Philco B314JWH TV
 

A Philco TV, though it's made in Taiwan for some company who must have bought the rights to the Philco trademark A set of the kind that you forget you own, hiding in the attic... :D
http://www.wa2ise.com/radios/philcomadeintaiwan.jpg

I had one like it in Orange, wound up sending it back to the Thrift Store from whence it came.

IIRC that has a real Philco chassis in it. Probably sold
after Sylvania took them over, otherwise it would say
Ford also. Philco built a nice little solid state B&W at
the end. They also had a flying saucer style one.
After the Ford era they switched to Sylvania chassii
& slowly rode off into the sunset............

73 Zeno:smoke:

Philco? Are you sure you don't have them mixed up with Panasonic?

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The chassis does look like an American design. As if they shipped the tooling and jigs to Taiwan.

Philco had one too. The Panasonics are more known.
I had worked on both. IIRC RCA had one also ?

73 Zeno:smoke:

Not unusual. The 12" & 16" Zenith B&W hybrids also came
out of Taiwan. Hand wired but had PCB's for IF & the low level stuff.
NOT as nice as a US made Zenith but a good set.
Odds are if the back of yours is held on with phillips its a Philco chassis.
If 1/4" then its Sylvania. "Screwology" the art of IDing a set
by its hardware.
Hows about a chassis picture for memories ??

73 Zeno:smoke:

You'll have to show me some, as I've never seen a Philco or an RCA that would have been described as a "flying saucer".

.

Here is the Philco
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-RED-...item4d3348741f

With the 9" screen its not as dramatic as an Orbital but we called
them flying saucers at the time. Probably the same chassis as
the one here. Came in other colors, not sure if any were AC/DC.

As far as RCA goes I was not sure on that. They did have a wedge
shaped hybrid B&W I may have been remembering. That set was
a bitch to get the back back on! Not a good set. Ran too hot & the
PCB's were not of the usual RCA quality, etch lifted easily.

73 Zeno:smoke:

That Philco was generally called the "space age" tv, I've never heard of it described as a "flying saucer" tv.

That Philco looks similar to my model B310 in white.
Those were made by "Philco of Taiwan" about 1970.
Everything inside operated from 12 volts via pass-regulator, so the set could be powered from a cigar lighter with a bit of internal work.
IIRC, GTE did not buy Philco from Ford until 1974.

I think the Spacey set was made for 1973

Edit: My set does have the Ford logo and the channel selector knobs are different, but the bright-volume and on/off switch is identical.

I remember in the book "Iacocca" Lido stated that Henry Ford didn't want his name on anything made in Japan. I wonder if he put Taiwan in that same category? Hard to explain all those Ford Courier's they sold, though. I have noticed that many bw portables from that era lacked the Ford logo, though I have seen it on stuff built around the time of the space age model.

Last night I happened across parts of an interesting book on Google; it was a chapter on the marketing of TV sets through the 70s. Lots of interesting tidbits, talking about the overcapacity of color CRT production in the early 70s, the sale of Philco's color CRT plant to Zenith (which soon had to idle it) and the story of what caused Ford to finally pull the plug on Philco consumer electronics. It said that several months worth of production in, I believe, early '73, were built with defective Motorola IC's. The cost of fixing that problem was the straw that broke the camel's back and they bid adieu to the old Philadelphia Storage Battery Company.

I still have an orange version of this set, a '74 built Philco Ford. Came with a detachable sunscreen. Knobs on mine are smaller and uhf is continuous tune. Bought it for $1.75 - Used it regularly for ten years until the transition.