Seventy years ago, these Philadelphia television technicians made the cover of the May 1951 issue of Radio Electronics by their ambitious service of converting small screen television to larger tubes. The magazine carried a feature penned by their boss, Larry Oebbecke of Philadelphia Television Service Corp., 19011 W. Cheltenham Ave, Philadelphia, who reported that the job could be profitable “if you know what you are doing.” He reported that his shop had been doing the work for about a year, and averaged 25-35 sets per week.

Some sets were simply not good candidates for conversion, and the author identified many. He stressed the importance of taking good notes when doing the jobs. The first conversion of a particular model might not be profitable, but armed with good notes, subsequent jobs would be much simpler. Also, the jobs required cutting a new front panel, so saving the templates was key to doing the job economically. Normally, the job would take one technician 6-10 hours to complete. In general, 7 inch sets weren’t worth the trouble to convert, since a new set would wind up being cheaper. But larger sets could be upgraded to 14, 16, 19, and 20 inch screens. Older sets with round tubes could get a more modern look with the newer rectangular tubes.

The shop provided a 90 day warranty on the conversion work, and a one year guarantee on the tube itself. The author noted that the guarantee did not extend to parts of the set on which no conversion work had been done.