There was an exhibition of vintage television receivers mounted at the Science Museum in London in 1980, billed as "The Great Optical Illusion". Philips Industries and Thorn Consumer Electronics were involved, and I understand Gordon Bussey was responsible for the overhaul of the sets. I welcome more information about this and others who may have been involved.
Certainly, the sets performed impressively and in particular I remember seeing a pre-war Baird T5, showing a large and bright picture.
Now,
stevehertz has very kindly sent me the original newspaper-size document that accompanied this event along with some other historical items. I have now scanned this to make it available here. You'll see the 'centre-spread' was hand drawn and shows some very interesting sets!
It's worth noting that at the time of this exhibition, the 405-line service was still on the air, proving that the historical interest of vintage television sets was already being recognised before these broadcasts ceased.
There are three levels of access to the scanned images. Firstly, low definition copies of the three pages are placed here as attachments, to give you a taste. Secondly, you can download three 1500-pixel-high jpegs
HERE (the introduction),
HERE (the centre-spread) and
HERE (the vintage set ads), which are big enough to read properly. Lastly, I have the 300 dpi original knitted-together scans. These can be sent by email following a request by PM.
Hope you enjoy! A big thanks to
stevehertz for the original document and keeping it all these years in good condition.
Steve Ostler