Safety glass -- how necessary?

[peverett]

I did read about one person being killed by a CRT imploding. What happened was that family members were fighting. In doing this, they were throwing a small TV set around and at each other. One of the participants went to pick it up and it imploded, sending glass into her neck.

When I was young, a local person who sold TVs was killed in his shop. I had always thought that this was also due to a CRT imploding. However, I later found out that this person was using a lathe and something flew off of it and killed him. Not related to TVs at all.

I too am VERY cautious when working with tubes w/o integral implosion protection. Think about it...even in the 1940's, well before the heyday of injury lawyers, manufacturer's were plastering "caution" notices on both the tubes themselves and on the insides of TV cabinets, warning about the possibility of serious injury when removing or replacing even a small 10 or 12 inch CRT, let along a 21 inch or larger. The service manuals of these sets even went so far as to highly recommend eye protection and arm protection.

When you consider how many things of that era were also truly "dangerous", yet carried no warnings (ie big ole' GE fans with brass blades and little to no guarding), there was obviously some well-founded basis for the concerns, even outboard of strict legal liability.