TheShanMan:
That badge on your PB combo looks like a logo the company used for most if not all of its TVs. Most TV manufacturers of the '50s had logos similar to this, such as RCA Victor's first one, a stylized "RCA" against a red dot. Many '50s-vintage RCA Victor radios and TVs also had a plastic script logotype of the words "RCA Victor" as well. The round logo and the RCA script logotype were replaced in the late 1960s, 1968 if memory serves, by a logo made of block letters, which remained until the company went offshore.
RCA also used the round logo on its television test patterns and station identification slides for its operated TV stations; for the former, the logo and the words "Television System" appeared in the lower right corner of the test pattern. Stations WNBT (now WNBC) in New York and WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV) in Chicago were two stations which used this type of test pattern, although most NBC O&O (owned and operated) stations of the '50s probably used it or a variation of it until at least the early '60s. WKYC-TV in Cleveland was an NBC O&O from 1948 to 1965 and from 1965 to 1972, but its test pattern did not show the RCA logo nor the NBC "snake" logo, so it was an exception, although it is entirely possible that the station's test pattern used from '48 to perhaps 1959 or '60
did have the "RCA Television System" and RCA logo.
I was born July 1956 and remember the cylindrical 45 RPM record adapter well, as my folks had an RCA Victor 45-RPM single-speed changer (which plugged into the phono jack on TVs or radios of the '50s) with such an adaptor integrated into the spindle (i. e. the adapter
was the spindle). The turntable was attached to the spindle, so if anything broke or was damaged on either the whole thing had to be replaced as one unit.
The changer was meant to play only 45s and had no amplifier, so the only way one could listen to records played on it was to plug the output cable, which was connected directly to the cartridge, into the phono jack of a radio or TV so equipped. The TV's/radio's volume control, of course, was used to control audio volume. Since many TVs and radios of the '50s, especially consoles, had excellent audio systems and huge speakers, it was not uncommon to find phono jacks and TV-phono selectors on the rear chassis aprons of these sets. I have a 1960 Zenith C-845 AM-FM high-fidelity radio with such a jack, but I wouldn't use the jack for anything (even an iPod) today because the blocking capacitor between the jack and the chassis is almost certainly defective--read a shock hazard waiting to happen.
Of course, I'd replace the capacitor before even
thinking of plugging anything in the phono jack, as the capacitor is meant to isolate the jack from the chassis. With passive devices like the RCA single-speed turntable, the worst that could happen if the capacitor were defective or missing would be the user might get a shock if he or she touched the RCA pin plug and a grounded object at the same time; with solid-state gear such as an iPod or any other modern mp3 music player, however, the unit itself could be damaged or destroyed by AC line voltage appearing right at the jack's hot center pin.
