The last roundie produced

[bgadow]

I once looked through the Sams files, folder by folder, searching for the last ones listed. There are some Truetones and I think some Airlines but the very last is a Magnavox, published in 1970. You can only date things approximately with Sams-they would have come out after the set was on the market. In a previous discussion Randy Bassham mentioned that the Maggie was a series string el-cheapo model.

I have read that there was shortage of rectangular tubes for awhile in the late 60s. Initially there were not many companies building them: RCA, National Video, Sylvania...but others came along. There were about 8 or so by about 1970. I was just reading an article from 1966 regarding Philco ramping up color crt production. Perhaps they were able to produce round tubes so cheap as to really make it worthwhile to keep going an extra year or two. The Philco chassis in the late sixties wasn't a Zenith but it wasn't too bad, from what I've seen. They did have some solid state circuits, moreso than some other makes, but certainly not at the level of the early 70s hybrids.

The Philco print-ad campaign is comical. Someone had posted it once before. It shows a big, burly guy struggling to carry a Philco roundie table model with a comment that Philco offered "big-screen" color for the price of those other guys portables.

As others have pointed out, there was no incentive to build a solid state roundie. Most companies continued offering tube sets up until about 1974 or so, with solid state being the top-of-the-line. The last roundies would have been the bottom-of-the-barrel as far as color tv goes. I think a solid state set could be built but it might take a little engineering due to deflection angle differences. If you could work that out you could take a real reliable chassis like a Chromacolor II and rig it up, right? I have what appears to be a complete Admiral Era II chassis up in the attic and someday I have the feeling it is going to end up in a Frankenset!

I'll add one more thing to my already too long comments-might have Setchell-Carlson ever built a solid state roundie monitor for commercial use? (or anyone else for that matter?)