1961 hand held color tv?

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by etype2

The 1966 Intertel set was indeed a working prototype. In the Feb. 1966 issue of Popular Mechanics magazine there was a 5 page write up about it. The opening paragraph by the reporter: "FLAT TV PICTURE TUBES ARE REALLY HERE. There are both color and black-and-white versions. I know, I've seen them in action. I've held them in my hands."

This photo is of an actual image on the screen: http://www.visions4.net/journal/time...wordpress-525/

I am very skeptical ... Popular magazines such as PM and MI were saying that flat screen "hang on the wall" TVs are "coming soon" & "just around the corner" since the Aiken and Gabor patents were filed in the 50s. Work did continue on both designs until about 1970, but no practical production devices resulted. No doubt, designers could have been working with such devices and speculating about and showing mock-ups of potential applications, but I think that the cover picture from PM was a total "hoax", for several reasons:

1. The circuitry required to operate a color flat tube in 1966 IMHO, could not possibly fit inside that box.

2. The "beach scene" lighting likely would have washed out any CRT display.

3. If the display was transparent and viewable from both sides, as indicated, wouldn't the viewers arm be viewable in the background of the image.

4. The display picture simply looks "too good" ... if Intertel had something that good in 1966, what happened to them?

again, just my 2 cents worth,
jr

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by etype2

See photo of Motorola 1966 working prototype 1 inch TV: http://www.taschenfernseher.de/doku/motorola1966.jpg

Interesting. Do you know the magazine (title, date) where that article was published?

The article mentions a paper by Mr. Tanner that was read at a 1966 IEEE convention. The IEEE website has many old archived documents. It would be fun to read that guy's paper, if available.

Phil Nelson

[etype2]

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

Interesting. Do you know the magazine (title, date) where that article was published?

The article mentions a paper by Mr. Tanner that was read at a 1966 IEEE convention. The IEEE website has many old archived documents. It would be fun to read that guy's paper, if available.

Phil Nelson

The article about the 1 1/8 inch Motorola TV was from the Columbus Dispatch in 1966. I don't know the day or month. I saw this on the history of television website. If your a subscriber to IEEE, would be interested to read his paper.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

The article about the 1 1/8 inch Motorola TV was from the Columbus Dispatch in 1966. I don't know the day or month. I saw this on the history of television website. If your a subscriber to IEEE, would be interested to read his paper.

DeLoss Tanner died (cerebral hemhorrage, IIRC) just before I got out of school and joined Motorola. I inherited a different project of his, a transistorized black and white TV that was an experiment in cost reducing any way conceivable. The set was breadboarded on a tinplated steel sheet. My first job was to buy a car battery and charger to run it. The IF transistors had no emitter degeneration and were current-biased by the AGC circuit. The CRT had been built from a cut-down glass milk bottle, with the bottom of the bottle as the screen. You could read the dairy's logo, stamped in the bottle bottom, in the picture; and it was, well, "milky" looking (no aluminization). The set basically worked, but there was no hope of holding tolerances for production. I got it running, and it went into storage or maybe got trashed, I don't recall; but at least it then was a documented experiment.

[Sandy G]

Yeah, the 1969-70 Panasonic Mica-1 set was B/W. Sorry about that, Chief...

[Electronic M]

If that flat screen two color CRT actually worked then it mat have been possible to make a three color tube by adding another layer to it.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

If that flat screen two color CRT actually worked then it mat have been possible to make a three color tube by adding another layer to it.

I don't see how. The glass that carries the phosphors has only two sides, and the idea is to have two beams approaching the opposite sides through vacuum.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

I don't see how. The glass that carries the phosphors has only two sides, and the idea is to have two beams approaching the opposite sides through vacuum.

Use one more screen with it's own deflection, and make one of the two screens semi-transparent so the two screens can be watched at the same time adding the primaries of each to make a tricolor image.

The two color one already had a semi-transparent screen so one could probably add another tube behind it with a third phosphor color to get full color with out any major modification.

Heck one could probably double up two bi-color tubes one having two primaries and the other having the third primary plus a white monochrome phosphor for improved brightness/simplified circuits.

[Sandy G]

I remember reading that RCA had a 2-color system that they developed while struggling w/the NTSC system... The story goes that they were gonna demonstrate it in Washington in Sept 1949... There were 2 huge receivers, apparently they were hybrid color wheel/CRT technology. It was DREADFULLY hot, the guy who was in charge was drenched w/sweat, they started the demonstration, & 1st one, then the other receiver failed, w/a large "BANG !" each.

[David Roper]

Are you sure it was an RCA demonstration? I'm quite sure they didn't do any color wheel development whatsoever, at least in the postwar period, much less attempt to demonstrate such in 1949.

[Sandy G]

Pretty sure it was-It was in that EXCELLENT book, "Behind the Tube", which gave an insider's look at the early days of TV from someone who was there. Naturally, I've misplaced it-Or I'd go look it up & fill in the blanks

[etype2]

One more tiny set:

Because this 29 transistor, 14 diode receiver was designed and built in 1964, it does not use integrated circuits. It weighs only 12 1/2 ounces and the entire unit occupies just 1.2 cubic inches of space. The earphone cord acts as the antenna. This television was featured in the October, 1967 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. See photos below.

I have other photos showing an actual Black and white image on the screen.


http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...Tim-525-WP.jpg

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...-1a-525-WP.jpg

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

One more tiny set:

Because this 29 transistor, 14 diode receiver was designed and built in 1964, it does not use integrated circuits. It weighs only 12 1/2 ounces and the entire unit occupies just 1.2 cubic inches of space. The earphone cord acts as the antenna. This television was featured in the October, 1967 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. See photos below.

I have other photos showing an actual Black and white image on the screen.


http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...Tim-525-WP.jpg

http://www.visions4.net/journal/wp-c...-1a-525-WP.jpg

I think this set has been mentioned here before.
It was a black and white set. It worked, but had some shortcuts, such as, the channel was permanently tuned to one Chicago station and could not be changed from the outside. Still, it made for interesting press copy.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

I think this set has been mentioned here before.
It was a black and white set. It worked, but had some shortcuts, such as, the channel was permanently tuned to one Chicago station and could not be changed from the outside. Still, it made for interesting press copy.

I can see why this TV had to be fixed-tuned to one channel. I doubt varactor tuners had been thought of in the 1960s, which rules out pushbutton channel selectors, and the very small size of these sets would have ruled out the use of any kind of mechanical RF tuner as well (I have never seen any turret or switch-type VHF TV tuner that would fit into a television set this small).

The fact that this TV used the earphone cord as the antenna, and does not seem to have any input jacks or terminal strips for external antennas, would mean the set would have to be located in a very strong signal area to operate at all, say within five miles of the transmitter. I cannot see this set working at all in the semi-fringe area in which I live (I am about 35 miles from the Cleveland TV stations) or any other such area; forget about using a set like this in a deep-fringe area--all you would get on the tiny screen would be snow on whatever channel the set had been factory-tuned to. I don't think this TV would work on cable or with a DTV converter box, either. But then again, who would want to tether a small TV like this to cable or to a DTV/cable box?

BTW, I remember the Popular Science article in which this tiny Motorola TV was featured. However, I did not realize at the time the set's shortcomings. I also remember a caption beneath one of the photos of the set in the article: "Don't wait for this (TV)...it's not going into production." My best guess is this was simply a prototype, which was never intended to be mass-produced.

[etype2]

Reserrecting this old tread. Found this recently, a working two sided flat screen television on display at a Japan expo in 1967, one year after the Popular Science cover photo and discussed in this thread and 15 years prior to the first Sony flat Watchman CRT. The film is in black and white, but the two sided display could have been in color. The ID plate looks like Sony or Sharp. See the video below.

http://media.gettyimages.com/videos/...d177080116?p=1