specialist publications. This was 1989, way before the internet as we know it, so researchers would have been reliant on publications. - And on the small chance they were aware of it (certainly, people like me who were in the TV repair trade or on the periphery of it weren't aware of LED TVs until about 10-15 years after this was broadcast), the technology probably won't have been mature enough to be considered a serious contender for inclusion in the programme - it wasn't until about 2010 that (in my opinion) LED TVs began to be a serious contender in terms of picture quality for the last of the CRT TVs. - It's a 25-minute programme that's only intended to educate the average viewer and not be some specialist programme for a specialised field so even if they were aware of LED TV technology as it was in 1989, it would likely have ended up on the cutting room floor for that reason and possibly for the reason above, too. For example, notice how they don't delve too much into the benefits of in-line gun CRTs over delta gun CRTs, only giving it a passing reference in saying "owing to refinement of the tube design" when Tim Hunkin's assistant is playing about with the convergence controls on that ITT CVC5 towards the end? For the record, I've been a broadcast engineer for many years at Granada Television in Manchester and have done some editing work on programmes, too, after being made redundant and going freelance in the early 1990s - I'm using both my knowledge of TV technology during this time and thinking about what would and wouldn't have made it to the finished programme based on a list of priorities. Apart from colour pocket TVs, TVs with any kind of LED influence in the screen certainly weren't on the market here for the casual viewer to buy in 1989 because they were a long way off from being a marketable product. And as I don't think anyone working on the programme would have envisioned people wanting to watch it 30 years from then, they wouldn't have considered explaining the possibilities of future TV technology in too much detail in the programme, especially if Channel Four execs stipulate they only have 25 minutes to cover everything in the programme's brief.
@MichaelKingsfordGray I never really paid too much attention to solid-state TV technology. For me, *proper* TV truly died when 405-line TV, valves, then camera pickup tubes were replaced by so-called "superior" technology. they were the equivalent of the valve vs. solid-state audio amplifier debate - solid-state tech is technically superior, but valve pictures and sound look and sound more pleasing to the eyes and ears!
i dont think high enough brightness leds for backlights were available at this time, there were laptops with lcd panels but fluorescent backlight, and STN or early TFT technology in the screen itself with poor viewing angle, i have a couple of laptops from around the time of this program, the screen would definitely not be suitable for tv use....
There used to be another British documentary series that was similar to this one, in that it had some humor mixed in, but it was an hour program instead of 30mins. It was probably from the 70s or 80s, and they dealt with different subjects, and always had a starting point that led off in seemingly unrelated directions, but then everything was tied together at the end. I can't remember the name of that show....
That was "Connections" by James Burke from the late '70s (the entire series is available on youtube). Watching "Secret Life of Machines" for the first time this week, it immediately reminded me of "Connections," as well!
24:39 I suppose when this was on air people were screaming "WTF?" at the end scene but now we've all been there done that with the onset of LCD, plasma, etc.
Not really - they mostly look like 1970s TV sets, which by 1990 (when this one was made) would have been considered junk. They probably got them very cheap from warehouses where knackered ex-rental stock was flogged off at dirt-cheap prices.
@@stickytapenrust6869 and now crt sets are getiing sought after ..... 😉 most of the tvs we had over the years were second hand, at least 10 years old when we got them, and still working perfectly or needing only minor repair (which i did myself)
23:35 - I can't really tell from the poor quality of the video (as loads of TVs from the 80s had slide-out vertical circuit boards like that), but I *think* that's a set using the Rediffusion Mk4 chassis, dating it to between 1981 and 1985 (which, ironically, would have been - technologically - a little long in the tooth by then, the irony being that Tim claims in the voiceover that it's representative of a modern set for when this programme was made, around 1989!)
@@kevvywevvywoo the one with the board on the left side may be a fidelity, the board looks familiar, i repaired loads of portables, mostly grey plastic cased, using that board/chassis, usually psu blow up , occasional bad degauss posistor 😁
the one with the big 'motherboard' and several vertical boards is an itt , either cvc20 or cvc30/32, used to have a cvc30 for a few years, theres also a cvc5/8/9 shown, the one with a few valves in it, had a few of those, still got an unused 'spare' line output transformer for one..
@@FunkySpunkyJunky That doesn't really make sense. 2160 implies 2K since it's about 2,000. But anyway, we do have 8K monitors now, so yes, 4000 lines :). 2160 is still impressive by 1991 standards.
@@tomservo75 yeah, i know it dont make much sense, but thats how it is. HD TV is 1080 lines and 4k is double that at 2160. You are technically correct as 8k does exist, but not on mainstream TVs that I know of. I wasn't having a dig, your point was still understood, that we now have very high def TVs that would have been unthinkable back then.
Sigh. Back then tv was made to look great and work great. It made as furniture. Not anymore. By the way I was not alive back then and really not even a thought.
TheMonkeyFarted Back in the 50s and 60s, tv's used to be like a nice piece of furniture. Youd have a huge wooden box made of top grade, nicely finished wood, with usually mono speaker(s) in the side panels, but the actual picture tube was usually much smaller in diameter than the size of the overall box it was mounted in. So youd have a 4 foot wide, by 3.5 foot tall x 3 feet deep set, but with a picture tube that was only maybe 20" - 24" diameter(18" wide X 17" tall). They weighed a ton too! No idea how much they cost, but it was probably the equivalent to $2000 in today's dollars.....
@@HighlanderNorth1 The first TV I bought was in 1980, 22" screen and it cost $NZ 1554.38 (includes interest because it was purchased on Hire Purchase).
The irony is that tv sets are once again getting less reliable as technology progresses. An lcd screen from say the early Naughties could last over 10 years and compared with today was cheaper. A full array backlit today has an average life for many of just 4 or 5 years as the arrays fail (as we’ve found out to our cost). Oleds and plasma screens can burn out with individual led’s failing completely and ghosting. They’re getting better but still aren’t as reliable as a tv from 20 years back.
14:08 - "Gave high definition picture" It sure did. :) A resolution of around 352 × 288. If these people only knew what was going to happen just 20 years later, from the airing of this show. I'm currently watching this in 3840x2160 on a 32" 4K monitor. No more x-ray emitting CRT.
24:22 ooooh how environmentally unfriendly - oooooh, should have recycled them instead, oooh what a terrible programme, ooooh, ooooh, handwringing, non PC ooooh... more handwringing....
Thiis has gotta be the lowest budget documentary there ever was............and that's what's so cool about it. The guy explains things in such a way that it makes complicated stuff simple and obvious. Wish there were more of these types of show's around.
I mean it has great editing, animation, cinematography , great writing and a great host. What else do you want?
Remember the earlier Doctor Who shows which had limited set budgets and no special effects ! What they did have was excellent storylines and brilliant actors leaving your imagination to take off and enhance the overall experience.
And he did it a lot less nerdish. Almost layman's terms. Sorry nerds. Your secret is out. 🤣
Loved it, from a time where you could learn something from a television program, not like the pop shows from today
Pff, _someone_ doesn't know the truth about the Pyramids.
Aliens, duh.
Did you sense something was about off? A little? Doesn't the tv need a video camera and doesn't a video camera need a tv? I guess film just ran into the plugged grid, idk. Something is way off though
The shows of today actually dumb down the audience as opposed to edifying them.
5:08 - "Here he made attempts to start up a jam-making factory but was defeated by the local bees." Tim Hunkin, master of deadpan.
God dam bee's🐝🐝🐝. They might have wanted to trade Honey for jam.
Until it was dumbed down, the National Museum of Film, Television and Photography in Bradford showed this episode on permanent loop in its gallery about how television works.
Televisions no longer work like that.
@@fjccommish it's still valid technological history.
@@tommcewan7936 Yep! 👍👍 If one doesn't know how a phonograph works, They cannot ever understand a CD player or an MP3 Player! No one can understand digital photography if they don't understand chemical photography. The old tech is HOW we got to where the NEW tech IS. Hell, DIGITAL communications began with the TELEGRAPH. A telegraph electrically employs an "on" and "off" electrical state (a binary 1 or 0). I always am baffled by people who say "radio is dead" because they listen to Spotify on their phone. Yeah, That's STILL radio., With Bluetooth it's radio TWICE, LOL.🤷
I would bet that I have watched a dozen programs that tried to explain television and this is the only one that made it completely clear. I like it we need more programs like this today.
John Logie Baird is in my Family Tree, and I am very proud of that!
@@sockington1 Because He Invented Television "first". Just as Westinghouse is admired for being First to mass produce electricity to cities in DC (Which failed) yet Tesla perfected AC! And He is less respected (Which is wrong)
@@WilliamHBaird-eq2hp You should be proud of that.
Good now do something wonderful
@@markhodgson2348 Working on Time Machine right now :-)
@@ChristopherSobieniak Cheers! I am!
We need more programmes like this not Big Brother or X Factor
Programmes like this is dangerous be cause it educates people now they use a dumbing down process having a bright public is not good for the few if the public to educated there be no cannon fodder
10:10 - that's an EMI 2001 camera on the left (with an autocue affixed to the front), dating from around 1968-1972 (which is when they were made). Many British TV companies used them and they were the workhorse of the British TV industry throughout the 1970s. The BBC were the biggest customer (indeed, it was designed primarily to fit the BBC's needs and requirements), along with about half of the ITV companies (the "big five" - Thames, LWT, ATV/Central, Granada and Yorkshire TV - along with HTV in Cardiff and Bristol and Anglia TV in Norwich).
The BBC phased them out slowly, with the first being taken out of service in 1976 and the last in 1991! The aforementioned ITV companies each began replacing theirs between 1979 and 1986, with Granada being the first (throughout 1979) and Central being the last (most of theirs had been taken out in 1984, but a pair remained for use with continuity and presentation purposes until 1986). Yorkshire TV were the last ITV company to use them for regular programme use, replacing theirs in 1985, and donated them to BBC Leeds for spare parts because parts were becoming scarce by that point!
I adored this show as a kid in the 1980s - watched it on public TV channel. I remembered all the episodes but forgot the name - I did all sorts of searches with key words to find it but none came up. Finally asked someone on TH-cam by describing the show and that it had animotronics and primitive animation and now I am watching the again!
You forgot Philo Farnsworth! Inventor of the first fully electric television held 169 patents
They also forgot to mention that the Baird system only failed because the studio burnt down.
@@nivlick
No, it was failing before that. The 240 lines as opposed to the 405 lines of the EMI system, having to run the film through a chemical bath to develop it between the studio and the transmitter and the poor overall quality of the Baird-only sets and camera/ studio equipment all meant that fully electronic TV was the only way forward. The fire was just the last nail in the coffin.
Whatever you think of big business and its anti-social, even psychopathic, behaviour over the years, if you're launching a new technology like television from scratch, sometimes you need some proper technical and investment heft rather than just being a shoestring operation based on backwards- looking technology.
I recall just adoring this program as a young A/V tech. I really owe these guys a lot.
Wish I could go back 30 years...Tell him...I'm watching you on my computers Flat screen monitor.
Tell him now
@John Ashtone this was the highlight of my visit to Southwold a couple of years ago.
@John Ashtone yes it absolutely was. I didn't even know it was there until i stumbled across it. Ahhh back in the day when we could actually go places and do things.
@dBREZ. .Send a message to Tim on his You Tube channel. His new series called 'The Secret Life Of Components' is brilliant.
I watched this series on cable (in the USA) long ago. I am really glad to see it back on TH-cam. Good stuff here!
Thank you for posting this series here 📺
… what brilliant television! … slow, informative and creative … a great combo
As cheesy as they are I love the animations in this show and think they are absolutely hilarious (the cat flying into the ship for it raining cats and dogs). 😂😂
15:02 Imagine just casually mentioning that you were friends with the first guy to die servicing a TV.
A time when burning a massive pile of tvs full of toxic heavy metals was seen as a joke
Every year on, fewer and fewer people will be viewing this on an old CRT screen. Amazing technology back in the age of fire--bottles (tubes/valves).
Who remembers a bad picture because of “ atmospheric’s” or kicking the tv cabinet inducing a thick line moving up the screen.
There's an old, probably apocryphal story from the Cold War about American engineers first getting a close look at a Soviet military aircraft, and scoffing at it because it still used thermionic valves in its electronics instead of being all solid-state. That is, until someone pointed out that in the event of a massive electromagnetic pulse from a thermonuclear bomb going off, the instruments in the Russian plane would have been more likely to keep working whilst the solid-state electronics in its counterpart fried.
By the end of the vacuum-state era, some valves ("Nuvistors") were as small as discrete canned transistors - I've seen a few TV sets that used them - and now, things are coming full circle with the recent development of the nanoscale vacuum-channel transistor...
Here we are in 2023 and I can assure you that not a singke viewer will be watching this on anything other than a high definition TV , tablet or smart phone.
@@grahamkearnon7853 or holding the "bunny ear" aerial above ones head whilst balancing on top of the arm of the sofa !
@@tommcewan7936 I worked for General Motors in London Ontario in 1994 on their LAV light armored vehicles division. The engineers deliberately designed them with robust analog mechanicsl switches for exactly the reason you mentioned. Most of the varients which were created for battle conditions had foam injecgion systems built in to suppress any fire hazard. If only the engineers at NASA had thought of that when the Apollo testing was being done on the liftoff pad. Perhaps those three astronauts would have been spared that horrible death. White, Chafey and Guss Grisham. RIP.
I worked in a television shop when I was in high school and college in the 70's. Those old vacuum tubes, CRT's were a royal pain to work on. Today, most televisions are "disposable". They stop working, you toss them because it is cheaper to buy a new one, than to have it repaired.
You should watch Shango006, and RetroTech.
in some cases its only one or two bad capacitors in the power supply that stops modern ones working, if so, easily and cheaply fixed 😉
i have to admit it was the intro music that got me into this series.for those that dont know the music,this version is the russians are coming by val bennet,witch i have on 45 by the way,originally its a jazz tune called take 5.this particular programme helped me out when i was studdying electronic servicing,as i used to fix the old cathode ray tv's
Take five ! It was the Dave Brubeck band who perfurmed it , written by Paul Desmond.
Old but Gold
i am watching this on a oled monitor
Those times we were not concern about burning down a bunch of old TV sets with lead, plastics and other pollutants. Fun times indeed. Today I would get beaten by my neighbours.
I was going to throw my devices📺📱 in the river but now I've decided to burn them 😂😂🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
I used to avidly read Tim Hunkin's cartoon strip in The Observer every Sunday, The Rudiments Of Wisdom. It did something very few people can do - it made complex things simple. Our country will be a lot more successful once we start doing this on a large scale in schools. People like me got lost on the second day of every subject, never to understand it again. We are the overlooked ones, not because we are dim, but because teaching was only ever for intelligent kids, and not for the average or below average kid like me. If only Tim Hunkin were minister for education.
The same with learning maths ! Our maths teachers were so bland and un inspiring that I fell asleep during class. When I was in my twenties I watched a Disney cartoon which shone light on all the wonderfull things you could do with mathmatics. But in a fun way which drew me in, not turn me off.
@@den264 Extraordinary mate, yet it appears few people in the teaching profession are allowed to stray from the syllabus in order to engage the entire class, before continuing with the hogwash of quadratic equations and those snot-gobbling logarythms.
21:59 onwards - that colour set is one using one of the *excellent* ITT CVC chassis (somewhere between a CVC5 and CVC9, dating it to between 1972 and 1977). That is using one of the delta gun CRTs I referred to in another comment below.
Of all the TVs to go in that fire pile at the end, this ITT certainly didn't deserve to end like that!
i used to have 3 of the cvc5/8/9 series sets, plus a cvc30, and a cvc45? i think, all worked pretty well, the cvc30 being used as our main tv , with no back cover, previous owner lost it, !!, for several years in the early to mid 90s,
definitely not! poor old things 😢
@@andygozzo72 If you’re on Facebook, you might want to join the group “UK Vintage Television Collectors”.
@@stickytapenrust6869 already a member 😉
0:53 - I have that same model of TV in my collection. In fact, I have two, one awaiting restoration and another that's in such poor condition it's only fit for parts. That model dates from about 1975 and it uses the Thorn 9000 chassis, introduced the same year. It was Thorn's first TV to use the Precision-in-Line ("slot mask") colour CRTs and it was the second in Britain to use that type of tube, Rank-Bush-Murphy just pipping Thorn to the post when they introduced their Z718 chassis in late 1974.
The P-i-L colour CRT replaced the earlier delta-gun ("shadow mask") colour CRT that had reigned supreme in colour TV sets (apart from Sony, which used their own Trinitron tubes) from the introduction of colour TV in Western Europe in the late 1960s until being phased out in the latter half of the 1970s. Ironically, it was Thorn who were also the last to use delta gun tubes, in their sets using their 9800 chassis, made from 1978 to 1980.
Watching this through a non-CRT makes me a bit sad, really.
Some years ago I met Gerald Wells with my brother, he would not allow transistor sets in his house however he made an exception in our case and we took a video camera to his house and made a complete program about him that has never been seen
Have you considered posting this program to TH-cam?
For your own private viewing?
he did have some transistor sets, a few portables, in the 'radio shop recreation' room 😉 i visited a few times in the 1990s, last time in 1998, he passed away a few years ago and i've heard pretty much all the stuff in the house has been moved into the sheds out the back, with a lot sold off due to lack of space and money..
The slotted shadowmask he shows is from the Sony Trinitron tube.This gave brighter pictures, and required fewer convergence adjustments.
Philo Farmsworth was the inventor of electronic television. It's maddening that he's always overlooked.
Zworkin's television was a very crude mechanical system.
Yes there is currently a great TH-cam movie on his life and career. It illustrates hiw ruthless the American businessman can be when it comes to killing off a competitors career and life in the case of poor Philo !
This program was great, except for the fact that the history part was almost completely wrong. Zworykin never was able to get a working system up and going and the patent was eventually awarded to Farnsworth who, not even mentioned here, was actually the first person in 1927 to show a fully functional system. RCA bought Zworykin and his parents and then proceeded to try to erase Farnsworth from history, while copying his work. They ended up loosing the patent case, but it seems they were successful in changing history, at least on this show.
I was actually waiting to hear Farnsworth name
I wonder how much they paid for the parents?
are British stupid or what. Farnsworth is the man
@MichaelKingsfordGray the OP said RCA bought Zworykin's parents. (obviously a typo for 'patents' but I prefer the idea they bought his parents)
Yeah they never mention tesla either even though he invented alot of the things they discuss in their shows
In the 70s as a kid on Halloween, I remember a house with 3 witches. My folks must have known them, it was a small town.
Anyways they had a camcorder, vcr set up and I remember freaking out seeing them on TV then in person at the same time.
I've forgotten a million things in 53 yrs but I'll never forget the first time I seen the magic lol
it really needs to be digitally remastered
Tim is slowly getting them remastered and posted on his own YT channel for these...
Fun Fact: Vladimir Zworykin once lived on the same street as my one-time girlfriend in Swissvale, Pennsylvania. Of course, that was 40 years before either of us were born. LOL. (Swissvale is a close by suburb of Pittsburgh. Zworykin was employed by Westinghouse.)
Great show
That guy who was killed by an early set was killed again 2 weeks later.. and again for a quite a few times over the years.
Excellent
Love the absolute environmental disaster they concocted for the end credits.
No I felt it a waste of good historic artifacts which can never be re created.
Today, most televisions no longer have tubes; CRT or otherwise. Now its all LCD, LED & Plasma displays. Nowadays, less people are getting Cable TV subscriptions in exchange for viewing complete TV episodes, movies & videos on the internet.
This Series Legend...
The first colour tv picture shown by Baird in 1946!
Used to watch these on the Learning Channel when TLC was actually called that.
And when "The Learning Channel" actually WAS that.
I think the real breakthrough which led to tv was the fundamental idea of ‘scanning’ an image, quite different to photography. Pity it wasn’t mentioned as such. Enjoyed the old-fashion approach.
10:54
24:34 - The first Amazon Fire TV... strange that it didn't catch on.
The Bonfire of the Tellies. 📺🔥😆
I really enjoy you posting these and thank you for that. main problem is the audio is so low, I can barely hear it on my lap top. need to use amplified speakers to hear it. do not need this with other videos, just yours. It would be much more enoyable if audio was at a normal level. thanks
RCA and it's engineers have to given credit for bringing tv into our homes. The RCA system of transmission and especially their system of transmitting color. The problem with the color system was finding a way that the B&W sets at the time could also receive a program that was being broadcast in color.
Indeed, they solved this problem in an ingenious way. The black and white analog signal remained, with a chroma or chrominance signal added to the carrier. This way, the telly knew what colour to add to the image.
"Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it." - C.P. Scott
And now in 2023 I am looking at the history of CRT television, on an LCD display, which is already obsolete being replaced by OLED, for even better image quality
This was an excellent tv series, would be great if they showed it again. Sadly UK tv now is mostly idiotic game shows and reality shows....
like secret life of machines ( not keen on reality show )
As kids we used to love smashing old telly screens for their implosion. Naughty but nice
Same here
Yes.
It was a mandatory rite of passage!
Of all the SLOM episodes, this one is probably the most dated.
Still a good watch. They had no idea that HDTV and LED would take over the industry.
@MichaelKingsfordGray Then why didn't they mention it, then?
In 1990, the closest you would have got to LED technology in TV sets were the small backlights used on those colour pocket TVs that used LCD screens.
@MichaelKingsfordGray It was a rhetorical question.
However...
Thinking back to 1990, the reason may be threefold:
- The lack of availability of information about what was happening in TV technology outside of Britain until said technology was mature enough to become a mass-market product in Britain, mainly due to patriotism on the part of TV trade publications like Practical Television magazine and the annual large, thick, ruby-red Newnes TV servicing books.The researchers would have been subject to this ignorance on the part of specialist publications. This was 1989, way before the internet as we know it, so researchers would have been reliant on publications.
- And on the small chance they were aware of it (certainly, people like me who were in the TV repair trade or on the periphery of it weren't aware of LED TVs until about 10-15 years after this was broadcast), the technology probably won't have been mature enough to be considered a serious contender for inclusion in the programme - it wasn't until about 2010 that (in my opinion) LED TVs began to be a serious contender in terms of picture quality for the last of the CRT TVs.
- It's a 25-minute programme that's only intended to educate the average viewer and not be some specialist programme for a specialised field so even if they were aware of LED TV technology as it was in 1989, it would likely have ended up on the cutting room floor for that reason and possibly for the reason above, too. For example, notice how they don't delve too much into the benefits of in-line gun CRTs over delta gun CRTs, only giving it a passing reference in saying "owing to refinement of the tube design" when Tim Hunkin's assistant is playing about with the convergence controls on that ITT CVC5 towards the end?
For the record, I've been a broadcast engineer for many years at Granada Television in Manchester and have done some editing work on programmes, too, after being made redundant and going freelance in the early 1990s - I'm using both my knowledge of TV technology during this time and thinking about what would and wouldn't have made it to the finished programme based on a list of priorities. Apart from colour pocket TVs, TVs with any kind of LED influence in the screen certainly weren't on the market here for the casual viewer to buy in 1989 because they were a long way off from being a marketable product. And as I don't think anyone working on the programme would have envisioned people wanting to watch it 30 years from then, they wouldn't have considered explaining the possibilities of future TV technology in too much detail in the programme, especially if Channel Four execs stipulate they only have 25 minutes to cover everything in the programme's brief.
@MichaelKingsfordGray You're welcome
@MichaelKingsfordGray I never really paid too much attention to solid-state TV technology. For me, *proper* TV truly died when 405-line TV, valves, then camera pickup tubes were replaced by so-called "superior" technology. they were the equivalent of the valve vs. solid-state audio amplifier debate - solid-state tech is technically superior, but valve pictures and sound look and sound more pleasing to the eyes and ears!
i dont think high enough brightness leds for backlights were available at this time, there were laptops with lcd panels but fluorescent backlight, and STN or early TFT technology in the screen itself with poor viewing angle, i have a couple of laptops from around the time of this program, the screen would definitely not be suitable for tv use....
There used to be another British documentary series that was similar to this one, in that it had some humor mixed in, but it was an hour program instead of 30mins. It was probably from the 70s or 80s, and they dealt with different subjects, and always had a starting point that led off in seemingly unrelated directions, but then everything was tied together at the end. I can't remember the name of that show....
That was "Connections" by James Burke from the late '70s (the entire series is available on youtube). Watching "Secret Life of Machines" for the first time this week, it immediately reminded me of "Connections," as well!
Connections....
@@hellmuth26
Didn't James May (Top Gear) do a series of 'Connections' few years back?
@@hellmuth26 Connections is a bit difrent. I don't think the entire series is on TH-cam :-( .
Confused 🤷♂️ because, if you couldn’t record sound with the video! How did they do it then in the beginning. ?! Hmm 🤔.
I suppose no-one puts a magnet near a screen anymore to get funky colours.
Very fitting funeral pyre for the CRT television.
It's surprising how long some of the sets stayed functioning in the fire.
Wasn't the end of CRTs when that was made, though, not by a long chalk.
That madman look I his eyes when the TVs burn
2:11 Skype Version 1.0 P.S. "When a repairman repairs your telly..." is not something anyone born after 1976 is likely to hear, sadly.
What about Farnsworth across the Pond?
I remmber the ones with candles in the back i mean valves or is it tubes ..jeff
In the UK, they were referrd to as valves; in the US, tubes (pronounced toobs).
shango066 eol lol
this episode has a certain anachronistic autodidatism to it
24:39 I suppose when this was on air people were screaming "WTF?" at the end scene but now we've all been there done that with the onset of LCD, plasma, etc.
Not really - they mostly look like 1970s TV sets, which by 1990 (when this one was made) would have been considered junk. They probably got them very cheap from warehouses where knackered ex-rental stock was flogged off at dirt-cheap prices.
@@stickytapenrust6869 and now crt sets are getiing sought after ..... 😉 most of the tvs we had over the years were second hand, at least 10 years old when we got them, and still working perfectly or needing only minor repair (which i did myself)
Boop tube now a flat screen
Cool! Was the Narrow Band Mechanical Television technology ever used for smart bomb /glide bombs in the 1930's / 1940's ?
not many had to worry about glasses as it was rare to be blind in today’s youths.
cool
Over here we have Burning Man. In the UK, there's Burning Tellys. LOL
23:35 - I can't really tell from the poor quality of the video (as loads of TVs from the 80s had slide-out vertical circuit boards like that), but I *think* that's a set using the Rediffusion Mk4 chassis, dating it to between 1981 and 1985 (which, ironically, would have been - technologically - a little long in the tooth by then, the irony being that Tim claims in the voiceover that it's representative of a modern set for when this programme was made, around 1989!)
looks too modern for a mk4, even the 4A had 4 seperate pcbs, the one on screen has a switchmode power supply on the main board
@@kevvywevvywoo the one with the board on the left side may be a fidelity, the board looks familiar, i repaired loads of portables, mostly grey plastic cased, using that board/chassis, usually psu blow up , occasional bad degauss posistor 😁
the one with the big 'motherboard' and several vertical boards is an itt , either cvc20 or cvc30/32, used to have a cvc30 for a few years, theres also a cvc5/8/9 shown, the one with a few valves in it, had a few of those, still got an unused 'spare' line output transformer for one..
👌
great
No mention of the German contribution.
Rex needs Diodes
Who's Rex? Does he have a pain in his left side?
605 line televisions. Tell them we have 4,000 lines now!
We don't though. 4k = 2160 lines. (Twice that of 1080p)
@@FunkySpunkyJunky That doesn't really make sense. 2160 implies 2K since it's about 2,000. But anyway, we do have 8K monitors now, so yes, 4000 lines :). 2160 is still impressive by 1991 standards.
@@tomservo75 yeah, i know it dont make much sense, but thats how it is. HD TV is 1080 lines and 4k is double that at 2160. You are technically correct as 8k does exist, but not on mainstream TVs that I know of. I wasn't having a dig, your point was still understood, that we now have very high def TVs that would have been unthinkable back then.
Quite happy with my 1080p 60Hz, thank you.
405 and 625 lines
Sigh. Back then tv was made to look great and work great. It made as furniture. Not anymore. By the way I was not alive back then and really not even a thought.
TheMonkeyFarted
Back in the 50s and 60s, tv's used to be like a nice piece of furniture. Youd have a huge wooden box made of top grade, nicely finished wood, with usually mono speaker(s) in the side panels, but the actual picture tube was usually much smaller in diameter than the size of the overall box it was mounted in. So youd have a 4 foot wide, by 3.5 foot tall x 3 feet deep set, but with a picture tube that was only maybe 20" - 24" diameter(18" wide X 17" tall). They weighed a ton too! No idea how much they cost, but it was probably the equivalent to $2000 in today's dollars.....
@@HighlanderNorth1 The first TV I bought was in 1980, 22" screen and it cost $NZ 1554.38 (includes interest because it was purchased on Hire Purchase).
24:30 I can see all the eco-activists pissing themselves in nightmares ..
See? :-) I Love these.
What we are looking at now is not a tv😅
Met the great gearald wells top man
THANKS BRITISH SCIENTISTS
The irony is that tv sets are once again getting less reliable as technology progresses. An lcd screen from say the early Naughties could last over 10 years and compared with today was cheaper. A full array backlit today has an average life for many of just 4 or 5 years as the arrays fail (as we’ve found out to our cost). Oleds and plasma screens can burn out with individual led’s failing completely and ghosting. They’re getting better but still aren’t as reliable as a tv from 20 years back.
Every municipal clean up now has at least five dead TVs per street. Cheapos from Aldi, mostly, with giant screens…
14:08 - "Gave high definition picture" It sure did. :) A resolution of around 352 × 288. If these people only knew what was going to happen just 20 years later, from the airing of this show. I'm currently watching this in 3840x2160 on a 32" 4K monitor. No more x-ray emitting CRT.
The real irony is that you're watching what looks like a VHS rip in 360p on that UHD tv.
377 pixels high. Not 288.
Television was invented in 1921 by an 14 year old Idaho farm boy named Philo Farnsworth
Inaccurate and nutty, typically British. I thought It was a Monty Python. Program.
May have been inaccurate but entertaining
That is funny .
Ask someone under 30 how something works and they can't explain. Computers are magic, not modulated stream of electrons, right?
How did we go to the Moon when TV's were looking like that?
24:22 ooooh how environmentally unfriendly - oooooh, should have recycled them instead, oooh what a terrible programme, ooooh, ooooh, handwringing, non PC ooooh... more handwringing....
Pity that Philo Farnsworth work was not recognized, and the RCA/Zarnoff lie is propagated.
Burn a huge stack of tvs for tv… and we wonder why we’re having climate issues today
They should rewrite so that he doesn't have to struggle with pronouncing "probably."
Man invents color television in the 1940's and dies a week later. Nothing wrong here...