How did people watch 7" sets?
 

As I've been using my Admiral and Motorola 7" sets, it occurred to me to wonder how the living room of the late 1940s 7" set owner set up their living room to use their televisions.

If it was set in the traditional few feet in front of the coffee table, people would have went blind watching TV or had to watch the set with a pair of opera glasses. Yet, I don't ever remember seeing any pictures of any living rooms with any of these sets....seems that 10" was the minimum living room size set.

We can pretty much be sure that TVs in the bedroom weren't the standard back then unless you were filthy rich.

Here's the only photo I could find that shows a living room with a 7" set, I took this as a still out of a Motorola TV commercial from 1948. They can't be more than 3 feet from the set, which is actually about right. I picture all of their living room furniture moved into a corner, and the rest of the room totally empty :D

Just the thrill of the new entertainment absolved all inconvenience of viewing hurdles.

Yeah, just HAVING one of those "Majickal Boxes" that had radio AND pictures was the Marvel of the Age.. Went to a wedding reception last night, talked to a woman who REMEMBERED sets like this & my Porthole... She said they'd put chairs in a semi-circle in front of 'em & stare intently at the flickering box..

Well, I can't testify how they watched 7" sets, but I can sure testify how I watched my 2nd TV, a huge 8" Motorola that looked like this,
http://www.tvhistory.tv/1949-Motorol...kelite-8in.JPG
except that the volume and contrast control had a brass insert with a red Motorola squiggle in the center matching the fine tuning control. Since I bought my set for $10 used and almost working at a 2nd hand store in Brownsville, TN, in 1958, I am assuming these matching knobs were original for this set. While I was still in high school in Dyersburg, TN, the set lived on a table in my bedroom with a rabbit ears on top, and could receive a beautiful picture from Jackson, TN (Ch. 7 CBS) and a slightly snowy picture from Memphis (Ch. 5 NBC and Ch. 13 ABC) but absolutely nothing from the CBS station there (Ch. 3)

After graduating in 1959 and moving to Atlanta, GA, not only was I not rich, but had trouble stretching my paycheck from week-to-week, but I had my set sitting on top of my wardrobe in my bedroom, with a rabbit ears on top and got a good picture of all four channels there. Of course, since I had a one room apartment, it was also in my kitchen and my living room.

When I moved to NYC, the set lived on my kitchen table, except when company was over, and then it was dumped in the closet. This set continued to be my daily driver until NBC started carrying the space flights in color in December 1965 and then I replaced it with Sears made by Toshiba.
http://www.earlytelevision.org/image...iba_16inch.jpg
http://www.earlytelevision.org/image...nch_chassi.jpg
I kept the Motorola as a backup set for a few years and it still put up a rather good and bright picture, but the center of the screen had picked up a 4 inch round brownish ion burn, a very common problem on the 8BP4's. I tried to find a replacement CRT and could not, so I gave the set away.

The Toshiba was a daily driver until 1972, at which time it too became a back up set, and again with the legs removed up on top of our bedroom wardrobe, so we could watch Johnny Carson in bed. In 1984 it was retired as a working set, but kept as an emergency backup until I junked it in 2006 still working, but needing a recap in the worst way, never realizing that it was a rather rare set.

However, I still have a Pilot 37 that I bought for $15 in 1965, in one of the junk shops down in Radio Row (this is the area that was demolished to make the original World Trade Center) and I've always wondered how one watched a three inch set . . . . . . :scratch2:

James

I basically asked my dad the same thing once and he said that they just didn't know any different. It was just amazing to them to be able to see pictures from St. Louis or NY, it didn't matter what the picture was or how good the reception. He did say that after a while the charm wore off and they realized the shows weren't that good.

Here's a photo from Life magazine's archive showing a family in Erie, PA that just got a TV. There's another picture in the series showing the kitchen full of empty beer bottles after everybody left. Others show the man buying the tv, and setting it up at home. I think the photo essay was originally about a new TV station going on the air and the effect it had on residents.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life...5f1776c24.html

http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/972...776c24_landing

Siting closer would benefit for sure , this is why Jack Webb had so many close ups in the 50's Dragnet , he felt that even with 10" or 12" screen you still had a small picture so by doing close ups people could see the faces , also in the movie with Shirley Temple and David Niven from 1949 ( the name escapes me ) there is a 7" Emerson in the living room .
the up side to a 7" is it didn't take up much room.

Funny how times changed between then and the 70s, when a 12" set was a common bedroom fixture and a 25" console was considered a giant screen set. Then there's the Mitsubishi World Square 37 from the late 80s, biggest set I know of from that time. Imagine one of those bad boyz into your living room, or even getting it in there, ouch.

What gets me is that in SO many pics from "Back in the Day", the people were always dressed up like they woulda been if they were heading off to church... Here in Greater Bugtussle, as I write this on Sunday, 12.30 pm in early June, its already 80-85 degrees w/withering humidity... I DON'T see how people stood being dressed up like that back in the days before A/C..

I think Dan pretty much hit the nail on the head.... As for the semi-circle
around the tv, just before the tv, was the radio, and pictures I have seen show
most listeners pulled up a chair and sat near the radio, even though those old sets
had amazing sound quality that easily filled a room, or two. I don't think back then
that people generally "needed" the picture for them to enjoy the show. They
were use to radio. I bet for a while, they didn't feel they were missing much
if the picture was too small, as in the 3" or 7" sets. I think the "picture" part was
a novelty, but it was still Burns & Allen, or who ever else they were now "watching"
instead of just listening to. And I bet they knew what they (B&A) looked
like anyway.... From other advertisements for the radio shows.

Very simple! If you wanted a job other than ditch-digging or farm labor, you had to get dressed up!


The interesting story behind the picture that egrand posted is about the opening of WICU in Erie, PA and it is on pages 101-107 in the May 2, 1949 issue.

WICU was a new in 1949 small station with only 12 employees. Apparently when the station first opened, despite the fact that the AT&T cable that carried the network programs was nearby, it was not available to the station, so all network shows were on film.

This link should get you there:

http://books.google.com/books?id=hk4...0Nuber&f=false

If it does not, do a Google search for: Life Magazine all issues

or try:

http://books.google.com/books?id=R1c..._issues_anchor

and find the issue by date.

James

Young people watch full length movies today on their tablets with 7 inch screens and on their 3 inch screen cellphones.

Absolutely true, but in the case of tablets and phones, they sit on their laps.....

I'd just like to see more pics of living room setups around a 7" set, which must have been common in the house of 1948. Of course, RCA (I'm guessing) took the market for 1949 with their "anniversary" model (9T246) priced at 199.95, only $10 or $20 more than the Admiral and Motorola 7" offerings.....not to mention the other companies in the fray at that time.

Yes.absolutely correct. I'm monitoring all this on a 7-inch tablet. Sitting 12 inches away from it.

When I restored my 7 inch National television, I said pretty close to it too on the kitchen table.

It does get tiresome, though. I can see how RCA Victor went immediately to a 10 inch minimum CRT size after the 621TS. Best way to combat the cheapies. Of course, they were in a position to do so.:smoke:

That's a good segue into another question. Does anyone use a 7" set on a regular basis, or is it more of something that gets turned on for company to show what TV was like, and to keep the circuits fresh?

I use my 8" Motorola 9VT1 regularly. i have it hooked to a DTV converter and a Roku box so it is a set that is actually watched, not just for show. I have it in a 10' x 10' bedroom and it is big enough to watch from anywhere therein. I also think living rooms were a bit smaller in those days too. The limited amount of programming and the novelty factor probably made the small size not much of a bother. Round screens also appear to be larger than the same size rectangular. I also have an RCA 8" metal portable but the Motorola just seems bigger and easier to watch at a distance.

If one had a large couch and a coffee table just over leg distance away, then I'd imagine that someone would put a 7" set on the coffee table propped up so the screen was aimed at the viewer's faces.

As soon as I saw egrand's photo of the 13 people watching the TV set, I suspected this TV was either a 7 or 8 inch Motorola, by the vertical label on the right side of the back, plus the shape of the top vents and a rabbit ears of Motorola design.

To verify this, I pulled up the scans directly from the original photographs that were used to print the pictures on the bottom of page 106 and verified that this is a 1948 7 inch VT71 Motorola in red mahogany (or a slight possibility that this is the similar 1947 set.) There is an unused photograph of the father carrying the set home, that clearly shows the front of the set.

Kamakiri, I don't think you will find a picture of more than 13 people watching a 7 inch set!

With that said, I think the 16 empty beer bottles might have helped many of them see the image more clearly . . . .

:) Let's not forget a couple of things here ;

First , is that we had magnifiers that stood on the table right in front of the picture tube that made the image quite a bit larger and thus viewable from somewhat further away .

Second , we were not expecting 1080DPI HDMI quality , we were just darned happy to have moving pictures to go along with the radio . In some cases , this lack of clarity was actually a good thing in that every Zit , Mole , or Wart wasn't there in scarily clear well rendered colors ......

Which is one fact that I hadn't really considered....the programming was geared towards sets of this type. Meaning, that there was only so many people or so much information on the screen at one time with studio adjusted contrast and lighting levels to make things appear clearer on smaller sets without having to be right on top of them.

Much of today's programming is of course geared towards HDTV, which can display as much as you can fit on the screen with perfect clarity. Not so sixty plus years ago.

Since my wife passed out in the living room tonight in front of our 46" HDTV, I shut the set off, put my 7" Motorola on the coffee table and watched Law and Order SVU. Perfect distance. Then she woke up and asked me to turn the big one on again :sigh:

Interesting to think about though. We see all kinds of pictures of 10" and larger sets worked into a living room situation, but rarely if ever a 7".

Consider this too......perhaps they were used more for special programming (a movie) and pulled out for such things as a family treat, or they were made particularly to carry to friends' houses for larger get togethers or to watch a ball game with your buddies. I guess that would explain the logic of expensive (for the day) televisions being enclosed in suitcase designs.... the reason for which has always sort of eluded me.

I dunno.....Dragnet didn't go on TV until 1952. By then screen sizes had increased.

Definitely in the late 40's the most common shows were stage based variety ones, i.e. Milton Berle. They didn't seem to use close ups much.

I think a good point was made about people being used to radio. I'll bet they listened to the TV as much as watched it back then.

A lot of those small sets were sold with stands. I'll bet most people used them like shown in the photo. It was just moved into the middle of the living room when used. At that time, TV was only on in the evenings, so it would be moved out of the way during the day. People didn't consider them a piece of furniture yet, or plan their living rooms around them like they did when larger screen sets came out.

I have a 5" JVC :)

http://s29.postimg.org/cyg2zujqv/DSCF2085.jpg

By that time though, we can assume that the owner of your set had at least one other set, probably a color console in the living room. And though obviously meant for transport from place to place, there was a much different dynamic in 1948 when the suitcase set was likely the only TV that the owner had.

When you look at the amount of suitcase portables sold (and there is no shortage of them today), one wonders what the plans were for such sets versus say the wood table models. People didn't travel as much in the late 40s as they did in the mid 70s, certainly not to the point where television was such a central part of their lives that they wanted to bring it with them.

Maybe I'm going overboard on that whole line of reasoning, but it's fun to think about.

Think I've read-Likely HERE- That the 3" Pilots were marketed as "2nd sets" & to well-heeled College students. Given the number of survivors-Altho they seem to be a bit more rare now than they were 10 yrs ago-HOWEVER they were marketed, it was successful... Anybody know how long they were in production ?

People indeed got dressed better in those days, but here is a funny fact: I don't know if something like this happened in the United States or other countries, but here in Brazil, in the early days of television, lots of people - specially women - put their best clothes on to watch TV, because they believed that the people on the screen could see they!!!!

I use a TS-18 with the 7 inch tube pretty regular. In the kitchen is a 3 inch JVC 3050. I sit about 7 feet from the Motorola and can see it OK. It does not have a great "wife acceptance factor" for watching. That is left to a 25 inch BPC sharp.

My oldest uncle bought the first TV in the family, a 7" Tele-tone. He put on one of those oil-filled magnifiers on it.
My mother remarked: "We'll wait a little while to buy a set. It has to be better than that. The picture's blurry and dark." :sigh:

I have no problem watching TVs that size. In fact as I write this, I'm watching the news on a 9" Sony Trinitron; 12 feet across the room.

Charles

Well, I COULD watch my 2" Philco Safari from across the room in my office, If I had my agile modulator hooked up..But that's sorta "Cheating", since they were DESIGNED for that..

The Friday Night Fights
 

Being born in 1947 I have vivid memories of my first television viewing experiences.

I was somewhere between 2 and 3 years old. Our family didn't have a set until 1951 when they purchased the Halicrafter 820 you see in my avitar.

A good friend of my father, Sam Sapaznick, already had a small screen tv set. It was a 7 incher but I can't recall exactly what brand it was.

SO......Every Friday night we would all go over to Sam's home for a gathering of several families to watch boxing on "The Friday Night Fights" which was sponsored by "Gillette Blue Blades"

The set up of the room was as follows: Dining room table was removed from the dining room. The tv set sat on top of an old fashioned china sideboard that was about 6" higher than a kitchen counter. IN front of the sideboard were 2 rows of kitchen and dining room chairs placed in curved rows, one behind the other and stagered like theater seats would be. Front row was probably no more than 6 feet away from the sideboard. All the kids sat on the floor in front of the sideboard looking up at about a 45 degree angle at the little tv screen several feet above our heads.

Watching tv was a big time social event in the early days of television, when the vast majority of homes still did not have a set. The host would prepare snacks for everyone and there would of course be plenty of Milwaukee's finest for the adults and soda for the kids. When the show came on, the lights in the room were turn off and we sat in the dark watching this tiny little screen. It was exciting! Live boxing from Madison Square Garden, every Friday night.

Certain things in life make an impression on you that sticks in your mind all your life. Watching The Friday Night Fights at the Sapaznick home in the early days of television, was just one of those things that made an indelible impression on my mind when I was just a little kid. I also remember the first "Color tv" I ever saw in 1956 in the home of one of my fathers freinds. I guess I was born in the vangard of the television revolution and probably has something to do with being a collector/restorer today.

my son used to watch blues clues at lunch time on a 7" motorola suitcase roundie that was 3 or 4 feet away on top of the refrigerator , that went on for a while , he would call it the circle tv, funny thing is on that show or dora the explorer they would sometimes mention a color and say do you see the blue whatever it is or red whatever it is , it was kind of amusing to me because i thought is there anyone else watching this with no colors ?

Bob, do you remember if they put on their "Sunday-Go-To-Meetin'" duds when they all met up at Sam's place ?

I think, I have four of those right now. When watching one, it's about arms length away.
I can't seem to stay away from small screen color sets. I'll buy all I can get.
The 9" Panasonic white kitchen sets, turn yellow after a while. I understand, they're made of flame-proof plastic. Probably U/V discoloration. :sigh:

That was a good idea. I sometimes wish TV stations would go back to that schedule, as daytime programming on television these days isn't worth watching; as we used to say in the '70s, it is strictly from hunger. Talk shows, game shows (one network station in Cleveland carries a syndicated version of Family Feud, while another has Jeopardy! just before its four p. m. newscast), and other ho-hum fare are all that's on daytime TV anymore (at least here in northern Ohio) after the soap operas. NBC is only showing one, at one p.m. Eastern time, while the other two networks still have three or more soaps before the first newscast of the day.

News at four p. m. is also something no US TV station had until a couple years ago. I wonder how many people actually see these late afternoon newscasts, as most people are still at work at that hour of the day. (Cleveland has two early newscasts, on channels 5 and 8.)

Of course, with all the cable channels available today (including retro digital subchannels), I guess people are finding a lot more entertaining stuff to watch during daytime hours outside of the broadcast networks, including older shows from the days when television was fun to watch.

TV Guide magazine used to publish local and national TV schedules, with listings from 7 a.m. through the end of prime time (11 p.m. Eastern), but not any more. Today, TV Guide shows only prime-time listings for the major networks and cable. The network listings are identified by network, not by local channel numbers as they were years ago. These listings are sometimes seriously incorrect if the networks have unscheduled programming changes, such as Presidential speeches or other special programming that preempts or moves regular shows to later time periods. This happens quite regularly in the summer when local stations preempt some or all of a network's prime-time programming for baseball or other sports; channel 3 in Cleveland, the NBC affiliate, does this without warning. They fulfill their obligation to the network by videotaping the preempted shows and showing them at unearthly hours of the morning, but tell me honestly--who is going to stay up until three a.m. to watch an NBC show that was telecast live during prime time? Digital cable makes it impossible to tape shows on standard VCRs for later viewing, and not everyone has or wants a DVR. Shucks, I don't even have the TV cable connected to my VCR anymore--I have the cable going directly to the set's antenna-cable jack, and I use my VCR strictly for watching old tapes. My DVD player gets far more use than the VCR nowadays. Haven't recorded a TV show in a long time and don't intend to, as, IMO, there is nothing on TV these days worth watching twice.

Isn't there an FCC rule stating that television stations must provide a notice that network programming will be preempted by local shows? TV stations used to do this years ago, in this form or something similar: "[Program title] will not be seen tonight, in order that we may bring you the following [station name] special presentation." The other network stations in Cleveland do just that, but channel 3 just preempts network shows almost at will, without saying a word beforehand. Don't get me started on NBC's habit of preempting their weekend evening news with sports programming. I have often wondered whether NBC feels sports on weekends is more important to their ratings than their own nightly newscast; it must be, otherwise they wouldn't let the sports programming slop over into the six o'clock news hour.

The local stations down here start the "6 o'clock" news at 4 or 5. They have Live at 5 on 5, then rehash the same dopey stuff at 5.30, regurgitate it AGAIN at 6, the networks take over a 6.30, then quite a few of 'em rerun the same 3 stories of a Horrible Wreck on the Interstate at 7 & 7.30 that we've heard about EVERY 30 minutes since 4 or 5.... And just in case you missed it, they dutifully repeat it AGAIN at 11 PM..The ads are even worse-down here, there's some bucktoothed guy w/a cheesy beard/stache who has been the spokesperson for "Johnson City Honda... Johnson City" for AGES, to try to get you believe that you'll get less of a screwing at the JC Honda emporium than you would if you went to the Dastardly cutpurses in Bristol or Kingsport.

Yes Sandy everyone including us little kids, wore nice clothes. People did that sort of thing back in the day. I didn't like getting dressed as a toddler, and I still don't lit to dress up to this day.

Me neither. I had to wear a coat & tie ALL THE TIME at the private school I went to. HATED it.

Indeed so Sandy!!

I don't like to be around people dressed like that, especially if they're wearing a black nametag with white lettering. One approached me this evening and before he could even start speaking I said "Sorry, I'm not interested". He then moved onto the others standing around.

Yup. My sentiments exactly, Sandy. It's the same thing as what goes on (or seems to) everywhere on TV news these days. As I mentioned in my post, channels 5, 8 and 19 in Cleveland have 4 p.m. newscasts, followed by the usual 6 p.m. local news and 6:30 network newscasts. (Channel 3 would probably have a 5 or 5:30 p.m. newscast if not for Dr. Phil at five.) At 11 they basically just repeat what they said five hours earlier. If that's not enough, many cities now have a 4:30 a.m. (!) newscast that runs until 7 a.m., then the networks run their own newscasts until nine or 10 a.m. (Channel 3 in Cleveland, I swear, has five-plus straight hours of news five days a week, counting local and network newscasts, but next to nothing as far as news goes on the weekend anymore.)

I am so tired of this that the only thing I will watch on channel 3 local news anymore is the weather forecast at 6 or 11 p.m. I do watch NBC Nightly News at 6:30, though, mostly live, although every once in a while I'll miss it for one reason or another and will pick it up on my tablet from NBC's streaming video. Some nights I don't even do that, and frankly, I don't miss it. Bad news is what makes ratings for these broadcasts; I realize that, but I am thankful I have the choice of either not watching it at all or shutting it off if I don't care to see any of it.

...And at LEAST 90% of the so-called "news" the local yokels put on is "Feel Good" BS, or something I, & I suspect a lot of others, couldn't care less about... But YOU can get a GREAT DEAL from Johnson City Honda, Johnson City..