Old TV Sets

Dave Mundy

I used my TMK500 analogue multi-meter in the past on ‘real’ TVs etc. (i.e. valve stuff!).

Nick Ware

(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)

Dave Mundy

.. absolutely! I found three really old TVs in the garage of a house we moved to in the early 60s – one had a real EHT transformer, not a flyback generated system! Lethal was the word that came to mind!

John Nottage

My first TV was a non-working monster with a 9" round CRT & rubber screen surround to give 4:3 picture. Unlike Nick’s ad, it was a landscape device: the big loudspeaker was beside the screen rather than under it, so it could stand on a table. It was full of old tin valves (EF50 or something?) and had a huge heavy 6KV EHT mains transformer which made a great doorstop…

Ian Hillson

We had a 17" Murphy with turret tuner but only a BBC Band 1 aerial. My early interest was piqued because Dad wouldn’t get an ITV aerial even though the telly had channel 9 and 10 biscuits in it.

Having got bored with waiting for Children’s’ Telly to start at 5pm (remember "Early One Morning" played just before?) I bought a book on how to saw the aerial elements to the correct length out of government surplus metal rod. Attach to wooden boom with staples and put in loft. Result!

A few years later a neighbour gave me their old console TV to destroy. It had a circular CRT and a circular speaker below which was even bigger. That speaker saw many years of service on my record player but the telly itself didn’t last long. It was "BBC only" with a box to convert Band 3 down to a Band 1 channel. But I soon got tired of having to keep adjusting the vertical hold and scrapped the thing – it was only many years later in my education that I realised that its field frequency was probably still locked to (1950’s) mains.

Our "radio" was delivered by British Relay (100v) line.

(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)

Mike Jordan

Lots of BRW Cable bits still hanging around London. Probably not in use – he he.

One of the things I had to do in BH Switching Centre when we moved all the 625/404 converters to transmitters and hence the GPO audio and video lines direct from BH to BRW in Fulham Road was to visit them and advise they would have to get CP off-air in future!

(Click on the picture below to see larger version:
use your Browser’s BACK button to return to this page)