If you had a small apartment 70 years ago and were in the market for a television, you might find this idea useful, from the July 1953 issue of Popular Mechanics. The magazine billed it as perhaps one of the most unusual TV cabinets. It was an ottoman on rollers and could take care of your sitting needs. But when opened up, it turned into a 20-inch television.
It was available from the Walter Weber Co. of 1106 S. Hope St., Los Angeles, CA.
Shown here, on the cover of the June 1953 issue of Radio-Electronics, is Barbara Reid, a worker at General Instrument in Elizabeth, NJ. She is making adjustments on the company’s Model 60 UHF tuner, which was in turn used in a number of manufacturers’ sets to tune channels 14-83, 470-890 MHz, which had been allocated to television in 1952.
According to the magazine, this band was an awkward one. The frequencies were too low for microwave and radar techniques, but too high for lumped-constant circuitry. Accordingly, this tuner, which found its way into sets made by companies such as Dumont, used a combination of both techniques.
If you were going to be an early adopter of television 75 years ago, it might be a fairly expensive proposition for you. This ad for the DeWald BT-100 appeared in the June 1948 issue of Radio News. The ad, for Warren Distributors, 3145 Washington St., Jamaica Plain, Mass., listed the set as selling for $372.10, which is the equivalent of over $4600 in 2023 dollars.
The set tuned 13 channels, meaning that it was all set to go for Channel 1, 44-50 MHz, even though that channel was soon to be abandoned in North America.
Over the next few years, the TV antenna on top of houses would become a familiar sight, But 75 years ago, the concept was new, even for experienced radio technicians, who were just starting to realize that the way they would stay in business was by embracing television.
Therefore, the June-July 1948 issue of National Radio News, the publication sent to alumni of National Radio Institute, carried an extensive treatise on the subject of antennas for FM and TV. One concept that would soon become familiar, but was probably new to most readers, was “ghosts” caused by multipath interference. The cause is shown above, and the result is shown below.
Seventy years ago today, the May 11, 1953, issue of Life magazine gave Americans this sneak peak at what color television was going to look like. Specifically, it was the compatible color system from RCA (NTSC), which could be viewed on existing black and white sets. The magazine noted that a competing system from CBS had been approved, but was not compatible, and had been shelved by CBS itself. The magazine predicted that approval for RCA’s system would take place sometime in 1954. The approval actually took place later in 1953, and the first sets were on the market in 1954.
These images were from a demonstration of the system to members of Congress, and show a special production of Kukla, Fran & Ollie.
If you were responsible for procuring vacuum tubes for a TV repair shop 60 years ago, you would probably find this ad very appealing, and chances are, your next order would be for Sylvania tubes. This two-page spread in Electronics World, April 1963, shows two good reasons for stocking that brand. According to the left side of the page, they’re good tubes and they’ll last a long time.
But the right side of the page is even more compelling. When you start ordering Sylvania tubes, you start collecting S&H Green Stamps, just like the ones you get at the supermarket or the gas station. You collect the stamps, and before long, you can cash them in for valuable premiums, “everything from home furnishings to furs.”
A hundred years ago this month, the April 1923 issue of Science and Invention contained a description of the work in television being done in France by Édouard Belin.
His system consisted of a mechanical television camera using what could be called a Nipkow disk. The receiving end consisted of an oscillograph reflecting an image from a mirror and projecting it on a screen.
Eighty-five years ago this month, the March 1938 issue of Practical Mechanics discussed the state of the art in British television prior to the War. Shown here was a method for projecting a television image to an auditorium audience of hundreds.
As shown below, Tat the receiving end, a continuous loop of film was used. The image was exposed onto the film, which passed through a developer and dryer, after which it was projected. Then, the emulsion was washed off the film and a new layer added so that the film could be again exposed.
The following year, on September 1, 1939, television in Britain was shut down for the duration.
Eighty five years ago, they didn’t know it wasn’t going to catch on, but it looked like the next big thing was going to be facsimile. The January 1938 issue of Radio Retailing carried a feature discussing the state of the art. It acknowledged that television was right around the corner (and it was, with only a world war serving to delay it), but the magazine incorrectly predicted that facsimile equipment might find its way into American homes before television.
The idea seemed reasonable, since a number of stations were already licensed to send fax transmissions, as shown by the list at the right. In the Upper Midwest, both WHO Des Moines and KSTP Kansas City held licenses to broadcast with the new mode, on their standard broadcast frequencies.
The magazine acknowledged that standards had to be fixed before facsimile service became common. And testing needed to be done to see how well it worked in outlying areas. And it still wasn’t know if the receivers would be standalone units, or if a printer would plug into the loudspeaker output of a standard broadcast radio.
Shown above is a pioneer of facsimile transmission, W.G.H. Finch of Finch Telecommunications, Inc. Other contenders for a market share were R.C.A., Radio Pictures, and Fultograph. Facsimile service was seen as a way in which radio stations could take on the competition of newspapers. But when the War ended, television took off a lot faster than many people imagined, and radio facsimile service is relegated to a footnote in the history of radio.
For a snapshot of the state of television in the United States 75 years ago, this map shows stations on the air, as well as construction permits and pending applications.
This map appeared in the January 1948 issue of Radio Retailing, which also showed the following selection of sets that were on the market.