Re: Television in the Home
 

No doubts on that one. Cossor 137T. (Both cased and uncased.)

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Thank you Peter. To round off the pre-war materials, I have included this picture from Andy's book. This shows part of the exhibition of vintage television mounted at the Royal Festival Hall in 1986. This took place in a lobby area, and concert goers could drop by and have a look on their way into the concert.

I contributed a couple of sets but the majority were supplied by John Gillies. Several were shown working. I recall there was also a Marconi 701 or HMV 902, also working, in a rather nice 1930s room setting.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

I've just finished this HMV 1816 and received permission from the director of furnishings to place it in the bedroom. It has had a re-gun tube at some stage which is still in very good condition. Apart from the usual de-couplers, a combustible valve holder and all the waxies, there was very little wrong with it. All the sliders are good. Does anyone know if EMI did a turret conversion for this model?

Re: Television in the Home
 

Very nice, Steve! There was a similar type of set with doors, an opulent HMV 1806 I think, shown working at the Festival Hall exhibition.


Now for something completely different... though still very much "television in the home"... mechanical television in colour.

This is a 120-line mirror screw I constructed some years ago. These two videos were taken from across the room with my mobile phone. This was necessary because the picture width varies with viewing distance. Sorry I didn't remove the barometer on the wall before recording - it's rather a distraction - and the frame bars are of course artifacts. The actual screw rotates at 25Hz (twice a Baird televisor's speed) so flicker is not too bad. Note the flashing in front of the device. This is because the whole thing is irradiated in brilliant modulated light that carries the video information.

Click HERE and HERE to view.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Niechial.Steve wrote: "Does anyone know if EMI did a turret conversion for this model?"

Hi Stephen
It's possible that the 14 channel EMI incremental tuner was available for Band 1 and 3 conversion of this range of models. The tuner was fitted later 1824A models.
The HMV 1816 has near BREMA IFs of 35.5Mc/s vision and 38Mc/s sound.

DFWB.

Re: Television in the Home
 

That thing is just amazing Steve. I'd love to see it live some day (without the bars).

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

That certainly is something different! What amazing quality. What is the modulated light source?

Re: Television in the Home
 

Thanks David. I guess the the HMV must have been one of the first sets with higher frequency IFs?

Re: Television in the Home
 

Peter's photo of that Loewe set (post 141) seems to be the answer to the question "What do you get if you cross a television with a ziggurat?"

The cabinet styling appears more Central American than Bauhaus.

David

Re: Television in the Home
 

A 702 lights up the room for this family watching a fake image.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Uncle Sydney demonstrates that Mickey is perfectly clear on 180 lines.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Three parallel rows (RGB) of brilliant LEDs totalling 198 in all in a vertical assembly. See 1st pic. The required video bandwidth is 240 KHz. The late Karen Orton made a Timing Corrector, which in addition to other tasks converges the reflections of the red, green and blue LED rows.

The assembly is so bright it's probably dangerous to look at directly, though is fine when spread out into a reflected raster by the mirror screw.

Here's another scene from Andy's book: 2nd pic. What's the date? About 1958?

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

A couple of Retrovisors in the home. The cream one was the last one made.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Panrock wrote: "Here's another scene from Andy's book: 2nd pic. What's the date? About 1958?"
Hi Steve,
The TV looks like a Ferguson "Golden Glide" model from 1960.
Not sure about the gram, Pye G63 perhaps?

DFWB.

Re: Television in the Home
 

Television in the Student Digs

South-East London in 1991. A photocopy of a photo taken by my flat mate. Enjoying some early evening entertainment on the Invicta 697-chassied set.

Attractive floral blanket box as a TV stand. Prized Sharp VHS machine below and a newly acquired Sony C7 Betamax from the junk shop across the road. Amstrad Stereo speakers around the fire place.

A friend donated the Invicta set - he'd been using it in his damp bedsit, watching TV with the fizz and glow of corona around the anode cap. By the time we got it the mains filter cap had gone pop and necessitated some track repair on the EHT board.

Sold the set for a couple of pounds at a boot sale on leaving college. Back to a Bush Ranger black and white portable in my digs for my first job.

SR

Re: Television in the Home
 

Some good responses. Wish I had a picture of the K-B Royal Star I operated at boarding school (against the school rules) in the '60s!

Here's another from Andy's book, apparently taken from a postcard. The set?

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

I don't know about the TV, but the electric fire is a Belling!

Re: Television in the Home
 

Is that TV placed on top of an electric fire then? 8-o

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Not a period photo but period props.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

These are not period photos either, but I think/hope it makes sense to post them here. The first one is from a really nice website devoted to film props, 'Our Life with Props', which features a section on the 1984 production of Nineteen Eighty-Four (directed by Michael Radford, with John Hurt, Susana Hamilton, Cyril Cusack, Richard Burton and many other great actors). Among other aspects, the art directors and prop makers wanted to create future technology as it would have been envisaged back in the 1940s (this is sometimes called retrofuturism, I think). The first photo depicts their interpretation of the infamous Speakwrite machine (a sort of bidirectional TV + (des)information system). They had to build many of these and so they used vacuum formed plastic painted and finished to look like bakelite (the descriptions and stories on the website are very interesting and I definitely recommend it to anyone who's into film and film props). This is in fact one of my favourite films, and one that has marked me deeply from the moment I first watched it back in the mid-1980s. When I recently came across the film prop website, I realised that perhaps this had something to do with my taste for Bush TV22s and DAC90As (I have two of each, which are actually my only vintage sets). Can you spot the similarities?
On another note, and inspired by this thread, I think it would be great to have a thread on "Television in the factory". I managed to find online a couple of reasonably good photos of the Bush factory, which have a lot of interesting details, including the way the chassis actually looked like when they were new.
Helder

Re: Television in the Home
 

If you liked the Speakwrite in the film version of "1984" Helder you will probably enjoy the technology in the film "Brazil" too.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Thanks Peter. I don't think I ever managed to watch Brazil in full, but will give it a go soon, possibly on the TV22. From what I recall, and apart from the opening scene with the soon-to-be-exploded TV22-ish sets, the aesthetics was closer to cyberpunk (e.g., Blade Runner) than to the 1940's retrofuturism in "1984". Regardless, I enjoy both.

Re: Television in the Home
 

This might not be the right place and I can't do a link but Steve did say that his thread was originally inspired by a domestic photo.

Episode 2 of "DNA Family Secrets" [Stacey Dooley] BBC2 shows Margaret standing next to the family TV Console. It has four prominent control knobs. She is aged 6 and was born in 1953 so it's 1959! Do we know the make and model? On I-Player, it's at 3 minutes in!

Dave W

Re: Television in the Home
 

Attachment 230800
A forensic question about the date,
I wonder how long it took for the speaker aperture to darken in that familiar manner?

Re: Television in the Home
 

KB LFT50 1954 ?

Actually the tube look bigger so maybe the LFT100 1954.

Cheers

Mike T

Re: Television in the Home
 

I'd never have thought of "dating by darkening" as Graham suggests-thanks for posting the link:thumbsup:]. If it's a 1954 set, there's only five years to blacken the speaker outline but that was different times-coal fires etc:shrug: Would it be the spkr magnet attracting fine dust/metallised particles or is it warm air from the interior collecting on the frame as it leaves via the grill? I'm guessing a Console KB would be a relatively high end purchase then!

Dave

I think it's a great photo by the way!

Re: Television in the Home
 

My TV22 at home. The two Crystal Palace Towers are within line-of-sight, which means anything remotely conductive behaves as an antenna, namely the triple RCA cable between my main source (a basic set top box with an usb port) and the hedghog, resulting in significant interference in the image. A shielded cable did not work either, and the fix was to use a cheap and relatively long (1.5m or so) triple cable twisted around 4 times (you can see this in the photo too).

Re: Television in the Home
 

Ye Gods! 'Within line of sight' is a bit of an understatement, it's looking right down your chimney! I thought I'd got problems with Moorside Edge ten miles away.....

Re: Television in the Home
 

Yes, I guess I should have said "right in my doorstep". The first tower is actually 200 meters away and, according to Wikipedia, its total power is around 1.3MW...

Re: Television in the Home
 

I recently totted up the transmitter powers at CP, assumed they are erp's not eirp's and a mean frequency of 550 MHz, and fed this into the Ofcom ICNIRP calculator, I got a minimum safe distance of 434 metres. 8-o

Of course, this is 'in the beam' though.... ;)

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Thanks Steve. I calculated the (straight line, fixed height) distance on google maps, and I got 390 metres. The distance to the top (220m height) is roughly 450m, which is closer to your minimum safe distance of 434 metres (phew!), but still...

Do you know where I could find the radiation pattern for the CP transmitter?

Helder

Re: Television in the Home
 

Steve, I found the radiation pattern at ofcom:
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/asse...l-plan-v13.pdf

Is the azimuthal angle measured with respect to North?

Helder

Re: Television in the Home
 

Hi Helder.

Since this is now going rather off-topic for the thread, I shall reply by Private Message. :)

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

A pre-war group. But what's the large screen set? It seems to have too many grille spars to be a Baird...

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

The T5 has three bars (or five if you count the top and bottom). The later T5C and T23 just have two.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Photographer John Myers shot a collection called "Ten Televisions" from Middle England which can be seen on his website here:

http://www.johnmyersphotographs.com/...elevisions.php

Re: Television in the Home
 

"Myers claims that the people and places he photographed were ordinary, neither particularly attractive nor particularly strange, but to read these pictures of a contained 1970s world today is to be struck above all by their pastness, which is a distinct form of strangeness and one tinged with melancholy."

Yes, the 1970s is a period best forgotten.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

What is this projection set?

Steve

Edit: just spotted the Decca badge. I'll now hotfoot it over to Jonz site to see if there's more info

Re: Television in the Home
 

Hi Steve,

From Jonz site the Decca Kensington is like the Knightsbridge but with bookshelves either side which could be what is hidden behind the opened doors in your photo.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

One in the Scott household. Photo from 40 years ago. A GEC C2041 that was my very first colour TV bought off a pile of ex-rental sets in a back street warehouse.

Peter

Re: Television in the Home
 

Is that a Cannon Gas Miser I can see peeping round the edge of the picture?

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of my first colour television - a Philips G8 (model 3720?)

Re: Television in the Home
 

Yes, I was really into Cannon Gasmisers in those days, mainly pulled from skips and some years later I bought half a dozen ex-rental G8s to repair and sell but unlike the 2041 they were all sin bins sets each with multiple board faults so it took me rather longer than I expected to fix them and I only got 5 working sets out of the bunch in the end.

Peter :'(

Re: Television in the Home
 

A friend set me this picture over WhatsApp the other day during a discussion about (trouser) braces!

I think the set here is a Pye FV1C. I had one of these many years ago. It always seemed too short to me to be a 'proper' console, so I made a plinth for it.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Shown before elsewhere on this forum but included here for completeness... well, if you allow a hospital to stand in for a home.

That could well be the mains lead strung out, doing duty as a "Baird Mains Aerial"!

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

... and just waiting for someone to walk into it!

Re: Television in the Home
 

That photo of the Ferguson Golden Glide was actually taken in Leeds circa 1994 at the home of my late friend and tv collector Pat Hildred. And yes the record player next to it was a Pye. Pat collected many sets - the stack of 1950s tvs shown in Andy's book also belonged to him. He enthusiasm for all things 50s/60s was limitlesss and he was a great inspiration. A good friend and sadly missed.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Wow, some fabulous photos there! Interesting to note how many of the sets are rentals, mostly from Granada.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

Yes, most with the ubiquitous vase of flowers on the top, providing the spillages that kept us busy.

Re: Television in the Home
 

Are we going to identify the sets? Let's have a go...

First row: 17" BRC 1500; Philips 300 series; Granada badged GEC series 1
Second row: Granada portable* x 2 and a Baird 1500 (just like my gran had!)
Third row: RBM/Murphy A640 chassis; Granada badged BRC950?; Another portable
Fourth row: Looks like another rental BRC 1500. Never seen that presentation before. Does it say Multibroadcast bottom left? Hmm.

* The Granada-badged portables are interesting. I recognise the sets but don't know who made them. I think they are possibly Japanese imports.

Interesting that the photos date from 1973 and not a colour set in sight.

Steve

Re: Television in the Home
 

The Granada portables could be Hitachis as they seemed to supply some of the smaller Granada sets later on in the 1970s & into the 1980s.

Frank Spencer managed to cause a fault on a similar Baird badged 1500 in an episode of Some Mothers Do Ave Em, once I worked out a potential model number, but can't remember it now.