Reactions to old TVs

[julianburke]

Tee hee hee! All of you youngsters (I'll be 56 next month) many times act as if you have just "discovered" old color TV's!! I was repairing them while in high school in the late 60's and I mean fixing them for real and when I was 17 got a job at a stereo & TV store as a TV tech. I have collected color TV's for over 40 years now and have about 30 of the roundies. (three mint CT-100's) I have countless other sets as well. (about 100 total) I also have all of my tubes and then some from a 40 year collection. (about 10,000!) I still have lots of NOS Zenith and RCA parts to keep my sets going. Now they're back in vogue and glad I saved them! Just wait until someone discovers I have NOS color CRT's!!

One story I like to relate is when I was at a Atlanta hamfest some years ago, a gentleman pulled in a trailer full of junk-and I mean JUNK. (nothing stuff from a wet basement) One thing he did have was a Korean era field telephone set (bad condition-I ended up buying it for $1) and two young boys about 15 looking were at it and one said "oh, that's a military radio. Those are valuable"! I happened to say no, that's an old Army field phone. One boy asked "what's that?" I said that you would have two or more connected with a pair of wires.

They looked at each other in amazement and one said "WIRES? ARE YOU SURE??" Our young generation just don't even have a clue of what wire is used for anymore.

When I give talks, I like to relate this story. Last year at the television museum in Columbus I related this story again and the audience roared. Some guy later on was giving a talk on his Russian RCA mirror in the lid set and when trying to get it to work mentioned he needed to hook up a antenna wire to the set. Someone in the audience yelled out, "WIRES? Are you sure?" That was funny! Julian