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Old 5th Jun 2017, 6:06 pm   #41
Jac
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Default Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting

Belling-Lee advert in the 1938 Radiolympia booklet.

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Old 5th Jun 2017, 6:17 pm   #42
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Default 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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Old 5th Jun 2017, 7:00 pm   #43
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Default 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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Old 5th Jun 2017, 8:12 pm   #44
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Default 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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Old 5th Jun 2017, 8:32 pm   #45
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Default 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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Old 6th Jun 2017, 6:37 am   #46
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Default Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting

EMI had the aerial + installation included in the selling price of the sets.

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Old 6th Jun 2017, 7:44 am   #47
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Default Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting

aerial included from advert of HMV in Television April 1937.
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Old 6th Jun 2017, 1:58 pm   #48
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Default 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!
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Old 6th Jun 2017, 11:44 pm   #49
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Default 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.
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Old 7th Jun 2017, 12:20 am   #50
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Default 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

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Old 7th Jun 2017, 10:48 am   #51
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Default 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.
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Old 7th Jun 2017, 1:12 pm   #52
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Default 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.
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Old 7th Jun 2017, 7:54 pm   #53
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Default 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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Old 7th Jun 2017, 10:51 pm   #54
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Default 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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Old 8th Jun 2017, 1:40 pm   #55
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Default 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.
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Old 8th Jun 2017, 3:37 pm   #56
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Default Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting

For the armchair traveler, sit and let Google drive you there:
https://goo.gl/maps/6b7EYStKrKt

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Old 9th Jun 2017, 11:20 am   #57
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Default 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.
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Old 19th Jun 2017, 10:28 am   #58
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Default 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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Old 19th Jun 2017, 7:26 pm   #59
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Default Re: Pre-war television aerial spotting

What a strange aerial! Is it some sort of collinear array perhaps?

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Old 19th Jun 2017, 7:33 pm   #60
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Default 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' ]
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