Thank you Charles
 

Mr Arkay was also generous enough to clue me in.
I did think he may be spoofing but the initial story sounded possible to me because I thought nobody in a group of such highly intelligent, well-educated and considerate people would bother to think and type so much just to fool strangers. To me that is not at all funny but I don't mind and my previous words CREEPY AS HELL were not reflective of any anger towards anybody. I just thought it was creepy to say what I was part of was creepy. Now I guess it was creepy afterall but not as creepy as praising Heath Ledger as though he had accomplished anything important in his life.

Earlier in the day I was watching a special on Egypt tomb carvings showing the helicopter, speedboat, and plane all next to eachother as I described previously and other specials that brought me to believe there are wilder possibilities in life than I thought. Another showed many people out west claiming to have seen ships come out of the ocean. A 911 call desribed overhead huge craft. Much else was presented with info on magnetic possibilities for these vessels. It was about something I had never heard of but it seemed logical to me.
I am frustrated not being able to figure out what is true or not. I thought I was getting smarter but now I think I may have some brain damage.
I should have known I would have heard about the exploding sets if it was true but I thought if UFO's are real than this story could be also.
I can't believe I'm that slow. I guess the person who wrote the story will get a real thrill from making a fool of me? I think this was good for me but I just feel kinda creepy.

You cast yourself as a "stranger" but I wonder if maybe we knew you before by another name...http://b7.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/0...71723117_s.jpg

Would you like me to be someone that was here before? Sorry to disappoint you but I am not who you obviously think I am. He is a very good friend of mine who was, in my humble opinion, abused by at least one person here who apparently was on some very odd power trip. Apparently the offender is an extremely successful man with beautiful children who, surprisingly to me, seemed to take a genuine pleasure in hurting my friend based on his words. I heard my friend wrote horrible things in return and that was completely wrong of him to do so.

Perhaps it will please that person to know that not only did my friend throw away many worthwhile TV's but also gave me his two RCA's that I mentioned knowing at least several of you would know the sets as if they were your long lost children. He became very depressed over being treated as he was and is currently in a private mental hospital after being persuaded by his family to not take his own life.

He told me that if I came here I would find some of the greatest people on earth. He said he regrets what he did but could not help himself because he believed he was being targeted for a bully's pleasure. He said he will never come back here. I don't believe he will ever come back here because I have known him since the first grade and he is one of the most sincere men I have ever met. He is writing a story about it all and thinks he can sell it. I'm not sure how you sell a book from a mental hospital but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Is he crazy? I guess he is or he probably would not be where he is now.

Wow...This is gettin' deep...

He's going to sell a book about being mistreated on a bulletin board to the extent that he needed inpatient mental health treatment?

I think the book about the black-hole TV sets will sell better.

No way could you pass enough current through the 18ga power cord and the chintsy little interlock to create this kind of magnetic field. Now a hospital EMR machine absolutely can, but have you ever seen the gage of wire going to one of those things?

Well, I checked our historical newspaper indexes, and while I couldn't find anything to support this story (no Chicago papers), I did come across a couple of interesting articles from the time period.

veg

Has anyone seen White Noise or white noise 2? The part where the ghosts were coming out of the plasma set and he whacked the screen with a baseball bat? Did you see the amount of glass that flew from that screen along with the shower of sparks and the smoke? I bet if I whacked a plasma it wouldn't do half that. My point... Hollywood amplifies the reality, what it sounds like here in this case is someone somewhere had turned this story upside down and made it sound like something that might have happened but not to the amplitude of what we are hearing... I just dont see how a TV could produce such a magnetic force to pull an object at high rate across a room... Just my opinion, take it or leave it but yes, this thread is a bit interesting.. No offence of course at all to those who moderated this thread.

Kudos to Newton for generating 45 replies in less that 24 hours!
 

As a guy who made a living for many years arranging letters of the alphabet on paper, I cringe sometimes at what my fellow editors have allowed to pass under the guise of reason masked by a word of admonition.

Consider the article veg-o-matic found: Forty-three years ago a house fire in a Deal, NJ home -- which by happenstance is two miles from where I write this bit -- was made by the NY Times to 'appear' as though a TV picture tube blew up and started a deadly fire. Check the fourth word in the article: 'apparently'. It is a way to make the entire article legal but, because of its location, quickly forgotten in the mini avalanche of negative news that follows about the fire and its victims. One easily leaves with the impression that an exploding television picture tube blew up and started a fire where people died. Gruesome. Bad TV set.

But television cathode ray tubes can implode in a fire. Maybe that's what actually happened. How can we know what happened forty-three years ago?

I wasn't there.

Maybe the "...explosion-like sound" reported in the NY Times was an exploding bottle of potable flammable liquid that ended up feeding the fire. I wasn't there.

Were you?

Don't be too quick to put faith in words you read. (paranoid persons excluded of course :-)

ouch
 

I will definately keep this in mind.

Thank you.

Consider the article veg-o-matic found: Forty-three years ago a house fire in a Deal, NJ home -- which by happenstance is two miles from where I write this bit -- was made by the NY Times to 'appear' as though a TV picture tube blew up and started a deadly fire. Check the fourth word in the article: 'apparently'. It is a way to make the entire article legal but, because of its location, quickly forgotten in the mini avalanche of negative news that follows about the fire and its victims. One easily leaves with the impression that an exploding television picture tube blew up and started a fire where people died. Gruesome. Bad TV set.

But television cathode ray tubes can implode in a fire. Maybe that's what actually happened. How can we know what happened forty-three years ago?

I wasn't there.

Maybe the "...explosion-like sound" reported in the NY Times was an exploding bottle of potable flammable liquid that ended up feeding the fire. I wasn't there.

Were you?


Seems like it should be possible to substantiate things from the past without actually having actually been there.

Ah yes, that is the challenge, isn't it?

http://b7.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/0...71723117_s.jpg is apparently back. :sigh:

Ok, for the record. I humbly apologize for playing along with Arkay's spoof. Electro-Harmonix tubes do not blow up guitar amps. Back to the Future wasn't real, and I don't want to duct tape a color TV to the front bumper of my truck. Jeez. One would think that any slow child over the age of ten would have known that was sarcasm.

Brach, I challenge you to join that other forum and make friends with all the members there until one of them cracks and lets you in on the secret of the tpu device. They obviously know something we don't, so they're smarter than us. It won't pay to ask around here, but they have it over there on that forum, I'm sure. If you don't have a 1965 GE color set, get one and experiment. When you find the answer, get back to us. Don't get back to us before then, only post here when you've got the answer. It'll make you cool and everyone will like you then.

No apology necessary. I was given a clue and a generous explanation by someone who is apparently very considerate to all others.

Again, I apologize for not being Bobby but if you'd like I could probably convince him to return. He is allowed to use the computer sometimes in his new temporary home.

A very good thead so far. I can only hope that since the tone is civil, no one will jump the gun and lock it! I would make the case that the tv only needed to produce the field for a moment, actually a mano second, to produce the result. . . so that removes the idea of needing time to build a magnetic field. Possible.

Someone probaly exagerating on fireball flybacks on magnavox or sears or possibly tvs?? Don't have or seen in person, but have seen older posts here of some bad flyback failures ---they may have ended up in smoke!

Certainly the most interesting thread here lately in AK TV World!
My reaction has gone from:
Hmmm...
Whoa!
Ha!
Hmmm...

Neat urban legend. Perhaps, way back at the root of it, lightning found its way to a CTC-11 clone. Lightning does do weird things-tends to magnetize CRT's (fairly common; not destructively so. degaussing fixes it) If I was going to explore it I think I would take that route.

My head is spinning.

Charles

It is me again.
Well now I see I should have ask a different question. The Exploding TV thing is side tracking my real question I have.

I was trying to be directed to to a source of information regarding early 60s GE color TVs via a Sams or other factory data for study and thought this would be a good place to start.

As Far as the exploding GE TV goes, I don't know if it really happened or not and don't matter one way or the other as this is not that important to my work.

However, thats right, I am working on building a Steve Mark TPU unit as discussed in one of the posts here.

The GE color TV part is only about 5% of what I am working on.

I was just trying to find some information on early GE color TVs for further study is all.

Thanks,
Newton

Newton, I'm sorry your post got so sidetracked, I was assuming you were asking if a malfuctioning TV could explode in such a manner to which I still say no, however if this is siome type of theoretical Quantum Physics experiment then who knows.

I have some schematics of early- mid 60's color sets, don't know if any are GE but they are all pretty similar.

If you PM me your address I would be happy to send you a couple.

Eric

Checking the Proquest database (which *does* carry the Chicago Tribune, as well as the NY Times, Wash Post, LA Times, Atlanta Journal-Chronicle, Chicago Defender...) absolutely nothing on any related keywords about color televisions exploding. Closest thing: January 27, 1970 Chicago Tribune: "122 Color Television Models Criticized in Safety Report," attached. Though it uses the term "explosion" it actually is just talking about sets catching fire, which I think we all can agree is possible. All the other articles with these keywords were either irrelevant or were talking about the explosion in color television (which in Chicago seemed to be happening every few years...)

Jeff Martin
Chicago, IL

Eric, thanks for your offer.

I think the early 60s color GE model set I am looking for information on is the one (s) that uses convergence coils instead of permanent magnets.
I don't know just which GE color model that is.

It is thought by some, that these coils were the source of the "problem" with the GE color TVs.

It is not just the coils themselves or the connected devices to the coils, but the arrangement of those coils that were / are, thought to be critical to the nature of the "problem"

It is this coil arrangement, yoke arrangement, CRT and the connected devices that I have an interest in.

I hope some one knows which model(s) this is and could let me know.

Regards,

Newton

Hmm, that 1970 article does list GE sets as more prone to catch fire than many other popular brands. (No data was submitted on Japanese manufacturers) :scratch2:

All early 60's sets used convergence coils - you are seeking a distinction that doesn't exist. Really, there is no possibility of this event ever having happened; my advice is to either give up or be prepared for many years of a fruitless hobby chasing this urban legend.

maybe "twilight zone" or "outer limits". dont think this really happened. make a good episode though. glad i didnt buy that ge roundie. potential atomic device,disguised as a television set. clever,very clever!

Note: only certain models.

Also note that the reporting of TV set "fires" is historically extremely sloppy. It undoubtedly includes some cases of smoke but no fire due to operation of a circuit breaker or fuse, and some cases where the fire started in some other way, but the TV set was blamed because it was convenient. Still, the engineering evaluation of materials present to support combustion is valid, and I believe these kinds of things were addressed by UL with stricter criteria for materials and tests. I personally can recall upgrades of PC board materials and wire insulation temperature ratings, although the details are lost to memory since I did not work in product engineering.

All that said, I do not leave my 1967 Magnavox plugged in when not in use.

I was digging around myself tonight and came across a blurb from a trade magazine from about '66 mentioning the same thing as one of these, about a simpler color crt from GE. This article was a little later and had the details: they were talking about the portacolor crt, which was simpler by virtue of using the inline gun.

I can play along with all this to a point. Okay...convergence boards varied somewhat from model to model. I would start comparing Sams for RCA sets and their GE counterparts and see what the differences were, and look at the convergence boards and see if they differed significantly. I am not a conspiracy theorist-I would say I am a skeptic. I see no harm, in this case, with helping out those who want to play with it. I have a pile of old paperwork and it's enjoyable to leaf through it anyway, so if I can find something why not share it. I was contacted by someone else privately regarding this whole thing and have offered them some suggestions.

There were GE sets (and come to think of it..other brands too) I would like to have seen explode. Then I wouldn't have had to fix 'em.

Y'all got my nerves tore up. Now I'm thinkin maybe I'll leave this vintage TV collectin' thing alone and go back to the safety of my day job at the dynomite factory:)

I'm not even a TV guy, but I had to read the whole thing.:sigh:

All I know is, when I was a kid, I could put my bare feet on the screen of our RCA roundie and see the bones in my toes.

Excuse me...I think I got something in my third eye. Need some eyedrops. Gotta wax my scales, too.

:lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao:

Hello Newton, I have a guess on how a imploding crt could generate magnetic fields way above the usual levels associated with normal tv operation. Of course my theory is about as scientific as discussions of the star ship Enterprize's warp drive. In a article of Popular Mechanics magazine Sept 2001 issue. They discussed how a Electro Magnetic Pulse EMP weapon would work. It requires a collapsing magnetic field, usually you have a coil of superconducting wire, that is energized, and then you have a small explosion which forces a copper tube to progressively short out the length of the coil which causes a induced pulse to emerge from the other end. It sounds far fetched but their illustration kinda looks like a long deflection coil. I know a deflection coil isn't a superconductor but maybe it was struck by lightning at the moment it happened. Just my 2 cents, Logan:nutz:

Ball lightning, that's the ticket! It purportedly does stuff like this. I remember an article about it, maybe in Popular Science, or the tongue-in-cheek Uncle Tom's Corner in Electronics Illustrated.

What does a slam on Heath Ledger have to do with jerking us all around for five pages of postings on what is obviously a huge jerk off tale? But the person who put up the frame from the movie with a light hearted joke about TVs blowing up gets high marks from me for disarming what otherwise could have been a positively explosive degeneration into homophobia.
The Vulcan aphorism applies here: "Wanting a thing to be so does not make it so." T'Pal's admonition to Archer referred to time travel; we might as well have been comparing notes on our recent trips to the week of the big bang for all the veracity this thing held from the get-go. Or as William Shatner told a shocked SNL viewing audience: Get A Life. --Tom H

Ahh, but time travel ended up being true... The basis for the whole series.

I would be more inclined to trust the NY Times than a Vulcan... Vuclcans are always holding-back and sneaky.

Man..I HAVE been away too long, I guess....
 

Some interesting things have been discussed here haven't they??

Someone mentioned lightning:: I am no physicist--BUT...I can think of ONE very REMOTE but MAYBE possible explanation

First:: there are a couple of "initial conditions" that would HAVE to be met here--for this to happen.

1--the CABINET MUST have been made of metal.
2--the set MUST have been hooked to an MATV system or rooftop antenna.

If so-I think HERE is what MAYBE could have happened:

The set is on, playing normally. Lightning, hits the rooftop antenna, or CLOSE (it does NOT really matter if it hit, a close strike is sufficent).

For a couple of milliseconds or so, BEFORE the resistance of the lead-in, amp tubes(of the MATV amp, if used) and power cord, casue destruction, a VERY VERY high current/voltage pulse WITH a VERY powerful magnetic field, could enter the set, AND IF it had a metal cabinet, in THEORY, for a brief milisecond, the cabinet COULD have become a VERY powerful magnetic source, before it totally vaporized and exploded.

That is my THEORY--as I said--it is a VERY remote possibility--but maybe possible. and it is the ONLY practical explanation I could think of.

Because--otherwise, the power line would have to supply more than 500 -1000 amps, to provide probably 15k Gauss of magnetic power, needed to magnetize the cabinet and cause the effect.

:DHey wait a minute! Vuclcans can't lie :no:; it's against their nature or something. But the NY Times... remember that reporter covering those two nuts shooting people from the back of a car; dude was writing fiction that made the front page.:yes:

hehehe
 

hehehe

Just how much energy does it take to pull nails out of walls? I bet it is a lot more than can be drawn from A 117 volt circuit, even if the 15 amp fuse ( we are talking 1960's) were removed and a copper penny installed in it's place.

Perhaps they had several bedrooms full of capacitors and one full of rectifiers.