Sylvania bought Philco.
 

I may have once known this, but that was years ago.
Per page 5, https://worldradiohistory.com/Archiv...TD-1975-10.pdf. , GTE Sylvania purchased Philco in 1974 and by August 1975 the first Sylvania built Philco’s were being produced.
Well before this, Emerson acquired DuMont.
In the 60’s and early 70’s, I never saw an Olympic color set and if anyone has any history on Olympic. The were regularly mentioned in ETD. Did they just clone RCA chassis? Did they just die off or did someone acquire them.

As far as Olympic, I've never seen one of their color sets; but, I'm told that they are basically an RCA clone. I believe the name was sold off to some importer, back around 1970-'71, and I've seen some cheap stereos from the early '70's (I believe they were actually made by Electrophonic) that bore the Olympic name. By the mid '70's, I think the brand name had been phased out.

As far as the Sylvania/Philco connection, I believe Ford bought Philco in '61, then Ford sold Philco to GTE in '74, and then GTE sold the Sylvania and Philco brands to NAP (who already owned Magnavox) in 1981. In the '80's, there were Magnavox, Sylvania, and Philco TV's that all used the same chassis (the Philco sets were usually the "discount" models).

My understanding is that NAP bought Philco in order to secure the use of the Philips trademark in the US. They were originally blocked by Philco's trademark lawsuit, which is why they operated as "Norelco" in the US for years. I actually had one of the first Philips sets sold in the US, it was a garden-variety Magnavox BPC set that had a slightly nicer finish on it.

I also heard that NAP wanted Sylvania's CRT manufacturing operation.

That would make sense. Syl already built CRT's for itself & Sears / Sanyo.
Add to that Philco, Maggy & eventually Phillips & thats a lot of jugs.
They were also quite active in the rebuilt market.

On the chassis end last true Philco I remember was a little 9" B&W
football shaped TV, not a bad set. The colors were RCA SCR sweep
clones & real dogs. The first Sylvania/ Philco was the E08 IIRC.
Maggy became the builder of all in the early 80's. Probably the E32 was the last Sylvania. The NAP C-3 was the first I remember in all three. A real
over engineered POS chassis. Before that they had the C-1, the best Maggy ever. It only went in Maggys.

enuf fer now
73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I have one of the last Zeniths, a 32”, A.V.I. Models. It has a Sylvania made for Zenith crt. Needs a sweep board, but May never run across one. (AVI, Advanced Video Imaging)
‘

I agree 100% that the C1 was the better chassis! That being said, when you come across a good running C3 set, it just runs forever. I can only recall popping in a new filter can once or twice and a fly maybe once.

There was an early 80s Sylvania 19" which was extremely plentiful in the NY area well into the 2000s, it had a decently chromed control panel with manual tuners and a GTmatic style pushbutton for auto tuning. I have seen them well into their second CRT with no chassis work done. Some non Zenith hospitals used them. The tubes were also rather bulletproof, Sylvy sourced naturally.

The set I grew up with was a 19" Magnavox that had either a C1 or C2 chassis (I can't remember; but, I think they were both basically the same). After that, they went downhill and I didn't care for the C3 or C5 chassis. Our Magnavox was ran hard until the mid '90's, when the CRT got too dim to watch.

I think the C-1 was for 19" & the C-2 for 25". and probably
had more features like a comb filter.