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Vintage Television and Video Vintage television and video equipment, programmes, VCRs etc. |
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5th Jun 2017, 6:06 pm | #41 |
Heptode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Belling-Lee advert in the 1938 Radiolympia booklet.
Jac |
5th Jun 2017, 6:17 pm | #42 |
Dekatron
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
7 Guineas: that's between 1 and 2 weeks' wages for a typical working man back then.
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5th Jun 2017, 7:00 pm | #43 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
According to the widget on my site, £7 7s. in 1939 is equivalent to £453.50 today. This is compared to prices.
Wages have since risen in real terms (how much they can buy), so a television aerial would have seemed even less affordable than that.
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5th Jun 2017, 8:12 pm | #44 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Just goes to confirm that first-generation pre-WWII TV was ** very very ** much a rich man's hobby! No wonder there was slow takeup, in a country that was still very much creeping out of the early-'thirties depression.
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5th Jun 2017, 8:32 pm | #45 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Yes, and despite talk of people buying the aerial but not the set "to impress the neighbours", with the aerial alone being so expensive I doubt there was much truth in that.
A lot of viewers must have been tempted to 'make do' without a proper aerial if at all possible. Then of course there were 'mains aerials' such as found in the Baird. It's little wonder that rooftop television aerials have been so difficult/impossible to spot in old newsreels.
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6th Jun 2017, 6:37 am | #46 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
EMI had the aerial + installation included in the selling price of the sets.
Jac |
6th Jun 2017, 7:44 am | #47 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
aerial included from advert of HMV in Television April 1937.
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6th Jun 2017, 1:58 pm | #48 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Re post no. 39,
Certainly Post-war 'Telerection' aerials (3 and 4 element designs) used first a 'T' match then with later models a Delta match. They had a reflector-plain dipole spacing of about 0.25 wavelength with a dipole-director (and director-director) spacing of about 0.1 wavelength. They were also inclined upwards at about 15 degrees. I don't know if 'Telerection' was in business before the war. It was a company based in Cheltenham - so somewhat in the deep fringe of Ally-Pally! |
6th Jun 2017, 11:44 pm | #49 |
Pentode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
I made similar attempts to find antenna pictures in prewar New York and
Los Angeles. I found the transmitters, but no receiving ones, at least ones I didn't already know about. |
7th Jun 2017, 12:20 am | #50 |
Dekatron
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Have you seen this web page?
http://www.earlytelevision.org/antennas_prewar.html There a number of web links on that page. Frank Last edited by Nuvistor; 7th Jun 2017 at 12:28 am. |
7th Jun 2017, 10:48 am | #51 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Thanks for the info on the Telerection aerials. I have what must be an early post-war catalogue and thought that the sloping orientation of their multi-element aerials was due to photographic perspective.
An early post-war US aerial array that seems to consist of stacked Band I and Band III H aerials of a type I have never seen in the UK is shown on a Norman Rockwell painting - "The New Television Set" - for the "Saturday Evening Post" of 5 November 1949, extract attached. Rockwell was normally very precise in his depictions and at that time tended to work from photographs. |
7th Jun 2017, 1:12 pm | #52 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Slightly off topic,
Emeritus, The Telerection 'Multimus' you have in your photo used the screw-in element mounting that is typical of the early designs, but the Delta match of the later designs. Those screw-in element mounts are impossible to take apart due to corrosion. Also the bakelite junction box is usually a corrosion disaster area. So the aerials look impressive but really cannot be 'resurrected' without serious hacking. The 15 degree tilt to the heavens make them look as if they are 'sniffing the breeze' for a signal. Certainly later 3 element designs used the 'plate' type mounting for the elements- so are dismantleable, but the junction boxes are still the same disaster area design. More to the point the gain claims are a little, on the large size, shall we say. Also on a channel B4 example, the reflector element length is a tad too short, and the directors a tad too long - so I've got my doubts about them. I reckon there is still a dipole (1DB/SO) 'in the wild' screwed to the side of a house on the West Malvern Road, on the West side of the Malvern Hills. The challenge is whether it is a B4 for Sutton Coldfield or a B5 for Wenvoe - both were equally feasible in terms of signal strength. |
7th Jun 2017, 7:54 pm | #53 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
There's one of the Telerection "upward-angled " 3-ele Gamma-match-fed antennas still visible on the A419 a few miles north of Swindon.
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7th Jun 2017, 10:51 pm | #54 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
If I can do so safely while driving, I'll have a look out for it when I head down that way at the start of next month.
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8th Jun 2017, 1:40 pm | #55 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Re post no 52:
For the intrepid picture snapper: the house at West Malvern is on the Hills side of the road about a couple of hundred yards down the road, travelling north, from a sign to the 'Brewers' Pub. |
8th Jun 2017, 3:37 pm | #56 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
For the armchair traveler, sit and let Google drive you there:
https://goo.gl/maps/6b7EYStKrKt Peter |
9th Jun 2017, 11:20 am | #57 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Peter,
Yes, that's the one. BTW the dipole is a perfect shape and not split as in the Google image. |
19th Jun 2017, 10:28 am | #58 |
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
Having today received a copy of Practical Wireless from 15-08-1936, I see that the Practical Television supplement vol. 3 no. 15 contained therein includes the image below:
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19th Jun 2017, 7:26 pm | #59 |
Nonode
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
What a strange aerial! Is it some sort of collinear array perhaps?
Steve
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19th Jun 2017, 7:33 pm | #60 |
Dekatron
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Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting
It looks more like a version of the "J-pole"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J-pole_antenna [which historically mutated into the 'Slim jim' ] |