The 15GP22 Rebuild Project

[zenith2134]

Sandy, I once read that NASA's computers back then weren't even equivelant to a pocket calculator today. And you're right--look what they did with them!

[leadlike]

Fixer-by coincedence I was just up at corning glass and they had a shadow mask on display in their museum-it was labeled as one of the first ones made, and IIRC, it was attributed to Westinghouse. From the looks of it, it was indeed 15gp22 sized.

What gets me is that I live in Lancaster, Pa-where RCA made color CRTs and I believe even the 15gp22s. Why can't one of these turn up for me locally? I drive by the old CRT and tube plants everyday....

[Aussie Bloke]

MRX37, your comment has really brought up some interesting and informative responses.

Putting my own humble opinions in response to your thread and the following responses, if all the engineering data for building a 15GP22 still exists in a RCA archive and there's a rich CT-100 hobbyist out there that is a millionaire and is willing to spend astronomical amounts of money in rebuilding a mini 15GP22 tube plant built to specs matching that of the original plant or a modernised plant with more refined modern tube making machines that do the same job, and of course the materials needed for the CRT then I would dare say making new 15GP22 tubes would be possible.

However it's obviously not a profitable project as the majority of people in USA are not interested in owning a colour TV set from the 50s let alone wanting new tubes, they want a wide plasma screen TV.

So to make new 15GP22s is weighted on being able to obtain all the engineering data for the CRT and the CRT building plant equipment and someone who is willing to spend astronomical amounts of cash in making a CRT plant to do the job and the materials.

I can somewhat see the possibility of some major electronics company remaking CT-100s utilising modern electronics and modern round tube CRTs made to modern CRT specs as a retrospective release by demand if enough people in USA are interested in owning a classic style RCA CT-100. This sort of project was successfully done with the classic 1958 Philco Predicta TV set, Telstar are making these sets with colour CRTs and making them in a range of styles and colours, check out the site http://www.predicta.com/index.shtml .

So I go with the flow and say rebuilding the old 15GP22 is the way to go.

[Sandy G]

There's also the very strong possibility that duplicating a 15GP22 would be illegal today-Perhaps some of the chemicals, phospors, etc, are on the EPA's "banned" list, & could not be used or handled anyway. We ran into that all the time in the plating business-you were always trying to find a substitute that hopefully worked as well as the "verboten" methods. Sometimes they did, a lot of times they didn't.

[MRX37]

Then, like Aussie Bloke said, they could just make a replica from all glass with more modern components (perhaps a round version of the famous Zenith Chromacolor). It'd be cheaper, and while not historically accurate, it could bring a CTC 2 chassis back to life.

[colorfixer]

Companies like Svetlana Electron Devices still builds common audio tubes. Didn't the Russians build their own CRTs? Wonder what happened to their plants?