# Ye Old Days Of TV



## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

Hello all,

I wonder how many of you remember your first television. In 1952, my folks had a black and white console, probably 15”, and I believe it also played 78rpm records, and radio. I was 6 years old, and Howdy Doody was my favorite show.

It wasn’t until the summer of 1959 that my folks bit the bullet, and purchased their first color set. I can still hear the opening theme song from Bonanza, and a greenish hued picture flicker to life, before my amazed eyes. I was 11 years old, and being a cowboy was the most important thing to me at that time.

Now with hundreds of choices, and many in High Definition, with Dolby Digital Surround Sound, it’s interesting to look back at the roots of home entertainment.

I have to give a special shout out to two people that pioneered the way for some of the more educational shows of their time:

1)	Jacques Cousteau 1966 to 1976
2)	Marlin Perkins 1968 to 1971

Feel free to share some of your earliest experiences.


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## spartanstew (Nov 16, 2005)

Well, having been born in 1964, I don't remember life without color TV.

I do, however, remember the big antenna on the roof and the dial we had to rotate for a better signal every time we changed the channel. 

I remember when cable first arrived and the fancy remote with rows of buttons that was the size of a small laptop and was tethered to the cable box.

I remember that you could tune in the cable porn channels and while they were very wavy and hard to see, every once in awhile you'd get a brief flicker of a good picture if you tilted your head just right. Sometimes you could hear the audio too. I spent many nights as a teenager trying to get those channels to come in.


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

A color set in '59, holy crap. We didn't get color at my house till 1974 just in time for the Munich Olympics.

I remember how when I was 8 or 9 (1966 or so) my first visit to Shea Stadium was an absolute assault on the senses because I had never imagined how green a baseball field could be, and the seats were four different colors.

As I write this, my son is playing some Tiger Woods golf game on xbox 360 on a 60" screen.


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## dbconsultant (Sep 13, 2005)

We didn't get our color tv until I was 10 - 1965. We'd moved out to the desert and there wasn't much to do!!!!:lol:


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## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

I'm sure my dad put up the antenna and we had rabbit ears as well. 

"I remember that you could tune in the cable porn channels and while they were very wavy and hard to see, every once in awhile you'd get a brief flicker of a good picture if you tilted your head just right. Sometimes you could hear the audio too. I spent many nights as a teenager trying to get those channels to come in." 

Oh I had forgotten all about that, but now that you mention it, yeah.

Can you imagine what will entertainment look like forty years from now?


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

I don't know when we first got cable, but it had to be the mid to late 70's and it must have been before the must carry (or should I say can't carry)rules. We lived in Northern NJ, and got a bunch of stations from Boston and Philly along with everything from NYC. Being a big hockey fan, it was just great, if there wasn't a pro game on, there was usually a college game to watch.


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## tcusta00 (Dec 31, 2007)

Being 30, the worst thing about TV I recall is that you had to stand up and walk across the room to the cable box to change channels. I remember we had a tiny spare black and white TV that my parents let me hook up in my room on "special" occasions like my birthday or if I was having a friend over - out came the rabbit ears and barely watchable stations.


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## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

I remember the early days of remote controls, I could drop a stack of pennies on the carpet and change channles, or if an airplane had just the right pitch, it would change channels as well. They must have been sound/pitch activated.


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## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

Despite the fact that my dad was a gadget freak, and we had some pretty high-tech gear by '60s and '70s standards, there was no wireless remote in my house until, I'd say, about 1984. We'd had color TV since the early '70s though.


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## paulman182 (Aug 4, 2006)

Boy, you guys are spoiled! 

Even though I only remember back to the early 60's, my memories are of one channel coming in OK--a second one usually barely watchable--and a third one could be seen sometimes. 

We had 1500 feed of uninsulated "ladderline" run to a hilltop, with high voltage on the line to power a vacuum-tube booster (amplifier) under the huge antenna up at the top.

My Dad, or myself, would walk the line when limbs fell on it, or leaves blew against it, because you lost one, two, or all of the channels...and if the booster was plugged in and you touched the line, the voltage knocked you down! Rain lowered your picture quality, and a little ice killed the picture altogether.

I'm not sure when we got color TV... my memories are more like the "I had to walk six miles thru three feet of snow to get to school" kind of thing!


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## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

From Wikipedia:


> In 1956 Robert Adler developed "Zenith Space Command", a wireless remote.[3] It was mechanical and used ultrasound to change the channel and volume. When the user pushed a button on the remote control it clicked and struck a bar, hence the term "clicker". Each bar emitted a different frequency and circuits in the television detected this noise. The invention of the transistor made possible cheaper electronic remotes that contained a piezoelectric crystal that was fed by an oscillating electric current at a frequency near or above the upper threshold of human hearing, though still audible to dogs. The receiver contained a microphone attached to a circuit that was tuned to the same frequency. Some problems with this method were that the receiver could be triggered accidentally by naturally occurring noises, and some people, especially young women, could hear the piercing ultrasonic signals. There was even a noted incident in which a toy xylophone changed the channels on these types of TVs since some of the overtones from the xylophone matched the remote's ultrasonic frequency.


Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y89/ghost_wheel01/Zenith_Space_Commander_600.jpg


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## FHSPSU67 (Jan 12, 2007)

My dad sold TV's starting in about 1949-50. First two were about 12-inch, I believe - a TeleKing and a Westinghouse. Both were table models. Always had the fellow merchants over Wednesday nights for Pro Wrestling.


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## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

"I'm not sure when we got color TV... my memories are more like the "I had to walk six miles thru three feet of snow to get to school" kind of thing!"

Uphill both ways I bet.


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## Lee L (Aug 15, 2002)

I am only 37 and we always had a Color TV (a big console thing with side speakers and a record player built into one side and a Tape deck and Radio tuner on the other, with flip up lids). As a kid, I remember the TV guy coming to fix it when tubes would go out because I would hold the mirror for him to make his adjustments.

Also, at some point we had a smaller tabletop model that did not have a remote, but had up and down buttons that would cause a motor to turn the channel for you. It had to be some kind of electronic tuner because there was no fine tuning ring I remember.


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## STEVEN-H (Jan 19, 2007)

Well we got an RCA 10" in the late 40's early 50's. There were 3 channels and they were not on all the time. Our first color TV was a Heathkit that I built as a teen. 23" if I remember correctly. My Dad invented a remote control...he would tell me to get up and change the channel.


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## Old Tv Watcher (Dec 23, 2007)

r0b0tic said:


> I'm sure my dad put up the antenna and we had rabbit ears as well.
> 
> "I remember that you could tune in the cable porn channels and while they were very wavy and hard to see, every once in awhile you'd get a brief flicker of a good picture if you tilted your head just right. Sometimes you could hear the audio too. I spent many nights as a teenager trying to get those channels to come in."
> 
> ...


 WE discovered if you connected a piece of 300 ohm twinlead to the antenna "in" on the TV along with the cable in lead in and wrapped aluminum foil on it you could receive the playboy channel and ironiclally the Disney Channel! I don't know who discovered this.


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## Steve Mehs (Mar 21, 2002)

I have a few Playboy TV stories myself

Being 23, I can barely remember the days of standard 480i and only 1 HBO.  I remember one time back in probably 1991ish, cable channel 15 was WWOR from NYC, during primetime there was a goof, audio was WWOR, video was Playboy. Back in the day, my grandfather had one of those 'special' cable boxes for when I would come over for The Disney Channel. When Time Warner took over from the old CVI system, they rearranged the line up. Channel 33, which was Disney was now Playboy. Boy that was a surprise.


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## Tom Robertson (Nov 15, 2005)

The earliest TV I remember was a color model in 1964ish timeframe. Perfect for watching the Packers during family dinners. 

Then my parents divorced and we had black and white for a few years, then color again.

I was the first in the family to have cable, right out of college, in my apartment; slowly almost everyone in the family eventually picked up cable or DIRECTV.

Cheers,
Tom


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## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

My grandmother gave us a color TV for Christmas in the early 1960s. I definitely remember the black and white one before that, and the great switch to color! It even had a remote control, Zenith's Space Command remote that used ultrasonics to change the channel or volume. My sister and I quickly found that by dropping stacked quarters a quarter of an inch onto the top of a soda pop bottle, we could get the TV to change channels. Cool.

I also remember waiting every 3-6 months for the TV repairman to come by and change out some of the tubes inside the set. This was well before solid state TVs.


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## mobilelawyer (Aug 16, 2006)

Take a look at the link below for a two minute clip of the 1958 special "An Evening with Fred Astaire." It is well worth watching. This is one of the oldest surviving color videotapes and you will love the fascinating intro! You will need to have Quicktime installed to view the clip.

"An Evening With Fred Astaire"


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## FogCutter (Nov 6, 2006)

I was about 10 the first time I saw color TV. My uncle in town had a color TV and we happened to visit on a Friday night. Hogan's Heroes came on in glorious color and WOW. Absolutely amazing. I'll never forget that. 

We've come a long way baby.


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## leestoo (Mar 23, 2002)

Our first TV was a 17 in Emerson in 1953. We had a rotor on our 25 ft. antenna so that we could get the Boston stations and the Canadian stations. There were no local stations.

And, the first TV show that I watched was a Sunset Carson western. 

It was great to watch shows like Jack Benny that I had only been able to listen to on the radio.

I didn't have a color TV until 1969. And the first show I watched in color was a Richard Widmark movie "Destination Gobi". It was amazing.


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## longrider (Apr 21, 2007)

The first TV I can remember was a B/W Zenith from the late 60's. It did have the Space Command remote which didn't always work. The first color was in the early 70's, when I moved out I was given the old B/W console.

The first cable I got (early 80's) was so bad on the local channels I put an a-b switch at the TV and watched OTA for locals. When Speedvision was launched and the cable co. wasn't going to carry it I switched to DirecTV and never looked back


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

I was a kid in the 50's. My dad had a TV chassis without a case. The case was optional. He finally got the case to please my mom. I remember watching WMBD-TV31 Peoria IL sign on the air on New Years day 1958. 
Our next set was an Admiral combo AM and phono combo. It was great to watch the Mickey Mouse club and Sea Hunt on!

We moved to Cincinnati in 1958 and my dad put a antenna with rotor on the roof. I remember him saying it was cut for Channel 4. We could pull in WTTV-4 in Indy at any time and watch the stock car races. We could get Cincy, Dayton, and Louisville almost at any time. I remember getting WGN at night after WCPO sign off.

We got a Zenith with a Space Command remote in 1960. You could also drop quarters on the table to change channels. That was the set I saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on live TV. 

My dad died in 1968. My mom got a color Zenith in 1969. We used to go up the street to the neighbors to watch their color set for Wonderful World of Disney untll we got color.


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## frederic1943 (Dec 2, 2006)

We got our first TV around 1952 when I was 9. I got my first color TV around 1970. And first HD LCD in 2005. One thing I got into early was VCRs. I got a Sony Beta for $1600 in 1977 and a VHS 2/4 hour for $1200 in 1979. And then paying $20 for a blank tape.
I remember when the old TVs quit, taking all the tubes out of the TV and taking them down to a store with a Tube Tester machine and trying to find the right slot for each of them to find out which one had failed.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

mobilelawyer said:


> Take a look at the link below for a two minute clip of the 1958 special "An Evening with Fred Astaire." It is well worth watching. This is one of the oldest surviving color videotapes and you will love the fascinating intro! You will need to have Quicktime installed to view the clip.
> 
> "An Evening With Fred Astaire"


That station ID slide at the beginning is definitely a latter-day recreation, and I could do without the fake "TV set" border on the whole thing. But other than that...

I was born in 1974. My family got a color TV, if I recall correctly, for Christmas in 1980 (a 19-inch Sanyo, and then the 19-inch Zenith black-and-white set got moved to my parents' bedroom).

We didn't have cable until the summer of 1986, but only because cable TV wasn't available to us until then (the city of Tampa was wired for cable relatively late, and we were one of the last neighborhoods the cable company put it into).


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

Back in the 60's, they used to show "The Wizard of OZ" once a year, around Easter I think. That was always an event at my house, we were allowed to eat our dinner at TV trays in the living room. We had probably seen it 5 or 6 times before we saw it at an aunts house one time and she had a color set. WOW, that transition was something.


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## jimisham (Jun 24, 2003)

We got our first television set in 1950 when i was 14 years old. It was a 10 inch Sparton that picked up 1 snowy channel from Grand Rapids.
A few months later the first station in Lansing went on the air with a much better picture.
If we wanted to change stations, one of the things we had to do was go outside and change the direction of the antenna. It was mounted on a long pipe fastened to the side of the house and we turned the pipe by hand.


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## Pete K. (Apr 23, 2002)

This is a great thread for us geezers. My family's first TV was a Capehart B&W vintage
1952. Living in the NYC metro, we were able to get 3 channels! WCBS, WNBT (WNBC),
and WABC. In the early 60's we moved to Georgia and could from that day on, receive but one channel, 
which plucked the best of programming from all 3 nets. Of course, we watched as a family. 
If one of us didn't like what was on, too bad. We could listen to Gunsmoke or Johnny Dollar on the radio.


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## r0b0tic (Dec 18, 2007)

Thanks to everyone for contributing to the trip down memory lane. We have indeed come a long way, baby.

And, who besides me, had to hold the rabbit ears and strike a pose like an olympic dancer, to get the picture a little bit clearer?


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## B Newt (Aug 12, 2007)

I remember the early days of scrambled cable. It was easy to beat the scrambled signal with a coffee can and a coil of heavy gauge copper wire and two cable connectors.


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## steve053 (May 11, 2007)

I remember in the late '70's our color console tube tv started to go. My Dad and I opend up the back of the tv and took out a bunch of tubes, hopped in the car and drove to Walgreens. They had a tube tester in the front of the store where you could plug in each tube and test it. I though it was pretty cool that we could fix our own television. I think the tube tester was eventually replaced by an ATM. :lol:


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## say-what (Dec 14, 2006)

steve053 said:


> I remember in the late '70's our color console tube tv started to go. My Dad and I opend up the back of the tv and took out a bunch of tubes, hopped in the car and drove to Walgreens. They had a tube tester in the front of the store where you could plug in each tube and test it. I though it was pretty cool that we could fix our own television. I think the tube tester was eventually replaced by an ATM. :lol:


I remember the tube tester - we used to go to the neighborhood Ace Hardware store.....


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

frederic1943 said:


> We got our first TV around 1952 when I was 9. I got my first color TV around 1970. And first HD LCD in 2005. One thing I got into early was VCRs. I got a Sony Beta for $1600 in 1977 and a VHS 2/4 hour for $1200 in 1979. And then paying $20 for a blank tape.
> I remember when the old TVs quit, taking all the tubes out of the TV and taking them down to a store with a Tube Tester machine and trying to find the right slot for each of them to find out which one had failed.


Wow that brings back memories, taking the tubes to be tested. I do remember paying around $20 for a 2/4 hour tape too. I paid lots of money for a 2/4 hour VHS recorder. Piano keys and a 1 event 24 hour timer.

Later years when VHS recorders dropped to around $400 I gave out four that year for Christmas presents. I did have a better paying job then of course and taxes were much lower here in NJ then. I still bought them over a period of time.

An Aunt and Uncle had the first color TV set I ever saw. In living Color with the NBC peacock. Round picture tube with the top and bottom masked off and the corners were curved.

My first TV was a hand me down B&W RCA with a 10" round picture tube.

What a change now. HDTV, DVD player, DVD recorder, SVHS deck. DVD blanks are cheap, I bough Verbatim 100 disc spindles sunday @ $23 so that works out to 23 cents for a disc that can hold 2 hours of video at much better than VHS quality.


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

say-what said:


> I remember the tube tester - we used to go to the neighborhood Ace Hardware store.....


Woolworths had the tube tester and tubes in my neighborhood. My dad showed my how to use a screwdriver to discharge the caps on the tubes to the TV chassis so you didn't get shocked when you pulled them out!


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## EXTACAMO (Apr 7, 2007)

Here is an interesting link http://www.vintagetvsets.com/


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Phil T said:


> We moved to Cincinnati in 1958


Your family took the place of my family. We got our first television in about 1956, if I recall correctly, while living in Cincinnati. I can still remember my father bringing it home, a small, probably 15", GE in an all metal blue and white chassis. In 1958 we moved to Levittown in the Philadelphia burbs and took the GE with us (of course). The television ended up in my parents' bedroom and we used to sit around in there in the evenings watching this little box. Needless to say, television viewing time was somewhat restricted, which was probably a good thing. The GE wasn't replaced until probably 1964 or so, just before another move to Laurel, Md., when we got a Zenith B&W set with a real remote control and motorized tuner. That Zenith followed us the next year to Minnesnowta. I think my parents first color television came along after I went off to college in 1967. Of course, I, er, my room mate, had a very small portable B&W set in our dorm room and the dorm had a communal set in the lounge. When I got my own apartment (about 1970) I bought a 21" (I think) Sanyo that lasted me for several years and moved with me several times around the Minneapolis area. I first got cable when I bought a 4 plex in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. Each unit was wired for cable and had a two coax feed from the cable company (Rogers). Eventually, after moving to the burbs (Eden Prairie), I got a 35" Toshiba that I used for a while then ended up selling to a customer of mine on a "time payment" plan. I replaced the Toshiba with a Zenith ceiling mounted 3 gun projector and a 96" screen painted on the wall.  My customer failed in making payments enough times that I ended up taking the Toshiba back and using it in the bedroom. When I sold the house and moved to Florida the projector stayed with the house and the Toshiba was put back into full time service. I eventually replaced the Toshiba with an InFocus front DLP projector and a home brew 90" screen. This was much easier to set up and align than the Zenith three gun monster (I hope I don't get sued for using that term in an AV application). The Toshiba is still being used to this day at my brother's house. The InFocus has been replaced with an Optoma HD front projector and a home brew 100" screen. THERE... you now have my total history... I think.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> We got our first television in about 1956, if I recall correctly, while living in Cincinnati. I can still remember my father bringing it home, a small, probably 15", GE in an all metal blue and white chassis.


And there it is: http://www.vintagetvsets.com/gered.htm except in blue


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## ub1934 (Dec 30, 2005)

Pete K. said:


> This is a great thread for us geezers. My family's first TV was a Capehart B&W vintage
> 1952. Living in the NYC metro, we were able to get 3 channels! WCBS, WNBT (WNBC),
> and WABC. In the early 60's we moved to Georgia and could from that day on, receive but one channel,
> which plucked the best of programming from all 3 nets. Of course, we watched as a family.
> If one of us didn't like what was on, too bad. We could listen to Gunsmoke or Johnny Dollar on the radio.


 You left out one WABD ch 5 DuMont which was the first ch to go full time 12 to 24 hrs a day . I used to come home for lunch from grammar school & watch a show called " The Ted Steal Show " it had man on the street interviews shoot out the window from 515 Madison Ave NYC where they had their studioes and transmitter, think that was in 1946 & we had one of the first 10" GE B/W TV then . We went to color in 51 with a CBS Columbia 405 line Feild Seq. Set W \ spinning disc that CBS was pushing only to loose out to RCA with their NTSC system which will die Feb. 17 2009 , This brings back the good days of real live tv and all that went down in the early days like the first live news from NY to Washington DC and the first shows from Chicago to NY like ( The Dave Garway & The Earnie Kovics Show ) All in B&W 480 I .


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## razorbackfan (Aug 18, 2002)

I grew up in Los Angeles and remember in the 50's having a Sylvania black and white tv. Some of the local shows I remember watching was Sheriff John on channel 11 KTTV, Engineer Bill on KHJ channel 9, and Romper Room. When color tvs came out, my Dad bought a new RCA in this huge cabinet. The place he bought it from had to deliver and install it and used a degaussing magnet which the installer placed in front of the screen and moved it around. We watched Bonanza and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, and I remember how amazing those shows were. It was exciting to see the NBC peacock and the announcer say "in living color" before Bonanza. I remember watching Sci Fi Theatre, and a movie GOG scared me to death. The Virginian was 90 minutes long, and we watched that, Burkes Law, Dragnet, Ed Sullivan, My Mother the Car. 

It was a big deal every year to watch The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. Every drug store had a tube tester, and on Saturday's you could see men with paper bags full of tubes they were testing. 

We received 13 channels and I remember a big thing about "pay tv". There was even an election for it and it was defeated. In the 70's they came out with a scrambled pay channel, 52 I think, which showed recent movies. Channel 22 was the other pay channel. That was long before cable, with a simple roof top antenna pointed toward Mt. Wilson. And when the "programming day" was over, usually after Jack Paar or Johnny Carson, all the stations played the National Anthem and went off the air. The Indian head test pattern was shown, or snow.

Everything was so simple back then.


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## cadet502 (Jun 17, 2005)

I remember my dad taking tube to the hardware store to use the tester. 

The first color set we had in '74, was somewhat of a hybrid if I recall. It had some tubes and it had some daughter boards. Sometime around 1978, the picture would go to a single verticle line. A calibrated smack on the right hand side would pop the picture back to normal for a day or two. When it got to the point of happening twice a nite, the TV got replaced and I got the old one. My dad never opened it because there were "no user serviceable parts". Well after a few weeks of smacking the thing two or three times a night, I pulled the back off and, gulp, plugged it in and turned it on. I'm not sure if I used a screw driver or something else insulated, but I found one of the daughter boards loose in the socket. If you pushed it to one side, the picture was fine, if you pushed it the other way, just a line. Turned it off, unplugged it, tied a piece of string through a hole in the board to the chassis for just a touch of pressure. I used that TV without having to smack it for at least 3 years.:grin: 



.


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## B Newt (Aug 12, 2007)

Here is the tv I remember as a kid. Except ours was B&W and the wood was light color wood, other than that it looks the same.

http://www.vintagetvsets.com/ctc7.htm


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

This looks like the 10" B&W RCA that was my first set. It was a hand me down and someone had antiqued it  I still have it sitting in the storage house out back, Don't ask why. It was still working when I went to Color TV.

This is a image I found of what it should look like. Oh well.


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## frederic1943 (Dec 2, 2006)

razorbackfan said:


> And when the "programming day" was over, usually after Jack Paar or Johnny Carson, all the stations played the National Anthem and went off the air. The Indian head test pattern was shown, or snow.
> Everything was so simple back then.


I remember that end of the programming day. The national anthem with the American Flag and jets flying and then usually a prayer from various pastors. In the mid-70s Channel 2 here in Portland, Oregon started a screen that showed wind speed and direction from 2am to 6am. It's amazing what you'll watch when there's nothing else on.


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## ub1934 (Dec 30, 2005)

* Thats the same set we got as a wedding present in Nov. 1958 :hurah: *


B Newt said:


> Here is the tv I remember as a kid. Except ours was B&W and the wood was light color wood, other than that it looks the same.
> 
> http://www.vintagetvsets.com/ctc7.htm


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## Satsince1978 (Jun 28, 2007)

I worked for a company in South Bend Indiana that was an electronics distributor ( Radio Distributing) and we had a Hallicrafters TV that had channel 1 on it. We also sold the Finco 400 bedsprings antenna and the VDX with a Yagi antenna. 
My Dad bought our first tv in 1950 and we would turn the antenna directly south and watch the state basketball finals from Indianapolis. I also watched WSBT sign on for the first time on UHF. They are now the oldest UHF station in the country. One other beat them on the air by around 15 minutes but are no longer broadcasting.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> In the 70's they came out with a scrambled pay channel, 52 I think, which showed recent movies. Channel 22 was the other pay channel. That was long before cable, with a simple roof top antenna pointed toward Mt. Wilson.


There was a similar system in Minneapolis that broadcast from the top of the IDS Center in downtown. You needed a "special" antenna and a set top box on the television. I never subscribed and the service didn't last too long.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

> I used that TV without having to smack it for at least 3 years.


And you lived to tell about it.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

r0b0tic said:


> I remember the early days of remote controls, I could drop a stack of pennies on the carpet and change channles, or if an airplane had just the right pitch, it would change channels as well. They must have been sound/pitch activated.


My parents had an RCA tv in their bedroom with a 3 button remote, every time the phone would ring it would change the channel. It had a motor in it to change the channels.



Lee L said:


> I am only 37 and we always had a Color TV (*a big console thing with side speakers and a record player built into one side and a Tape deck and Radio tuner on the other, with flip up lids*). As a kid, I remember the TV guy coming to fix it when tubes would go out because I would hold the mirror for him to make his adjustments.
> 
> Also, at some point we had a smaller tabletop model that did not have a remote, but had up and down buttons that would cause a motor to turn the channel for you. It had to be some kind of electronic tuner because there was no fine tuning ring I remember.


I'm about the same age as you, and we had the same TV in the 70's. Then in the early to mid 80's my dad got a Mitsubishi 40 something inch big screen TV, one of the big square ones, with doors on it, and that was the coolest thing of that time. Of course the picture on that TV looked horrible compared to todays HDTVs.

We had one of those 2 piece VCR's, where one half was the tuner and the other half was the tape player where you could hook it up to a camera and record things with it.

We also had one of those cable boxes with the manual dial on it which you had to get up to change the channels. My dad got clever and set it up next to the couch on the end table so you didn't have to get up and could change it from there. We finally got one with a remote control a few years later.

Ah the good old days.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Richard King said:


> There was a similar system in Minneapolis that broadcast from the top of the IDS Center in downtown. You needed a "special" antenna and a set top box on the television. I never subscribed and the service didn't last too long.


And I just tripped across this tonight, a case mentioned in another thread here. 
http://www.altlaw.org/v1/cases/466177


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## n3ntj (Dec 18, 2006)

We just got the RTN network as a subchannel on our local ABC affiliate. It's nice seeing some of the old shows that TV Land and Nick At Night used to show.. Streets of San Francisco, Get Smart, Emergency!, Cannon, Love American Style, etc.

Gotta love those old big 70s cars and loud shoes on pavement.


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## jimisham (Jun 24, 2003)

I have an old magazine called TV Forecast dated April 29, 1950. It apparently was based out of Chicago. It has listings for the 4 Chicago TV stations at the time. One of them was WBKB on Channel 4, which I guess was the CBS affiliate at the time. All the programming started at about 10 or 11 AM and ended at around midnight. It seems to me there was a scrambled station on Channel 2 testing pay TV.
There's a one page list of the weeks' programming for WTMJ, on Channel 3 at the time, in Milwaukee, and a one page list for the week's programming for WLAV in Grand Rapids which was on Channel 7 back then. They both went on the air at about 3 PM until around 11 PM.
There's a headline on the cover asking "Has Jack Benny the TV Jeebies?
The article talks about Bob Hope's TV debut and what a great program it was. The writer thinks Red Skelton will be a success, but has doubts about Jack Benny. There's another article predicting Milton Berle's days are numbered.
There's an ad for a Zenith with a round picture "with a 105 square inch screen" for $239.
Another ad is for a magnifier called Marvel-Lens "which will expand your 7" picture to A BIG 10" size or expand your 10" picture to A BIG 12 1/2" SIZE.
You could buy "Vision Filters" to put over the screen, or "Eyeglasses", to reduce eyestrain while watching TV.
The magazine, which has 30 pages, brings back a lot of memories.


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## Pete K. (Apr 23, 2002)

WBKB was Chicago's first commercial station. Hugh Downs was one of the announcers.
Mike Wallace auditioned for a job there. "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" originated at WBKB. 
The station carried Cubs baseball for two years, 
sometimes simulcasting the games with WGN. 
WBKB eventually became WBBM and moved from Channel 4 to Channel 2.


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## trainman (Jan 9, 2008)

jimisham said:


> I have an old magazine called TV Forecast dated April 29, 1950.


TV Forecast was one of the local TV listings magazines that Walter Annenberg bought and combined into a national publication called TV Guide in 1953. I have the Chicago edition of Issue #13 of the national TV Guide, and the black-and-white listings pages look very different from what became the standard TV Guide listings format, because they were still using TV Forecast's format. (For example, there's a row of small pictures of TV personalities at the top of each page.)



Pete K. said:


> WBKB eventually became WBBM and moved from Channel 4 to Channel 2.


WBKB was owned by United Paramount Theaters (BKB stood for "Balaban & Katz Broadcasting," Balaban & Katz being a local theater chain that Paramount owned). In 1953, UPT merged with ABC, which already owned Channel 7, WENR. They weren't allowed to own two stations in Chicago, so they sold Channel 4 to CBS and moved the WBKB call letters to Channel 7 -- where they stayed until the late '60s, when Channel 7 became WLS-TV.


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## JM Anthony (Nov 16, 2003)

Let's see:

- Sky King
- Rin Tin Tin
- Howdy Doody
- Lassie (tough because it used to compete with Friday Night Fights)
- And the Saturday serials, including the dreaded "Clutching Hand" (I used to hide behind the sofa to watch that one).

While B&W was cool, watching the ol' peacock spread her wings was always a treat!

John


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## bdowell (Mar 4, 2003)

Late coming to this thread with my comments, but I'll add a few...

Born in '62, raised in Southern Maryland, about 50 - 60 miles from the TV towers in D.C. and about 45 - 55 miles from the towers in Baltimore. TV for my youth was one TV that the family had to share. Black and White until well into the 70's. 20" screen at the largest. My grandparents got a big Curtis Mathes console TV at some point in the 70's, the first color TV that I remember being able to watch. They had that set for years, big heavy beast that they moved through three house moves.

As my brothers and I (I'm the oldest in the family) and our sister aged, the parents gave us the B&W set for use in the basement while they put the 'portable' Color set that they bought from my Aunt & Uncles furniture store in the Carolinas in the living room. That B&W set, or it's replacement, later became the TV that we played our first video game console on -- the original 'pong' console from Sears. I put birthday money and money made while working odd-jobs towards buying the console for the kids in the family to play on. Sharing was required otherwise I wasn't allowed to buy it, and didn't have enough money to pay for it all anyway.

I loved to watch cartoons, as did my brothers, and even my dad, but mom almost always had chores for us to do on the weekends when Bugs Bunny and friends or other cartoons would come on, and the few channels that we had available offered only a few cartoons in the afternoons. Even then we still had chores, or were expected to be working on school work, etc.

TV channel selection was incredibly limited. ABC, CBS, NBC from D.C. or Baltimore, with varying quality and lots of fuzz and noise. Dad added a rotor to the TV antenna in the late 70's and it helped, but the signal still sucked. We had an independent station from D.C. (later turned into the FOX network station) that was broadcast on VHF channels. So pretty much had a total of 7 channels to choose from, with duplication of network offerings. Cable didn't exist in our area until mid 80's, long after I was out of the house. UHF signals were virtually impossible to receive and really disappointed us as that was where we would have been able to watch Ultraman, Speedracer, and more 'great' programming that we heard about from friends (school mates) that lived closer to the big cities.

When my wife and I got together in the mid 80's I bought a new TV for myself, a color set. Portable, 15" tube. It was the largest I could afford and really couldn't afford it (thank you Sears for your revolving charge card with perpetual payments ). We later added a Colecovision console to that TV and played a bunch of different games on it (we played against each other or shared turns playing) before the video game market bottomed out and took a good while to come back. Bought a Beta VCR and used it for several years (had a friend that was able to convert content from VHS to Beta for us, and was able to benefit by going in the other direction. Very handy for building up the video collections  ).


I missed a lot of different TV shows from back in the good old days because we just couldn't receive the channels that carried those shows or because we were rushed off to bed before the shows aired (and had to be up very early for the long bus ride to the mid-sized 'town' that was home to the high school and such). I wind up catching a lot of those shows via channels like Superstation WGN, or TBS, and now via channels like American Life TV (I get that one from Verizon FiOS. {Even though I'm primarily a DirecTV customer, I have FiOS TV programming as I get their Triple Play offering. It is not much more expensive then I'd be paying for Phone and Internet, so I take all three and get some channels from them that I can't get from DirecTV}).

One of the local FOX affiliates has been broadcasting a sub-channel that they air what they call 'good TV' on. That too offers a bunch of old shows that I saw only a few of, or that I wanted to see again.

From my immediate family, I think I was one of the first that was able to get cable TV. It came to the area the wife and I live in before it was finally built-out to to where my parents and grandparents live. Around 1986 if memory serves. We got to experience cable TV when on vacation but never had it at home because it wasn't available in our fairly rural home town.

Cable Internet didn't hit our area until 2003. I think my parents may have had it available to them a few years earlier, but not by much. The area they live in has exploded in growth, and they have gotten more of the modern conveniences quicker over time. FiOS hit my area about 2 years ago now, with TV fully available about 14 - 16 months ago (internet before that actually).

Life in the rural town is such fun 

Thankfully I live about 20 miles from one set of towers now, about 40 from the other. Big outdoor antenna gets the signals from either market, though the old analog signals still suck. The digital signals are gorgeous. Nice to get the sub-channels also and nice to have a broader choice of programs to watch there, even if many of the current choices suck.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

JM Anthony said:


> Let's see:
> 
> - Sky King
> 
> John


:lol: My brother gave his son, that would be my nephew,  the middle name of Schyler in honor of that television show.


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## Carl Spock (Sep 3, 2004)

I loved Sky King. That, and Whirlybirds, although even at a young age I realized Sky King was the superior show.


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Ah, yes, Penny. 

Whirlybirds, also a good show. Add to that Highway Patrol.


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## Old Tv Watcher (Dec 23, 2007)

Richard King said:


> Ah, yes, Penny.
> 
> Whirlybirds, also a good show. Add to that Highway Patrol.


 10-4


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

My Brother still asks me if I ever run across Whirlybirds somewhere to let him know so he can watch it.

Every so often I check Netflix and as today the closest i come is Whirlygirl which isn't even close.

http://www.tvaddicts.tv/movie/action/Whirlybirds.html has a 5 DVD set for $80, not even close to my price range what with the cost of gas for the car, + gas & electric for the house these days.


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## frederic1943 (Dec 2, 2006)

Remember when Telstar was launched in 1962. Live pictures from Europe for 20 minutes every 2 1/2 hours. No more having to load film on a plane and rush it across the Atlantic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TELSTAR


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Whirlybirds DVD's: http://www.dvdavenue.tv/movies/action/whirlybirds.html I can't vouch for the supplier and have no idea if they are legit. They seem to run several similar sites and have the same product for $20 more at another site. Oops, the other one is the site you referred to. I don't think there were ever 111 episodes of Whirlybirds.


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## K4SMX (May 19, 2007)

Don't see ours on the vintage tv website. It was about the mid-50's, and it was made by National Radio. Two separate chassis and about a 15" round tube. No case, as it was designed to be built in to a bookcase. It had a wood panel cut-out which covered the electronics. Before that I only got to watch Howdy Doody at the woman's house down the street sometimes.

Charlotte, NC. One channel: WBTV CH 3, CBS Network. It was the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger every week day afternoon. I remember best being extremely irritated when those two shows were pre-empted by the incessant re-broadcasting every half-hour all day long of the coronation of the Queen of England. Watching Mel Gibson's "The Patriot" again recently reminded me of that.....

I was very interested in figuring out what all those potentiometers on the _back_ of the set were all about. That led to crystal sets, Knight Kits from Allied Radio's catalog, homemade telephones, Heathkits, ham radio license at age 12 and ever since, etc.

And yeah, I'm a veteran of many hours with the drug store's tube testing machine....


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## petergaryr (Nov 22, 2006)

Back in the '50, our first TV was an RCA console. 21" B&W screen (considered "big" at the time). It is weird to watch TV Land and see shows that I remember being "first run".

My mother was really into a horrible show called "Queen for a Day" where the more miserable your life was, the more prizes you would get.

My favorite was "Winky Dink". It was great interactive TV---as long as you remembered to put the magic drawing screen on the TV before drawing things (I may have forgotten to do that a few times).

Then there was that great invention that turned our B&W TV into color. You taped this sheet of plastic with a blue band at the top, pink in the middle, and green at the bottom. If you looked at an outdoor scene quickly, it almost looked convincing (OK, it didn't look convincing at all, but there _was_ color on the screen.

Didn't get to see a color TV until a visit to the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. They were first showing a game show. Colors were flourescent and faces quite orange. Then they showed Northwest Passage  (the TV show, not the movie). It had been filmed in Metrocolor and looked surprisingly good.

We didn't get our first color set until 1966, just in time to watch that new fangled sci-fi show called _Star Trek_. Figured it would never last. There was that one character with pointy ears that seemed to have a slight greenish tint to him.


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## finaldiet (Jun 13, 2006)

Our first tv was a console. I believe it had a 12" screen, radio, and record player. I use to go to my grandmothers, she had a 12" screen and watching her favorite show, " I remember mama". Watched westerns, Lash LaRue, Lone Ranger, Gene Autry. Remember the Borax 20-mule train and "Call for Philip Morris". Watch the first Battlestar Galatica and the Space Cadets and Flash Gordon. Also took tubes to be tested at hardware. Tv went off about 10 or 11 and on about 8 or 9 am. and the test screens. Makes me smile when I read some of the complaints I read on forum. Thanks for the memories. By the way, radios had some good stories also.


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## TBoneit (Jul 27, 2006)

Richard King said:


> Whirlybirds DVD's: http://www.dvdavenue.tv/movies/action/whirlybirds.html I can't vouch for the supplier and have no idea if they are legit. They seem to run several similar sites and have the same product for $20 more at another site. Oops, the other one is the site you referred to. I don't think there were ever 111 episodes of Whirlybirds.


I wasn't endorsing that site either I just forgot to mention it....

From Here:http://www.tv.com/whirlybirds/show/....html?season=0&tag=season_dropdown;dropdown;3
Episode 1 Big U 2/4/1957 to Episode 111 Four Little Indians 1/18/1960
It appears there are 111 episodes over three seasons. Nowdays we don't get 37 new shows a year. We seem to get Approx. 23 new shows a year... Wheee!!! Not to mention that a current 1/2 hour show has more commercials and less running time for the show than in the past. approx 22 minutes.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

Born in '62 and spent a LOT of time in my youth in front of the tube thanks to medical problems.

Being confined to my bedroom for so long (legs in casts) my mother had pity on me and I got a small 9" or so portable black and white TV that I put to use watching all the afternoon cartoons that showed in San Francisco. Speed Racer, Kimba the White Lion, etc. During the time I was 'more mobile' I would get shuttled off to a family friend after school (along with a few other kids - this was before 'day care' was invented) and we'd be watching Dark Shadows and Ultraman. (This would be around 1968)

I remember our first decent color set after we moved to NYC. I especially remember watching the Munich Olympics and going ga-ga over the color. But when I'd be in my room I remember a lot of old shows like "Wonderama" (some talent show that a NY independant channel ran) waiting up late to find out what all the hubbub was about "All In The Family".

Moving to NH in 1974 I was struck by the difference in quantity. In NYC, lots of channels (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 25 and lots more). We got the Boston stations in southern NH (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 38, 56 and that was it). When we got 'cable' 2 years later, we got channels from Providence RI (alternates to NBC & ABC which was great when the MA Governor would take up all of the BOston stations with a speech or debate) and, get this, SHERBROOKE QUEBEC. CKSH-TV 9 got to be REAL popular with the high school kids because they had LOTS of nudity after midgnight on Friday nights. I learned a lot more French watching the Montreal Expos on that channel as well.

I got 'my' first set in 1981. I still have it and it still works. 19" Toshiba with the Sears name plastered on it. Got it the same way another poster mentioned - went to Sears saying I was interested in a TV and they were all too ready to set me up with my first credit card.


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## Jaspear (May 16, 2004)

OK, I'll get in on this nostalgia as well. 

The first set I remember was one my uncle owned, about 1949 or 50. It featured a CRT mounted horizontally in the cabinet. To view, you opened the lid to a 45 degree angle and watched the CRT on a mirror mounted to the underside of the lid.

He bought the set before the war, so it may have been this one or a similar model. I guess that would have made him an early adopter!


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## Richard King (Mar 25, 2002)

Jaspear said:


> OK, I'll get in on this nostalgia as well.
> 
> The first set I remember was one my uncle owned, about 1949 or 50. It featured a CRT mounted horizontally in the cabinet. To view, you opened the lid to a 45 degree angle and watched the CRT on a mirror mounted to the underside of the lid.
> 
> He bought the set before the war, so it may have been this one or a similar model. I guess that would have made him an early adopter!


Wow... projection television before its time.


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## Jaspear (May 16, 2004)

Richard King said:


> Wow... projection television before its time.


No kidding! Interestingly, there were a number of companies that offered actual rear projection TV's with a front projection screen in the late 1940's. Here's a fancy RCA from 1947:









My uncle switched to a front facing CRT set because his "mirror" set could only tune channels 1 to 4. He wanted to watch channel 6!


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## frederic1943 (Dec 2, 2006)

while not quite TV, remember the shoe fitting fluoroscope to take x-rays of your feet.

http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm

.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

frederic1943 said:


> while not quite TV, remember the shoe fitting fluoroscope to take x-rays of your feet.
> 
> http://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/shoefittingfluor/shoe.htm
> 
> .


It was sharper then our tv was much of the time in Sacramento in 1952. And your memory took you to a strange place. Mine does that alot.... All that exposure to xrays.


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