The Original Family Zenith

[Arcanine]

How often can a person say, they know the entire history of a set that's as old as this one? The date sticker on the back says 1982. Purchased brand new by my mother in 1982 for a weekend house in Northern Wisconsin! So it never really saw a huge amount of use in the beginning.

It was around when I was an infant. I remember mom playing the original NES on this TV. I was born in 1986, and this was the family TV at the time.

We moved to the Lake Geneva area in 1987, and the TV came with. The TV was then replaced by a Philips in late 1989, and this set was relegated to the hobby room in the basement until we moved from that house in 1996. It saw weekly use in the basement hobby room, but only a couple hours at a time. It used to have a Panasonic Pop-Top VCR plugged in to it, and I would watch movies on it. That VCR died just before we moved again.

By 1996, it was pretty old. It was just placed in to storage in the basement. I pulled it out though the years and used it a few times. Until today the last time I turned it on was 1998! It was very sleepy when I woke it up. The tube had very much gone to sleep. I let it run for a few hours and it cleared right up with in the first hour of use and still produces a clean and sharp picture.

None of the pots are scratchy, nor are the channel selectors. Everything still works as it did when I put it away.

It's had it's scrapes and bruises over the years. The cover for the speaker and controls is long lost (Anyone have one that might fit??), and the speaker was damaged by me when I was a kid, because I liked to stick pennies in it, so dad snapped off the plastic that covered the speaker so I would stop putting pennies there (they'd rattle and I thought it was funny).