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
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 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.
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.
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 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 !
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.
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.
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.
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.
Definitely thumbs up. Thank you and your team for collecting and restoring these fantastic historical items of engineering. Great knowledgeable presentation.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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
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
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.
I have one of those RCA mini console TVs like the one you have tucked under the CTC-11. It still works too, for the most part. Hey, can you finally put a question to bed for me? Were they really only used as salesman's samples to demo the bigger RCA sets, or could the regular consumer also buy them?
Do you have a 1959 MOTOROLA TV? We had one, in brown Bakelite cabinet. I still have the ticket that went with it. If your museum could use it in your collection, I can mail it to you.
Thank You for sharing your knowledgement. I’d really learn and appreciate that. But I became surprised for such intelligent and investigative people believing in masks as precautions for Covid19 pandemics. Greetings from Brazil.
It would have been nice if the gear to make this video at least was used with a holder for cell phones . The shaking and sometimes out of focus , made a poor omage to this very interesting subject of vintage TV sets .
Very enjoyable video. My parents were married in 1957 and my grandmother gave them an RCA color TV as a wedding gift. I was born in 1960 and for the first 9 years of my life we were the only house in the neighborhood with a color set, and for a couple more years after that the only house with a color set larger than a PortaColor. Our house was a popular place on weekends, which was great for me because all my friends would want to come over on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons in color. I remember once when Mama was rearranging the furniture, she had to call RCA and have them send a tech to move the TV. PortaColor had a small screen that was not really suitable for group viewing, but for just one or two people they were great. The image was bright with vibrant colors. GE used a heavily modified shadow mask that allowed much more light to reach the screen than traditional color sets of the time could do.
@@kirks1959 I couldn’t remember the model number, but I googled RCA CTC7 and that sure looks like it, as I remember. It did last a long time. My cousin bought it from my mother in about 1980, and she had it for several more years.
The monochrome NTSC spec was created in 1941. However, the U.S. entering into World War 2 put TV on hold. The technology advances during the war made consumer TV practical. England had electronic TV before the war started in 1939 and again was put on hold during the war. In Canada, we got colour TV in 1967, just in time for the country's centennial. I was in the studios of CBLT, the Toronto CBC station, watching a show being produced. When that was over, they had to pack up the one colour camera they had, to take it up to Maple Leaf Gardens, to broadcast the Maple Leafs hockey game that night. Your description of colour isn't quite accurate. There weren't 2 pictures. There was the luminance signal, which was essentially the B&W signal, to which was added the chrominance signal, which provided the colour. I have never heard the term "colouring book" in reference to TV. The Quasar "works in a drawer" originally referred to Motorola TV sets, before Quasar becoming a separate brand after Motorola left the consumer market.
If you remove the "Y" signal (luminance or B and W)) you have only Chroma. If you remove the Chroma , you only have "Y"or B and W. That was the whole idea of compatibility. I was a tech for RCA Service and when I went to school in NY (Long Island) that is how it was explained to me by one of the engineers that was involved in the development of color in the lat 1940's and early 1950's. I stand by my explanation.
@@kirks1959 The problem is the chroma provides only the colour that is then applied to the B&W picture. It is also a much lower resolution than the B&W. If you had only the chroma, you wouldn't have a picture as such, as even the sync is included in the luminance signal and not in the chrominance. The chrominance signal has the red - luminance & blue - luminance components combined in quadrature, that is at 90° angle, with green represented by the luminance. Compare this with the mechanical system proposed by CBS. It had a spinning wheel, with colour filters. The chroma signal does the same thing as the colour wheel. It provides the colour component, but nothing else. No luminance, no sync, no nothing but the colour to be applied to the B&W image. There is no separate colour image. You may want to go back and review your notes from that training.
Your first sentence is the "coloring book" scenario. You are of course correct in your technical description of the jobs that are done by the individual signals.
The comments on progress are not nearly as great in 10 years as personal computers. Compare a 1985 PC to a Windows 95 PC. The progress for TVs in this video was a joke. Little progress was made during the time covered in this video.
There was tremendous progress between 1946-1956. Intercarrier IF, Aluminized CRT's, AGC for better signal regulation, Larger CRT with shorter deflection angle, the development and licensing of the NTSC Standard for Color- Along with nightly color programming (NBC) Sales of Color TV and Service to back it up. Portable Sets. Price down-quality up-Wireless remote control. I agree PC development was tremendous during the 1985-1995 period as well.
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 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
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.
That programming would make the museum useless for me. Instead of looking at old TVs, I would sit down by that color RCA and watch Looney Tunes all day long 😀 Getting stalked and harassed by hungry coyotes? #MeepToo!
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.
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😊
Actually, the Motorola was not bad for the time and price. I have one I bought when my friend’s father upgraded to a Zenith porthole model. The magnifier fell on the floor and leaked oil all over.
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.
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.
I love the history of television! As a technician and in my early life, a TV repairman, I was always fascinated that some human beings could figure out how to capture a moving image and reproduce it with such clarity... or any clarity at all, really. And when RCA stared dev on color, that was a time with some genius people at the drawing board. The one thing I missed with your video, was what the adorable tiny "floor model" TV was, that was sitting below that color TV with the legs on it. It looked just like a 1970s/1980s full-sized floor model, but that was zapped down to miniature. LOL What a history humans have with television.
Berlin Germany had the world wide first TV Program on the Antenna in 1935 " Der Reichssender Paul Nipkow". 400 Lines Kathode Tube, invented in Germany. By the way, the World's first binary Computer runed in Berlin-Steglitz in 1941.
