Zenith A1512J "bugeye"

[Jeffhs]

It's interesting to me to see the "Wavemagnet" antenna attachment on the back of this set near the antenna. I've only seen that attachment once or twice before now; the last one I saw was on eBay a few years ago. It was probably a standalone unit since it had, IIRC, an AC power cord as well as the TV output cable. This particular attachment was, moreover, the first such attachment (that I am aware of) to allow the use of the AC line cord as a television antenna; it probably worked well only in very strong signal areas, as did those cheap gutless-wonder plastic line-antenna gimmicks of the 1950s and '60s with the fancy plastic cases--the ones which claimed to turn your home's entire electrical wiring system into a giant TV antenna. I think I saw a picture of the inside of one of those several years ago; they are little more than two line-isolation capacitors connected to a length of 300-ohm line at one end and the AC input (two AC plug prongs molded into the case) at the other.

As I said, these gimmicks may have worked well in very strong signal areas, but would probably fail miserably in far-suburban or fringe locations. (I wonder how many of these, if any, were actually tried in fringe areas.) Moreover, these units could pose a very real fire or shock hazard (not to mention ruining the TV) should one or both isolation caps short--if, of course, the house fuse or circuit breaker didn't trip first.