A Huge Radio and TV Museum in My Backyard

[scotrace]

I did a feature story on the Auman Museum of Radio and Televsion. It really is extraordinary.

http://www.tuscbargainhunter.com/article/20140509/FEATURES/705099987/-1/tbh28

Here are some photos that didn't make publication.

 

[Hemingway Jones]

Great pics and I'm looking forward to diving into your article.

I love those early swivel television sets. They are so perfect-mid-century.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ah yes, the Philco Predicta -- the set that kept thousands of repairmen well-fed and happy during the early sixties. The design was achieved thru a specially-developed shallow picture tube with a very severe deflection angle, which tended to have a high failure rate. The chassis itself also had problems -- it was packed very tight into a very small space, and the components tended to fail from the heat -- "cool chassis" penguin nonwithstanding.

That's the main reason the Predicta is scarce and in-demand today -- few of them survived the sixties intact. They quickly got a reputation as a lemon, and after a brief flurry of interest based on the design, they stopped selling. Philco finally dumped most of them on the bulk-sale market, where they were bought up at a discount by various motel chains. The damage to the company's reputation for quality was done, though, and Philco -- once the world's largest manufacturer of radio and TV sets -- fell into bankruptcy as a result.

There are modern repros of the Predicta that are far more reliable than an original -- trying to restore an original is a task that's not for the faint, and if the picture tube is bad, it's pretty much impossible to find a good replacement.

 

[dlvh]

Ah...thanks for this, very interesting.

I don't want to date myself too much, but when I look back at "the old days" I have very fond memories of watching our old 1950's-60's TV (that was actually called a TV, and not a Flat Screen Display) and staying up very late some nights, like until 1:00 A.M. and watching the TV station end it's "Programming For The Day", with the National Anthem and actually having to get up and turn the TV set off. In those days, we had 2 or 3 TV stations to choose from and if we didn't find something we wanted to watch, we made due with whatever was on, or better yet, we actually went out and talked to our neighbors or friends, but nowadays, with all the technology that we have within fingers reach (like smart phones, touch pads and the like), we don't have to do such trivial things. It's sad in a way to say, but, Oh how I miss "the old days" even with all it's faults and trials...they seem so trivial now, now that I look back at them.

I'll get off my Soap Box now, but boy, it was sure fun finding my Soap Box, and actually using it again!

Take Care All.