Remember when telivisions werent so reliable and you had to give em a thump from time-to-time to make em work? And if they broke down at christmas that was it everyone thought christmas had had a heart attack and died? somehow tellies were crap but the programmes were better
There used to be a time when you could repair a TV yourself by taking the tubes to the local drugstore that had a tube tested. TVs were pretty expensive back then compared with today. You pretty much had to fix them. There was a time when TVs were actually made in the U.S.A. and Made in Japan was considered a joke. .
Interesting stuff you just said there - I never considered how expensive they were but I've got inkling youre right. Course I was too young back then when tellies had valves to realise how much they were. I know you are right about the Japan thing too. I think my mom and dads first telly that I can remember was a "Phillips" or "Ferguson" I think Japanese TV's have become awful again - never buy a sony we've had 2 Sony TV's and both of em have a wandering sound volume - and degraded picture quality over time. I remember when one of us would have to sit holding the antenae so we could get a good picture and every now and then the frames would start rolling and my dad would thump the top of the TV and it would suddenly be even better than ever. It was just part of every day life like "oh its your turn to boot the telly" - of course it wasnt like booting a computer.
Not only did it need a thump but it took one or two minutes to warm up:- then another few minutes for the ariel waves to dissapate when the signal slowly got stronger. But the t.v. programmes were better so it didn't matter!.
And you used to see that bright spot after you shut it off. Which, incidentally, could eventually burn a permanent spot on the the tube, so they put a lingering spot killer circuit in newer TVs. .
Actually our telly died one time and my dad opened up the back - looked at the valves and took one to a shop - couple of hours later it worked perfectly once a new valve was fitted that spot killer - is that why tv pictures now sort of go off in a big line rather than collapsing into a spot?
Most just go off completely. You might see a line for a split second but that's about it. The spot was because the filament was still warm and emitting electrons and some of the high voltage was still sitting in the tube like a capacitor. .
I remember one of my friend's old TVs took about 10 minutes to "warm up", during which you could only see a flickering horizontal line before it finally kicked to full screen.
the days of vacume tube and electromechanical tecnology, in the millitary this was called "brogan maintainence". not the best method even then, but when pins come loose in their sockets and relay (or mechanical tuner) contacts are dirty and fail to seat, sometimes a good thump would do the trick. also intermitant malfs caused by broken conductors inside their insulators can sometimes be shaken into making again, if only temporary, conducting contact. repeated use of this method, even then, did shorten the useful life of some componenets though. tv's weren't the only tecnology subject to this 'remidy'. radios, adding machines, the old baudeau teletypes western union used to have in every railroad station, and of course motor vehicules, all have been subjected to this treatment, with varying degrees of success. =^^= .../\...
