1958 Philco TV

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support AutomaticWasher.org:

Hey Sandy

I know that one can't always go by what they read, even with company literature. I've never been lucky enough to see the wealth of literature they've put out on their products, so I wouldn't say it's fact either. Magnavox doesn't seem to archive historical information either, they proved that to me thirty years ago. I think it was just last year I saw a pic of their first color television, and it was made for them by someone else, beginning in 1955.

112561++2-20-2010-05-28-51.jpg
 
Magnavox Color

Almost all companies that offered early color were just rebranded RCAs.Quite a few companies offered 27 inch sets and they were direct view.Starting around 1954.Good places to look for these ads are old Life magazines and House and Garden.The Dec issues usually have quite a few TV ads.
 
I have many Life magazines, and exactly one House Beautiful, no House and Garden that I can recall. I was thinking RCA was the Magnavox color set supplier, that seems the most logical. I wish I could find a lot of the early Magnavox color info without relying on eBay. Life magazine has been heavily scanned and posted on Google, as has been featured here and on Vacuumland.

112561++2-20-2010-07-21-31.jpg
 
Alan:

I found that Zenith made a 27" direct-view BW TV in '53, so it's possible that Maggie had one in '52, after all <br
BTW, RCA was not first on the market with their Merrill CTC-100 colour television. They were scooped by Admiral first, and then Westinghouse. <br
The Admiral C1617A was available for sale on December 30, 1953. The Westinghouse H-840CK was on offer 2 months before the RCA set, although it used RCA's colour CRT. <br
Here's a link to a copyright photo of the Admiral C1617A <br
http://www.tvhistory.tv/1954-Admiral-C1617A-color.JP <br
And here's a link to a page showing a lot of CTC-100 info, with a gorgeous shot of a Merrill in operation next to a Westinghouse H-840CK, also in working order <br
http://community-2.webtv.net/stevetek/StevesCT100 <br
The CTC-100 Merrill began production in March of 1954, with the first set being delivered on April 27 of that year. <br
Looking over some of the TV history pages, I see an interesting trend. It appears that there was availability of large-screen (27" and larger) BW sets in the early 50s, but by '55 or 56, that died out, with 21" sets being the largest most manufacturers offered. I don't have any idea why that should have been; perhaps consumers weren't interested in paying the premium price for a set over 21" yet.
 
Waiting for color

RCA was really pushing color in 55&56,so for the price of a Deluxe 21inch,you could get a table model color in 56.They really cranked up colorcast by then during the week.CBS was the last to go full color at night prime time,I think they were still fuming about the FCC not adopting their system in 1950.Although in 1956&7 they did their share of live color shows,Red Skelton was one of them.They only survive as B&W kinescopes.Dinah Shore was known as the first lady of color television during those years with her Chevy Show.PeterPan was shown in color live in 1955 and 56 and then on color videotape in 1960,I watched it the other day it still looks fresh,hard to believe Mary Martin was 47 then.
 
Color Video Tape

Whirlaway, and all, here's a clip of the oldest known color videotape, the entire program and commercials exist, but not sure if it's released on DVD <br
Ken D.--Magnavox did indeed advertise as late as 1969 of screens in square inches, and also diagonal measure. Sandy, it's a shame 27" screens didn't take off for even black and white, but I guess consumers weren't as obsessed with screen size like today. I hadn't thought either that Admiral and Westinghouse had predated RCA with color receivers. There was also Columbia and Motorola, but I don't know if they were completely manufactured by those companies. Other makes offered color, probably from RCA to their specs, so they would also have something to compete with.

 
Bobby:

Actually, the FCC did licence CBS to do colour broadcasting via their field-sequential system, and CBS both broadcast colour in their system and sold sets for it, only two of which are known to survive. They stopped at the FCC's order in late '51. Stories vary on what happened. The official FCC party line was that colour was halted temporarily because of the need to conserve materials for the Korean conflict. Cynics said RCA dug deep and did whatever it had to, to see to it that its NTSC system was adopted, which it was <br
CBS had bought a TV manufacturer, Air King, to get the production capacity to make the sets for its system. The FCC's reversal on licencing the field-sequential system left CBS holding production facilities it had to put to use in some other way. They renamed Air King CBS-Columbia, making and selling sets through most of the 1950s. The most interesting CBS-Columbia set of them all is shown below; it's a 1956 colour set using RCA components and technology. It is far and away the most beautiful modernist colour TV console of that period; it was designed by no less than Paul McCobb <br
So, CBS was able to get over itself enough to make very fine NTSC colour sets under the CBS-Columbia name. As to why they were slow to adopt colour on the network itself, I think the answer might lie in the company's viewer demographics and their programming. CBS has usually gone after an older, less urban viewer than the other networks, and in the '50s, those folks were not remotely ready to buy colour. Also, CBS had such big attractions, like Red Skelton, that there really wasn't that big a need to add colour - Skelton was pulling viewers in fine without it. At least, that's my thinking about the situation. <br
Also remember that RCA owned NBC, and TV sets were not a sideline for RCA, the way they were with CBS's CBS-Columbia Division. RCA made abso-damn-lutely sure that prospective colour set purchasers had plenty of NBC programming in colour to justify their purchase <br
My dad was with RCA for a long time, and I still like to kid him about how incredibly, jaw-droppingly bad their styling was in the '50s. The CTC-4 and CTC-5 generations were downright ugly (we had a CTC-4 set, the Seville 21, for many years). That CBS-Columbia set's styling was so far ahead of anything RCA had to offer in '56, it was not remotely funny.

danemodsandy++2-20-2010-18-20-44.jpg
 
Funny this discussion is going on right now. I just picked up an RCA color roundie (looks like a '64 to me) tossed out back behind a tv/app store this week. Though being buried in ice and 12" of snow, it doesn't look too bad though it'll need cataract surgery <br
The only 27" direct view set I've ever seen in person is in the basement; a Setchel Carlson in a gigantic weathered blond cabinet....and a broken CRT neck. Everything on the set has been scaled to keep the proportions of the screen. The knobs are almost comical in size <br
Re those typical RCA cabinets, there was a whole lot o' "ugly" back in the day we tend to forget about. It wouldn't be a long shot to figure more people have heard of the Eames' now than when they were doing their best work. -Cory
 
I briefly had a 1957 RCA color console, was forbidden by my parents to bring it into the house. A man bought it from me, put about $50 worth of work into it, and perfect tv. His grandson got behind it and totally detuned the whole set. The design was undeniably kludgy. Here's a slightly more attractive and quite rare Motorola.

112561++2-20-2010-18-47-35.jpg
 
I Think...

...Part of the problem with designing attractive colour sets in the '50s was the sheer size of the required cabinet. Our Seville 21 was about the size of a 30-inch range, and was probably heavier. <br
However, McCobb (a very famous designer in the '50s and early '60s, far better-known to the average consumer than the Eameses) did manage to do a great job with that CBS-Columbia set, bulk or no bulk. Alan, that Motorola is also pretty nice looking, though I hate to think of the stresses on those canted legs. They were holding up some serious weight.
 
Cory - Royal Sovereigns

Cory: If I'm not mistaken, the DuMont Royal Sovereign's picture tube is one of the more reasonable ones to rebuild, since only its face and tube neck are glass. I understand that it's possible to replace the gasket between the glass and metal components. Am I wrong here?
 
Eames Era-Most Abused EBay Term

McCobb's CBS television was nothing short of a masterpiece. Wouldn't I love to have that one myself! <br
I'd be inclined to believe the name Seville would be attatched to one of RCA Victor's more elegant designs of the period, not the characterless box with little stubby legs or the one that sat flat on the floor. Would yours have had doors on it?

112561++2-21-2010-05-38-30.jpg
 
Glass-metal picture tubes don't have a gasket-but a dumet metal to glass seal-the metal is specially treated so the melted glass will seal to it.Same with glass metal transmitter tubes I use at the transmitter site.Ceramic metal the same sort of way-tubes and vacuum capacitors.these can have glass envelopes too.
 
Ugly?

I have a 1956 ctc5 with a modern and beautiful cabinet,also the chassis wasnt nearly as bulky as the CBS and the CBS was a 19 inch.The 15 inch RCAS are the ones losing vacuum have been for years the 21axp22a like in my set have held up well.The Korean war had nothing to do with the color war as such.Life magazine in 1950 ran several articles on the two systems CBS was actually a mechanical one while RCA was the first electonic one.the Rca was ok but cbs was close behind.CBS did broadcast the big screen celebrity shows in color.Not the simple weekly sitcoms.Lucy was almost in color but it was cost prohibitive at the time.Thanks Bobby
 
Here's a Seville 21

Alan: The photo below is the only one I can find of a Seville 21. It was a modernist design in red mahogany. The way we got ours was, my second cousin owned a Western Auto in Carrollton, GA, and like many small-town owners, did the servicing of the sets he sold. Occasionally, he would run into a set that stumped him, and my dad - who was far and away the best tech in Atlanta - would go down and lend him a hand. <br
Sometime around '62, he ran into trouble with a backlog of sets he couldn't fix, and asked Dad to help, which Dad did. In gratitude, he asked Dad if he could use another stumper - an RCA colour set he'd taken on trade-in and which No. Body. had ever been able to get working properly. Dad said yes, we loaded it up, and we took it home. In '62, a colour set would not have really been affordable for us, even though Dad worked on them every day. <br
At any rate, we got it home, and oy, did that thing look strange sitting surrounded by Mom's maple Early American furniture! Dad got to work on it, and found it was every bit as troublesome as advertised; it took a long time to get the set reliable. A new picture tube was involved at some point. But once he got it settled down, it served us for years <br
There's a funny story about me and that Seville; a colour set was a Big. Honking. Deal. in '62, and of course, the instant I got to school, I bragged about it. You have to understand that this school was full of kids from blue-collar and minor white-collar families; we all lived in clean, tidy up-to-date homes, but very few people in that place and time had dishwashers, air conditioning or other such luxuries. My teacher, the evil and dread Mrs. Price, got wind of my boast, promptly decided I was telling tall tales, and called my mother to let her know All About It. There was nothing that made Mrs. Price happier than calling parents with tidings that guaranteed a kid a whipping; there was hardly a set of glutes in Joseph P. Humphries Elementary that had not felt the sting of the woman's epic wrath, however indirectly <br
Imagine the old witch's amazement when Mom told her that yes, we had a colour set now, and that she was welcome to drop by and watch a bit of Andy Williams or something with us! In 1962, kids did not often win a battle with a teacher fair and square (and I paid for it later, big-time, but that's not a story fit for the delicate ears of this group). <br
Anyway, the Seville 21 is in the grouping below, along with its base-model sibling, the Havilland 21, which was the same cabinet without the cant-legged base.

danemodsandy++2-21-2010-11-10-15.jpg
 
Our Mrs. (Dorothy) Price, 4th grade, was delightful!

Showed you that fancy set, because I thought I could make out the word "Seville". Yours, actually wasn't as prehistoric as my set was. And mine wasn't heavy, my friend John brought it home here on top of a little mail cart, like they used to use in the '60s. Contemporary Mahogany does rather clash with the spindly Early American, we had it for years too, not the expensive type either. <br
We got our first color set in '78, a metal Zenith on a plastic Danish swivel base. Then in '84 we got a Zenith consose with remote that lasted until '96, then I talked Mom into getting a $398 RCA stereo console, that one is wracked with convergeance problems. Constantly have to reset the color. Not going generic black flat screen yet!
 
Alan:

The set you showed me also appears to be a CTC-4; I think it's a Director 21 in the limed-oak finish, which was ultra-fashionable in '56. So, it's contemporaneous with the Seville <br
Glad your Mrs. Price was delightful. The name Joann Price still brings shudders to a certain generation of Old Humphreans. The hell of it was, in fifth grade you got Melissa Cox, one of the greatest teachers ever, someone who truly loved and understood kids. The following year - OY. You got Mrs. Price, a woman from whom Leona Helmsley would have fled in terror. I guess it was our warning that the real world was a bit of a tricky place.
 
Our first color TV

was received as a gift in 1963 from my grandfather and my dad's uncle and aunt. It was an RCA in a maple finish colonial cabinet, which didn't match our furniture very well (cheap Danish Modern in the TV room, and Drexel mahogany in the other rooms). This set replaced a mid 50's RCA b&w. I remember the repairman having to come quite often to work on it, and it was replaced in 1968 by a color Admiral console, that gave us very little trouble. After that, we had a '77 Zenith on a cart, and then the '91 GE, which sits on the same cart. I still use it.
 
Thank God I had only one teacher I didn't care for, in Fort Knox, KY, Kintergarten teacher Mrs. Chartok. I'd love to take an axe to lovely Mrs. Helmsley. I never could effectively deal with meanness. <br
I bought what I thought was a blonde end table, dated 1953, which almost became a casualty during my 6 week absense. It turns out it was sprayed grey and turned yellow through the years. I had a limed Oak Magnavox Continental hi fi for a while, I like that color range.
 
Sandy, as I understand it, rebuilding any of the glass/metal bonded tubes is a gamble due to the differing expansion/contraction rates of the materials <br
Whether the major risk is due to uneven heating or not being able to achieve "factory" specs with aftermarket rebuild equipment, I don't know. I was told the sheer size of the 30" make the odds pretty slim <br
For those unfamiliar, this is how it was done in the factory- (photo from the ETF)

cadman++2-21-2010-20-18-59.jpg
 
Cory:

Thanks for the insight into what's up with that 30-inch DuMont tube. I seem to recall something online about one successful rebuild, but I can't find it. I also seem to remember that it was something pretty unusual to accomplish.
 
I turn my back for a minute and you guys are dissing the 50's color sets as Fugly. I have a CTC 5 like this. I stole this pic since mine is under a pile of stuff sleeping <br
Cory is right about the difficulty is rebuilding a metal CRT. There are only a couple places left that rebuild tubes. Sadly, we're going to loose this technology as few repair these things. The same is the case with timer repair for washers, etc <br
I heard the 30 inch CRT is too big to fit in the oven of the rebuilder in the US.
 
Replacement

The nice thing about a CTC5 is you can replace it with 21fjp22 glass tube,and still keep it original.Some very late sets and the 57s had a glass 21cyp22.The nonbonded safty glass is better you dont have to worry about it loosening with age.
 
Travis:

I mean no disrespect to the technical achievements of RCA during that period, but their styling was problematic enough that there was a crash restyling programme in the early '60s. Every product got restyled, from the cheapest table radio to the most expensive entertainment centre. It was successful; sales grew. RCA's styling became some of the best in the business during this period, sleek and space-age in appearance, exactly right for the times. The biggest change was an impression of lightness, particularly in TV consoles, which had looked very chunky and heavy. There was a better mesh between console styling and the furniture-buying preferences of consumers; RCA broke it down to stuff like Danish Modern and Early American, with finishes that were a good match for most people's existing furniture (this was the big problem with the CTC-4 generation; the three major finishes offered were limed oak, red mahogany and French walnut, with only the French walnut blending well with most people's existing decor). <br
RCA topped off the restyling effort with its famous "picture in picture" ads showing famous TV shows in black-and-white, with the centre of the picture having a colour inset. That was the ad campaign that finally brought home the bacon for RCA with colour; sales took off like a rocket. It had taken RCA nearly ten years to figure out the sales message that would put colour across; like most great ideas, it was simple. RCA had long been showing colour in ads, but it wasn't really making people go out and buy sets in the huge numbers RCA wanted. By showing consumers the difference between BW and colour, using their favourite shows, the desire for a colour set was finally kindled in people who had been figuring they could live without one. It was one of the great ad campaigns of the '60s.

danemodsandy++2-22-2010-07-51-57.jpg
 
And furthermore

Hazel's first season in black and white, had one color episode, in which she insists she has to have a color tv, once she talks Mr. Baxter into it, they hit what is obviously an RCA Victor showroom (brands obscurred), and she gets a look at the stereo color theatre. She ends up with a color table model, but in episodes shown later, no more color tv, and the Baxters never had one either, even with his money. Also, look out for the RCA ad with Star Trek, definately something to see <br
 
Yeah...

...It was clear even to the most dim-witted consumer, who owned NBC <br
What was weird about all that was that the Justice Department broke up the movie business in the late '40s over exactly the same kind of monopolistic practises - owning both the entertainment stream (movies and the studios where they were made) and the delivery channel (movie theatres). For RCA and NBC to be doing pretty much the same thing would seem to have been a violation of the principles laid down by the Feds, but somehow, they got away with it. Perhaps the difference was that consumers owned the RCA sets they purchased, and could watch other networks besides NBC on them. But it was still a damn cosy arrangement.
 
Back
Top