Vintage televisions, anyone? Post pics here!

[Fletch]

In a little book about electronics, from 1932, a schematic of a Tv set. No picture tube, but a disc with lens and lamps and a motor.

The lamp was a neon glowlamp whose brightness fluctuated with the intensity of the signal. It illuminated the lens in a dim reddish-pink. The lamp fulfilled the luminosity function of a picture tube. The lens was analogous to a screen - one seldom bigger than 3", and usually much smaller.

The disc, placed between the lamp and lens, had a spiral of holes (24 to 80, depending on the broadcast system) that allowed the proper part of the lens (ie: the picture) to light up so many times a second. The disc fulfilled the scanning function of a picture tube.

It was really that simple - except that you needed 2 radio sets, one for video and one for audio (if any was provided). There could also be sync problems if you were plugged into a different frequency of power line than the station used. Then you had to punch a little button to keep the picture steady.

I would love to see the results of anyone who tried to make a Tv in those days... (probably it won't work today because the number os lines, etc).

A few British experimenters have actually fed "old standard" definition video (no HD!) to mechanical sets. Only headshots were at all intelligible - much as in the days of mechanical experiments. It wouldn't have worked at all except for a handwritten program to translate the signal from 625 horizontal lines, the old British standard, to the REALLY old one of just 30 vertical lines.

It says something about this method of making TV that in the 75 years since it fell from use, there has been exactly one attempt to recreate it in a full-length program. In 1967 a British (again!) TV engineer rebuilt some old pickup equipment and a receiver, and brought back a producer who had done a playlet for the BBC in 1930. Here are the results.

[video=youtube;RJoYskwKxsM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJoYskwKxsM[/video]
I find this little clip fascinating for what it is. But modern-day video professionals tend to react to it as a kind of gross joke. Even the guy who posted it on YouTube felt a need to apologize.

 

[cooncatbob]

If there's one thing I don't miss it's old black & white TVs.
I remember as a child in the SF Bay Area we only got 4 state 2 KTVU (IND), 4 KRON (NBC), 5 KPIX (CBS) and 7 KGO (ABC)
The channels went off the air late at night and you were always having to fiddle with the Horizontal and Vertical Hold, then the tubes always went out and you'd have to call the TV repair man to come to your home with his caddie of tubes.
That's a dead vintage profession, I remember the guy messing around in the back while holding a small mirror so he could see the screen.
No, I wouldn't trade my 42 inch LCD HD TV and 100+ channels for the good old days, they weren't that good.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Mine aren't too vintage, but not what you typically see in the American home these days.

My living room set, given to me by a friend. Works like a million bucks and I watch TV on it every day.

My bedroom set. So many memories with this one. My parents bought it in 87 when they got married. It was our living room set for years. I've watched so many hours of Television on it. The ball drop on the 2000 new years and two winning Super Bowls for Green Bay (I had it on for good luck last time around)

This was my great-grandpa's when my mom was a kid. When he passed, it ended up in my bedroom (before I was even born) and was in my bedroom until my teens. Still works. My folks both talk about how great-grandpa would have this thing cranked so loud (when my folks were dating) that you couldn't even understand Howard Cosell.

This one was just given to me 2 weeks ago and sits in the guest bedroom, works great.

Funny story behind this one. Back in high school, I got a call from my FFA Advisor. He asks me "did you pull a prank on me? There's 2 orange recliner chairs and a console TV in my yard with a sign that says Hillbilly Heaven" I told him "I didn't do it, but I'll take the TV and chairs" now they're in my family room lol

I have more sets in storage as well.

 

[dhermann1]

Yeah, not necessarily "antique", but very nice. As a guy who remembers TV as far back as about 1951, those sets don't look old to me at all, and yet actually any set from the 70's is now very old.
Those sets are really gorgeous, and with the advent of flat screens, CRTs will become curiosities. Those are really beautiful TVs. You should hang onto them, and before long they'll totally qualify as antiques.

 

[Absinthe_1900]

This page page on the 1930 mechanical TV production of The Man with the Flower in his Mouth has been around for some years now, but still has some great info: http://www.tvdawn.com/mwfihm.HTM

 

[Fletch]

This page page on the 1930 mechanical TV production of The Man with the Flower in his Mouth has been around for some years now, but still has some great info: http://www.tvdawn.com/mwfihm.HTM

Yes...I can't understand why people who use, make, and enjoy video have to be so smug about where it came from, just because it's technology and newer is better.

Not to find anything amazing about the fact that so simple a system as Baird's actually worked and was even usable, seems to me like an act of willful blindness. It would be like Bobby Rahal trash-talking vintage race cars instead of racing them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yoo Toob is hardly the place to search for contemplative insights on twentieth century culture. While there's some worthwhile video and audio material buried among the zit-popping footage and flaming-bag-of-poop stunts, the comment sections are pretty much a useless sluice-basin that seems to cater pretty much exclusively to half-witted twelve-year-old boys who're too lazy to go out and deface a bathroom wall. In which regard it achieves immediate parity with about 98 of the typical 100 channels on any cable system.

 

[Fletch]

Yabbut it's not just a YouTube issue. Even Michael Ritchie, the H'wd director who wrote a whole book about experimental TV, squandered most of it in snark about the pioneers' efforts. I couldn't even get my dad - who started in video production in 1954 and who has patiently heard out my Aspie riffing about Baird, Farnsworth et al. for hundreds of hours - to watch the Flower clip and do any more than wince at the lack of technical quality.

As for YouTube itself, at least the 78 record videos are relatively free of adolescent jackassitude. Altho only about 12 Tubers seem to be watching and commenting - most of them middle-aged or better and tending to gush about every platter as if it's the absolute cat's nuts.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Well, thank you for the kind words. I would like to have some older sets, but these were all free and I think they fit the decor of my house pretty well. People come over and always go "Wow that's such an old TV" I think nothing of them, that's what I grew up with and what everyone had. My family's never been much on updating, so maybe we were just behind the times.

Since my parents gave me their console about 5 years ago, they've went through 4 or 5 sets. Can't beat that Made in USA quality of the old consoles!

Yeah, not necessarily "antique", but very nice. As a guy who remembers TV as far back as about 1951, those sets don't look old to me at all, and yet actually any set from the 70's is now very old.
Those sets are really gorgeous, and with the advent of flat screens, CRTs will become curiosities. Those are really beautiful TVs. You should hang onto them, and before long they'll totally qualify as antiques.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

Always my favourite set:

 

[martinsantos]

Absinthe, thanks for the link! Loved this site!

You'll want to visit here:

http://www.televisionexperimenters.com/

Fletch, thanks for explaining. Made me very clear the little article in the magazine I wrote about. And the youtube video is really very interesting and fascinating, as an old technology getting on way again.

More than everything, at those days some very criative guys were creating a completely new system of images. This is wonderful! Something that, ever if we don't like Tv (my personal opinion), we always have to admire.

The lamp was a neon glowlamp whose brightness fluctuated with the intensity of the signal. It illuminated the lens in a dim reddish-pink. The lamp fulfilled the luminosity function of a picture tube. The lens was analogous to a screen - one seldom bigger than 3", and usually much smaller.

The disc, placed between the lamp and lens, had a spiral of holes (24 to 80, depending on the broadcast system) that allowed the proper part of the lens (ie: the picture) to light up so many times a second. The disc fulfilled the scanning function of a picture tube.

It was really that simple - except that you needed 2 radio sets, one for video and one for audio (if any was provided). There could also be sync problems if you were plugged into a different frequency of power line than the station used. Then you had to punch a little button to keep the picture steady.

A few British experimenters have actually fed "old standard" definition video (no HD!) to mechanical sets. Only headshots were at all intelligible - much as in the days of mechanical experiments. It wouldn't have worked at all except for a handwritten program to translate the signal from 625 horizontal lines, the old British standard, to the REALLY old one of just 30 vertical lines.

It says something about this method of making TV that in the 75 years since it fell from use, there has been exactly one attempt to recreate it in a full-length program. In 1967 a British (again!) TV engineer rebuilt some old pickup equipment and a receiver, and brought back a producer who had done a playlet for the BBC in 1930. Here are the results.

I find this little clip fascinating for what it is. But modern-day video professionals tend to react to it as a kind of gross joke. Even the guy who posted it on YouTube felt a need to apologize.

 

[Mr_D.]

This is my living-room TV, rescued from the dump in 1986. It was one of the first television sets in my home town -- we didn't get television at all until 1954, and this model dates to that fall. When I found it the neck was snapped off the picture tube from being tossed off the back of a truck onto the skip, but it was otherwise in working condition. I replaced the tube, using one salvaged from a junkyard, and then got around to re-capping the chassis about ten years ago.

Does everything I need a TV to do, plus it helps keep the living room warm. What more could I want?

After reading around this site for a while now and reading a lot of your post about stuff you hove found and got, I am starting to believe you have a time machine and you just go back in time to get things LOL. you are very lucky to have some of the things you have. I would die for some of those things.

 

[airgrabber666]

Beautiful televisions, everyone. Especially yours, LizzieMaine. I was wondering if I was the only individual that enjoyed such outdated technology. I've been looking for one of my own but not actively...I was so inspired by your posts that I went out and picked up a vintage set of my own off of my local Craigslist. Pictures, if you are interested, are to follow.

 

[Kirstenkat]

I'm not in the need of a new television anytime soon, but I saw the most gorgeous 1940s, 50s TV at a antique store last weekend. It was amazing I wish I got a picture. Looked a bit like this, but the bottom was all wood

Quite a bit of money of course though. The only concern I have with antique TVs is getting full cable or satellite. I don't know anything about them though, so who knows maybe it's possible. I'm kind of a couch potato and watch a lot of channels. My dad always tells me when he had only 4 or 5 channels. While I envy the simpleness of that, my modern side needs all my silly sitcoms

 

[airgrabber666]

It's a blonde '62 Magnavox 27" Normandy Provincial B & W console with power tuning and automatically adjusting picture. Supposedly, the 27" screen is the largest offered in those years.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have mine attached to an analog VCR, and the VCR attached to cable. A dvd player is plugged into the line input on the VCR, but you could also attach any other device to that input. Works fine!

 

[airgrabber666]

I'm not in the need of a new television anytime soon, but I saw the most gorgeous 1940s, 50s TV at a antique store last weekend. It was amazing I wish I got a picture. Looked a bit like this, but the bottom was all wood

Quite a bit of money of course though. The only concern I have with antique TVs is getting full cable or satellite. I don't know anything about them though, so who knows maybe it's possible. I'm kind of a couch potato and watch a lot of channels. My dad always tells me when he had only 4 or 5 channels. While I envy the simpleness of that, my modern side needs all my silly sitcoms

While I like the style of antique sets and revel in the possible nostalgia of watching old episodes of The Honeymooners on a classic television...I would not trade my living room LCD TV for one. Rather, I think of a vintage TV as a supplemental set for watching old movies or TV shows.

 

[airgrabber666]

I have mine attached to an analog VCR, and the VCR attached to cable. A dvd player is plugged into the line input on the VCR, but you could also attach any other device to that input. Works fine!

Kirstenkat, as LizzieMaine states, it's entirely possible to hook up an old set to a DVD player or VCR. Don't let that stop you from buying a nice vintage set!

 

[LizzieMaine]

After reading around this site for a while now and reading a lot of your post about stuff you hove found and got, I am starting to believe you have a time machine and you just go back in time to get things LOL. you are very lucky to have some of the things you have. I would die for some of those things.

If I had a time machine, I'd open up a shop and *sell* the things I brought back. (Which sounds like a great concept for a sitcom, but I think someone beat me to it.)

Seriously, though, it's taken me over thirty years to accumulate as much stuff as I have around here, and I found most of it just by keeping my eyes open and not being afraid to drag things home that needed a bit of repair work. That's the best way to find a vintage television set -- and if you live near an area that had television early, you'll have a much better shot at it than someone where television didn't show up until late in the day. I'd love to have found a late-40s TV, but they just don't exist here.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

This is how I've set-up with vintage TV's in the past.

I have mine attached to an analog VCR, and the VCR attached to cable. A dvd player is plugged into the line input on the VCR, but you could also attach any other device to that input. Works fine!