Stromberb Carlson TV mention in commic strip today (Friday)
 

Saw this in "Crankshaft" (image below under "fair use" copyright rule for discussion use). A few years before in this comic strip, Crankshaft's old tube radio stopped working and he went shopping for a new radio, but couldn't find anything that didn't look flashy and ugly looking. The author must know something of vintage consumer electronics!

NEAT!!!! I like to see stuff like that. Brings to mind an episode of Dragnet (radio version) where they had a sting operation to catch crooked TV repairmen. They did the sting the same way they do these days with car mechanics; they had ordinary housewives (of LAPD officers :) ) call a TV repairman, and the TV was rigged with something like a loose fuse, or the like... The TV they rigged was a Kaye-Halbert console (so stated in the dialogue!!!!), and they put a dud 5U4 in it to make it "dead" and caught all kinds of repairmen trying to sell all sorts of unneeded repairs. What was really interesting about that Dragnet episode was that it happened to be a Kaye-Halbert set, and they were so technically correct about the TV and the 5U4, etc... (Just to clear the record, Kaye-Halbert used a pair of 5Y3s in the 1952 chassis lineup, but a single 5U4 in the 1949-51, and '53-'55)

Charles

I regularly read Crankshaft in my local paper and laughed like mad when I saw that one in print yesterday evening. I immediately thought of AK when I saw it!:lmao:
Tom

I remember catching that episode on KNX around 2001 while I was test-driving out in Phoenix! (Around 2 AM!)... At the time, I'd never heard of a Kaye-Halbert, but I figured if it was on Dragnet, it had to be real!

Now I only need to find a Hoyt-Clagwell tractor, as consistantly mentioned on Green Acres!

The Dragnet episode is "Big Screen" airdate 8-9-1951.

Steve

The "Big Screen", and many other radio shows, are available for listening or download over on the antiqueradios.com site.

http://antiqueradios.com/shows/index.php?p=Dragnet

Thanks for finding that link...I am listening to the Dragnet episode right now. They even have the old cigarette commercials.
Those Fatima commercials are so serious sounding!
It is amazing how technically correct they are with the details. Too often on TV shows today they don't research technical details well enough.

I think the tractor on "Green Acres" was actually a very old Fordson. Don't think there ever was a Hoyt-Clagwell. The old tractor I always liked was a Cockshutt. Down at the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition, held at Spence Field, Moultrie, Georgia every year since '78, they have an antique tractor exhibit. Restored old Fords, Chevys, Packards, Caddys, Lincolns have nothing on these tractors-they look like they've never seen a field or pulled a plow. And the guys who have 'em are equally as proud...

Look for a Fordson tractor of the 1920s . . . that's what the prop department rebadged as Hoyt Clagwell. Meanwhile, the obviously different tractor in the opening sequence is a 1930s vintage John Deere.

This is avilable in the public domain from this site as well

http://www.archive.org/details/dragnet

I'm downloading the episode now as I type this to you all.