Chuck,
I think you are right on the cabinet, at least it is certainly a Victrola cabinet. I also have the mirror. The guts were discarded a long time ago, when Grandpa(Les Flory) turned the cabinet into a hi-fi cabinet with Garrard turntable, tuner and amp, and record storage. That is how I am using it now, but hope to drop a round-tube chassis in there someday and recreate the look and feel of the original set. Vertical hold on the front makes riding sync easier. ;) I may have the original tone arm and reproducer from the phonograph.

Rob,

A Sparton 4940 would probably be an ideal candidate to retrofit into the cabinet.

Too bad the HI-FI won out over the TV.


Chuck

Sorry to bring back an old thread, but I just found this picture at my grandma's house , taken in 1981, but the set is older, I know nothing about it, and nobody can rebember anything about the set, seems like an intersting design with the knobs across the top of the screen.
Any ideas about brand, or if it was color??
Somewhere is have a much better picutre of her late 60s RCA color console (She had a lot of TVs), which she used until 1990, and would have kept using it, but the picture tube died...:(
And was replaced with a Zenith Sentury 2 Console, still going strong today.

http://homepage.mac.com/brameika/mysterytv.jpg

Yes, that's all of the TV that was in the picture, sorry I don't have a better one.

Thanks...

Max, that set looks to me like a Zenith. I discovered this while looking at the partial pic you attached; found the name right above the CRT. I can't tell you if it was a color set, though, without seeing more of it.

The Sentry 2 series was a great line of TVs. I have a Zenith Sentry 2 19" table model in my bedroom which still works as well as it did when it was new, almost ten years ago. I don't use it much anymore; it was my main watcher until 1999, then I bought an RCA XL100 when I moved in November of that year. I still keep the Zenith around to back up the RCA, and will use the Zenith as my main set when the RCA eventually goes West.

Zenith was my favorite make of TVs and home audio gear until the company went offshore (grrrrr!). Whereas the company's old slogan for years was "the quality goes in before the name goes on" (this was true of their older radios and TVs--I have two Zenith radios that still work today, and well, in addition to having had several old Zenith TVs from neighbors' trash in the '70s that often worked as soon as I got them home, or after very minor repairs--tube replacements, adjustments, etc.), in the case of today's Zenith-branded Gold Star televisions, "the quality went out" the window when Zenith left Chicago for Korea in the '80s (this was probably when their audio division went offshore; I once had a Zenith integrated stereo system which was made in Korea, however, that worked well for me for some 17 years).


I did not realize until I read your post, however, that the Sentry 2 model was also offered in a console cabinet. Was always under the impression that this model was only made in a gray table-model cabinet, as mine was.

BTW, I don't much care for the way the finish has been flaking/scratching off the cabinet of my Sentry 2. The set was made almost a decade ago, as I said above, and already the cabinet is starting to look bad, although the TV itself works great on cable (no CRT or chassis problems whatsoever so far). What was used to finish the cabinets of the Sentry 2 table models? I've never seen the finish scratch or flake off a plastic cabinet before now, and I'm baffled. I'll probably wind up refinishing (if that's the right word) the cabinet with woodgrain Contact paper or some such material if and when I put the set in my living room, but I would like to know what caused the original finish to go to pot as it did. My best guess would be that the cabinets of these offshore-manufactured TVs are nothing like earlier ones, but then again, a lot of what comes to us today from Korea and other offshore locations isn't of the quality things used to be, when everything was made in the United States and Zenith, for example, meant Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago, RCA meant Radio Corporation of America of Harrison, New Jersey, Magnavox meant The Magnavox Company of Fort Wayne, Indiana...and so on.

Personally, I suspect Zenith started cutting corners on its color televisions as soon as its System 3 line, with plug-in printed circuit modules (gasp! :eek:!!!!! horror of horrors!!!) , was introduced in the '70s. This was the beginning of the end for Zenith as far as the company's reputation for reliability was concerned. The day the company abandoned hand-wired circuits in favor of circuit modules was the beginning of their downfall, IMO.

Oh well--that was then; this is now, like it or not. Offshoring, as it is known these days, is a way of life for many (if not most or all) manufacturers of consumer goods. The quality of these goods has, in many cases, gone out the window as a result, but there is precious little if anything we can do about it short of putting up with it.

Don't be, new postings keep things interesting :)

Odd looking set, is that the tuner sticking out the front like a big thumbwheel?

Maybe a Westinghouse?

I could swear I have a SAMS (of course, 3 hours away) that had a similar set pictured and I am pretty sure it was a Westinghouse.

Thanks for the replies...
Looking at the actual picture, I think I can just make out numbers above that big knob, so it is probably the tuner.
I will be doing a lot of cleaning there soon, since she is moving in about a month, so I will look for some mroe TV pictures, maybe a better one of this set. I know she had a LOT of TVs in the 50s and 60s, so there are probably more photos.

Max:

This ad looks a lot like the set you pictured. It is taken from a 1961 Sears catalog.

Steve

Wow!, That sure looks like the set.
I'll show it to my mom sometime, to see if it beings back any memories.
The date seems right, since this was her "basement" TV when the photo was taken, and probably moved down in the late 60s when she got her RCA color console.

Thanks for the ad!!!

I should have made the Silvertone connection-I've got a Suburbanite table set that is maybe a few years older than this but has the control panel across the top. Different design but same idea.

eBay again
 

These look more like professional monitors but still cool:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...111626982&rd=1

Re: Family TV Photos
 

Rob, that photo of your Grandpa looks to be a professional picture. The lighting, composition, and the fact that there's a clear screen shot of the TV (an actual live picture with no scan lines) all lead me to believe this.

Did this photo appear in a magazine etc at one time? Or was/is there a professional photographer in the family? Just curious.

Anthony

Cool eBay photo
 

I found this record at a church sale, and had to buy it because of the TV.:D
I've never seen a set with a tuner like this, there don't seem to be very many CBS sets out there.

If you're intersted, the record is "67 Melody Lane: Ken Griffen at the Wurlitzer Organ - 18 Selections from the Ken Griffen film series, "67 Melody Lane".

Whoa, how did you tune that thing?
Does the control slide along the bottom there or what??

The tuner does nothing......that set only receives CBS stations!!

Anthony

Here's another, I believe this was my grandma's first TV.
Thats my Mom and her sister setting there.
Don't know the brand of the TV, its long gone, but if you look on the lower shelf in the corner, you will see a little ceramic alligator, which she still has today. :)

Awww, how cute !! Those 2 l'il girls look like angels......Doncha just wish it could be 1955 again, just for a little while ?!? -Sandy G.

...

Those consoles just look out of place in the "mansion". He was probably too, eh, busy to worry about that!

Here is a shot from Christmas '75, me on the left, my sister on the right. Thats our old GE color console; I can't remember what make the console stereo on the left is-it was replaced with a Zenith later on.

WOW look at that RED carpet!!! :eek:

Here are some pictures I took in the early seventies, The first was when our RCA we purchased in June 1969 had its first failure two years later. Notice the Sony B/W on top! Oh, and the Channel Master antenna rotor control next to it
The other was when we were traveling, I liked this Mag so I took a pic of it!
The next is when we lived in Tucson, It is the hybrid RCA I mentioned earlier (Accucolor) The kid from next door is almost blocking its view!

Picture taken in a bakery, on September 18, 1950 - day one of brazilian television. The crowd is watching the inaugural broadcast in an RCA set. Sorry about the small size of the photo.

Captainmoody thanks for posting the RCA ctc-39. I have the solid-state clone of it but would like to find the tube model someday.

Another eBay photo
 

This gentleman looks rather uncomfortable sitting in front of a Sylvania Halolight?

Maybe his back hurt?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-1950s-TV...QQcmdZViewItem

Kinda hard to sit appropriately in those old armless chairs from the 50's. My grandmother had chairs like the ones in the pic so theres all kind of photos of relatives sitting just like that in our photo albums :lmao: :D No Halolites though as my grandparents only had a 1955 RCA Victor portable that they used until the late 80's when they gave it to me when they bought their Sylvania Superset. Needless to say it didnt give them the same service as the old RCA as the Sylvania is in tv heaven and the RCA is still playing in my den.
-Tony

TV Photos.
 

It's mis-placed, but, somewhere, in our family archives, is a picture of me sitting in front of our 1950 RCA Victor family tv set, at the ripe old age of 1 year old. :no: Won't show if I find it, though, as picture might be slightly obscene. I was buck naked!! :lmao: :naughty:

First TV set factory in Brazil
 

I was surfing the net when I found this photo...it was taken in 1952/53. It was taken on the Invictus factory, which produced the first televisions made in Brazil in early 1952. This is one of their very first models, I believe it was one which was also a radio set.

same model of the above photo
 

I was researching my archives on CD-ROM's when I found this 1952 ad. It's the same TV on the photo above.

Wow, I imagined south america getting TV much later. Todays spanish TV shows seem to be mostly "T"&"A" shots mixed into everything for kids and adults alike. I would love to see early broadcasts from spanish TV. Does anybody know if spanish broadcasts were always as sexual as they are today?
I would guess yes but perhaps with a little more good taste.

I suspect all here can be trusted to respectfully veiw a 1 year old child nude.
Somehow I think we would not notice the private areas but you could blur it out if it makes you feel better. I think Bill is being funny but what a downer to think that as a society we have to be paranoid about a nude baby.

Don't take that the wrong way! I love our society inspite of my recognizing faults here and there. I love everybody and everything, I just wish we could all be concerned with the important stuff first

I don't need to see Bill's photo but it would be cute to see a TV where it was way back then.
It's frustrating to not be able to add any humor here as someone would likely interpret it completely wrong.

That's likely because the people who would complain to the FCC never watch the Spanish TV channels. And nobody at the FCC watches Spanish TV either... :nono: My father used to like to put the local Spanish TV stations on just to see the above mentioned t and a... :nono: This annoyed my mom... :nono:

TV in South America
 

Here in Brazil we don't speak spanish, but portuguese.
However, the standard of TV programming here has been very low, lots of sexual stuff, but it is a little better now.
I don't know about the other latin-american countries, but the standard of programming here was very different on the early days of television. Very high level - Shakespeare plays, some short documentaries, lots of musical numbers, Quiz shows, cartoons for kids and sport broadcasting. I imagine that the standard for TV broadcasting here went downhill when the TV set began to became affordable to the masses of the poor and uneducated, no longer being just the rich people's toy it was in the begining. I also imagine that the "liberation" of the morality that happened around the world in the 60's played it's part as well.
Very little recording of the brazilian television of the 1950's exist today, because 90% of the programs were live staged, and most of the stuff that was recorded on film was destroyed on fires that plagued the TV stations in the 1960's ( believed cause of those fires is political motivation ), and also, many of the earlier TV stations, including the first one, went bankrupt and are no longer operating.

[QUOTE=Captain Video
Very little recording of the brazilian television of the 1950's exist today, because 90% of the programs were live staged, and most of the stuff that was recorded on film was destroyed on fires that plagued the TV stations in the 1960's ( believed cause of those fires is political motivation ), and also, many of the earlier TV stations, including the first one, went bankrupt and are no longer operating.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for that info. I am surprised and saddened to know that. I have wondered about such things possibly happening to old video/movies. To think of what was lost is very sad.

Found a couple more Tv pictures on Ebay.

Just think... that was back when kids' Christmas gifts were simple and easy to pick out. A little girl with a toy horse... another one with a Monkees toy. Imagine this... today... go out and buy your daughter a Justin Timberlake doll!

Here a couple more pictures. The Ebay link has a picture of an RCA set with KJEO test screen image.

polaraman




http://www.ssb4.net/members/watch/en...1166754840.jpg

I wish we could tell what those kids were watching on that porthole Zenith, Bozo The Clown, Howdy Doody maybe?

That Ebay picture with the RCA sure has poor linearity. The wax paper caps must have been leaking already.

1950 Rca
 

The picture below is very historic. In the screen of this RCA Victor set is the image of Mister Assis Chateaubriand, the founder of Brazilian Television, making the inaugural speech of his TV station on September 18, 1950.

A picture of W.C. Runder Tv store. Any info on this??

polaraman

http://cgi.ebay.com/1963-VINTAGE-W-C...QQcmdZViewItem