Do you own a black and white TV?

Ah happy days when I used to follow the latest technical advances in TV design, Roger.

Here is the TV in the introduction in colour – which is not bad for a VHF model. It’s amazing what you can find on the web.

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I think someone has been playing with Photoshop, Kate. We never had any VHF colour TVs in the UK. Colour TV was introduced after UHF broadcasting was introduced. To start with we had ‘dual standard’ UHF/VHF sets followed by UHF-only models.

Many a time I was called in to repair these dual standard sets as a youngster.

For the uninitiated, there was a very long multipole two-way slider switch operated by a cam arrangement. A few carried high current, many held off high voltage. In all cases, there was an instruction to shut the set off before flipping from one to another. But people didn’t!

Fortunately by the time I got called in to fix these, they were happy for me to fix it at 625 only (and I did!).

Brand new valves are ‘blackened’ too. This is the ‘getter’ used to mop up oxygen released during manufacture and use of valves and the appearance did not change significantly with use. If the black getter turned white, that indicated air leakage and loss of vacuum.

My father knew nothing about TVs but his educated guesses about which valve to replace were often right. We had a TV repair shop that sold them to the public. The city library had a series of books with circuit diagrams and details of components in TVs and radios, plus a list of common faults with the different models. This was my introduction to the same ‘chassis’ (and later circuit boards) being used in different brands and models of TVs.

Absolutely!

You’ve missed out Keaton 🙂

“Glimpses” between programmes shows short features from the past – recently, Rome in 1947, the Travelling Post Office, a family holiday at the seaside in the ’50s.

And horizontal and vertical hold knobs to twiddle.

These early black & white sets used ‘turret tuners’ which made a very satisfying clunk with each change of the channel. When the tuner was set up correctly there was no need to fiddle with the fine tuning control when changing channel. I found the workings of the TV more interesting than the programmes.

They were round the back on skeleton pots!

Yes this was a turret tuner – loads of wipers for the two separate daughter boards to edge-connect to. And space for a few more daughter boards.

Much later on I had a radio – from Russia of all places – with a similar arrangement – for the various shortwave bands. HM was on the mother board though – that position had a 405/625-esq slide switch to disengage it in favour of the turret. Happy days!

I don’t know what normal people will think about people mentioning turret tuners, varicap diodes and skeleton pots, but Duncan will understand.

After the tube of my parents’ 1957 TV became low emission, I decided to cut down the walnut-veneered cabinet to make a more compact VHF radio for my bedroom. The sound quality from the speaker was better than modern ultra-slim smart TVs produce. I was still a schoolboy at the time.

… and my father made a wonderful Radiogram. The base radio was a Fen Man 2 (push pull EL84 output stage, EABC80-based FM tuner) with a 3-band (LW/MW/VHF) plus “gram” setting on the rotary switch (phono sockets); the record deck was an auto-changer – BSR Monarch with a 9TAH flipover-for-78 cartridge, and the cabinet was the shell after discarding the innards from a full height TV cabinet (Rediffusion I think). The 10″ (or might have been 8″) bass speaker needed a tweeter alongside it – pity he never thought of that, but he loved his bass!

In those days the tube had a further toughened glass front panel – which remained. A piano hinge was inserted at the top about 4 inches back from the (curved) front edge,allowing the front (complete with the toughened glass) to lift from above the speaker grilleby something just in excess of 180° to prop on the top (making the open unit about 6′ tall). This gave access to the BSR record deck on a new ply sub-floor above the speaker on its AV springs. He had carved a rectangular hole at the top and drilled four holes fore from it in the 1/4″ walnut veneered otherwise polished top surface, fitting the previously upright radio/string-wired tuner dial facing front, with the dial facing the ceiling instead, with the four control pots/switches through the holes – with just enough on the flatted 1`/4″ shafts to take the original knobs.

The icing on this small cake was a further oval hole to allow the EM80 magic eye to be seen from above – using the original escutcheon from the case off the Fen man!

If he had bothered to put a few Pea bulbs around the glass to light up the record deck this would have been the most wonderful piece of furniture ever. As it is, it used to rock ornaments off the mantel piece such was the bass amplification and resonance!

What a memory this has returned. In terms of electrical repairs, I think over the next 10 or so years I had to replace the capacitor across the mains which went short circuit, one of the coupling capacitors which went leaky and one of the solid carbon dropper resistors (I cheated on that and put a string of 1/2W film resistros in there instead)! I’m glad when I was old enough to do this I’d changed my mind and gone into engineering instead of repair work!

I hope your father lived in a detached house because a pair of EL84s will deliver a fair volume. 🙂 Here is the Fenman 2 radio that inspired the project: https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/pye_fenman_2.html

As a young man, my father made a valve radio and had to take the accumulator to be charged at the weekend, but it was gone before I was born.

Your mention of a magic eye reminds me that I have an old Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder that needs new capacitors and a new magic eye. I can’t remember when we stopped calling them condensers. The retailer was less than helpful when it started crackling soon after purchase, and that was what began my interest in consumer affairs.

It was the arrival of the integrated circuit and the increasing difficulty in diagnosing faults that were responsible for me losing interest in playing with electronics.

I used to repair TVs because it was a challenge. I sometimes switched the connections to the scan coils to demonstrate to the owner that their set was now working but there was still a slight problem – the picture was upside-down.

Apologies to Kate for taking her Convo well off-topic. 🙂

That was it. What a find, thank you. 🙂 I remember now that combination assembly on the left (of four) knobs. The rotary control was a on/off treble cut control – and I never got around to cutting the track at the end of its travel to stop any intended attenuation), and the clear plastic thingy you can just see on the outside operated a concentric a four position rotary switch which added stages of bass boost.

Edited to add – that I’ve now skim-read some of the comments in there about problems – and yes the capacitor that went leaky was a Hunts – blue and white job (my father had a different name for it after I’d identified the fault, which was actually quite easy (pulled the valve out before it and the noise continued, unsoldered one end of it and it went beautifully quiet). I’d not get away with using an unearthed soldering iron these days – not so much safety but ESD damage!

And my apologies too for taking it off topic. I accept full blame. As indeed I used to in Dillo days (but only on those few days that ended with the letter Y)…

There are various other photos of the Pye Fen Man II on websites. Within the last month I have thrown out a box of dead components that I collected for no particularly good reason, mainly during the 1970s, many from b/w TVs. There were a few Hunts capacitors but none of the light blue/white variety, though I remember them well.

I must look through my late mother’s box of photos – there may be a small number of that radiogram. I wish I still had it, but it was cannibalised to relocate the Fen Man innards once again – into a huge baffle board above a downstairs cupboard, complete with its 10″ speaker – but no record deck, and no magic eye this time. The valve had failed and somehow we just went by ear!

At least on the early TVs it was easy to turn off the colour, but since the TV is still capable of receiving a colour signal a colour licence is needed. It’s the same with DVD recorders and the older video recorders.

I’ve still got a few of the ferrite ring magnets, Neil. You can still find them in magnetrons used in microwave ovens, but it’s important to discharge the large capacitor before delving into the works. When moving home I found an old box full of valves rescued from old TVs and radios.

Sorry, but that won’t do: https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/461749/Man-asks-for-black-and-white-licence-for-his-colour-TV-claiming-he-keeps-the-colour-off

This was a popular suggestion when colour TV was introduced.

“The box connects to your aerial (which will have to have been upgraded to digital)”

“To start with there was no {widespread} need to upgrade TV aerials for digital.”

Indeed, there is no such thing as a “digital TV aerial”. It’s just a TV aerial – and it is utterly irrelevant whether the signal it picks up is analogue or digital.

In some areas, viewers did have to flip the polarisation from horizontal to vertical or vice-versa. No doubt aerial sales people would have used this as an opportunity to sell a new aerial.

In a very small number of areas, some people may have needed a new aerial because some of their TV services had moved to completely new frequencies quite far removed from the original frequencies. Those who had an aerial covering a limited group of frequencies may have needed to change their aerial for one covering a wider group of frequencies. This was not a common occurrence.

Yes Ian they were usually called “wideband ” aerials it enabled other transmitters that could be picked up by moving the aerial to a different transmitter as I did when I lived in a city . I had two choices for reception , if you had the money you could motorize it like a sat dish. yes “digital ” aerials were a big con.

If you didn’t have money, the cheapest option was a wire coat hanger, a real sod if it got moved.

How times have changed……..

Radio Rentals supplied my first colour TV 📺 as I couldn’t afford to buy one. My newly found status in the TV world was probably the equivalent to getting today’s latest iphone !!!

I shared a house when colour tv first appeared with a chap who worked for the BBC, and was able to get his hands on one. I regret to say he removed it after a few weeks because we all spent too much time watching it! What a novelty it was. Times haven’t changed, except we can watch a colour picture wherever we like on our phones. I wonder how long before we spend more time in virtual reality than we do on the real world doing real things?

Just taken a break from cutting my hedges – must go.

Alfa- Do you remember the slot meters on the back of the TV -to turn it on you had to pay in ? John -whats wrong are you “banned ” from using the word WHITE as in “white elephant ” ? This is inverse RACISM .

No Duncan – Those ugly TV sets that stood on big fat legs were always grey so they looked like elephants. They weren’t ‘white elephants’ in the sense of being useless articles as they became very popular until the flat-screen plasma and LED TV’s came along and resolved the picture ratio problem. The wide CRT TV’s couldn’t produce a proper circle [which screwed up BBC-tv’s globe logo] and gave everybody 12″-wide shoulders.

Like Alfa, my first colour TV came from Radio Rentals and it certainly was a bit of a status symbol. I remember having to see the other 27 residents in the apartment building to get their approval to having the communal aerial system adapted and uprated to carry the 625-line signal to each flat – many thought I was just showing off. As if!

Okay John -you’ve “got me ” on the “Elephants ” but it was possible to produce a reasonably round circle on a CRT but it required much adjustment to get it right ,usually it was a oblong either vertically or horizontally you were dealing with the spot deflection in two directions from two different circuits on those old TV,s Frame and LIne output. various gadgets were attached to the tube neck depending on the vintage . Very old 50,s had a big lever and magnetic deflection later 60,s had electrostatic deflection , as well as that early tubes were 90 degree -later 110 degree , then in the 70,s the shape improved again . I do agree it was usually the case shock/movement / aging components affected the purity of the circle. This was made more complicated when colour came in and three colours needed adjusting with three times the complications . Have a look at the tube base connections of an early 60,s TV with their multitude of variable resistors to adjust the spot of each colour.

Thanks Duncan. I have no technical knowledge or aptitude in respect of televisions but I remember being persuaded to give up an FST [flatter squarer tube] set in favour of a new wide-screen CRT set and being appalled at the poor aspect of the picture. There was virtually no additional content in the image, it was just spread out across the extra width without a proportionate increase in height. This was towards the end of the 1990’s. Luckily good quality and better value sets became available once the tube was eliminated and the early resolution and definition problems of the plasma and LED models were overcome. It is hard to see what more uplifts in TV performance can now be achieved other than incremental advances on definition and fidelity that are barely perceptible to the human eye [and perhaps that’s why it’s hard to see them!].

I don’t remember TVs with slot meters Duncan. I paid RR monthly.

The first wide-screen TVs were awful. We needed a new TV when they first came out, didn’t like the squashed people, so went for the old CRT.
Wide screen has improved immensely since then.

I have long suspected every new tech that comes out gets gradually downgraded so we fall into the trap of needing the latest tech. The more canny of us will wait until we need it rather than want it.

I remember seeing a Finlandia TV probably around 1980, that had an amazing picture and would probably still be so, even by today’s standards.

I remember the remarkable circuit board on the previously simple base plug. Six pots – grid bias and gain (or, if preferred brightness and contrast) for each of the three primary guns.

A lot of sets had a service switch which effectively collapsed the firld scan to next to nothing to allow easy setting of the grid biases.

As for deflection fidelity, there were so many frigs that were deployed to overcome the fact that the tube angle had increased to keep set depth down it’s almost laughable. One very good aspect of digital is perfect geometrical rendition.

As Duncan has said, the early TVs had to be properly set up to produce a decent picture. Even then, the internal controls needed to be adjusted periodically to correct convergence errors and the balance in output between the red, blue and green electron guns or black & white films would show colour fringing and have a colour hue.

The later TVs used had the three electron guns inline rather than in a triangle and that made setting and maintaining convergence much easier.

Regarding Finlandia TVs, I found this on another forum: “In the UK, Finlandia was the brand name of Granada and these were usually rental sets. Finlandia’s were usually Salora, Nokia, Finlux or Sanyo based sets.”

Your right John its only persistence of perspective in vision that allows up to “see” a scanned picture in an old CRT as well as movie screens . Our mind “stores” the displayed full image .light striking the retina retains the image for approx 15th of a second because its a chemical reaction and the eye cannot distinguish speeds faster than this , they go unnoticed as they appear to be one continuous picture. Its like flicking those Victorian moving picture cards, amazingly the eye doesn’t function to replicate the world we come in contact with but to sense-process and encode and transmit to our brains into something it will interpret . This goes back to our changing DNA as a human race over millions of years to live in a visual sense of reality. Its also why people with mental problems “see ” life differently from others . Look how people can be hypnotized by moving objects .

You are bringing back memories again, Roger. After moving home I disposed of photocopies of TV circuit diagrams and various redundant kit including a home-made crosshatch generator.

You have “remembered ” me on a subject you asked me about years ago Wavechange . I told you I had a set of yearly bound Wireless World magazines going from 1930 up to 1947 they included Arthur C Clark,s first disposition on satellites but you asked about patents of well known electrical engineers of their day including John Logie Baird whom I said recently had patented colour TV and stereo TV- both ELECTRONIC . I wanted to give you my large collection but due to the weight would have cost an absolute fortune to send . BUT I have found a solution a USA website that has archived the lot including all the UK favorite electronic magazines and a host of others –marvelous website !! and you can download for FREE ! now you know why I love many things American – nothing like it in this country . I have already downloaded valve equivalent books as mine are getting raggedy –no problem downloading -no viruses etc http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Wireless_World_Magazine.htm radio history in abundance . You will be surprised at the innovations and patents including radar. Old 30,s radios were better than later models as they Incorporated many features never seen now.

I remember our earlier discussions, Duncan. I have spent hours browsing through the americanradiohistory.com site in the last couple of years. I cannot remember if you told me about it or I found it by chance. I agree that it’s a truly wonderful archive. I was tempted to get rid of my collection of Practical Electronics and Practical Wireless magazines after seeing this site, but I’m hoping to find a younger enthusiast who could use them.

Thank you very much, Roger, for putting in the correct technical terminology what I was struggling to describe. As you say, “one very good aspect of digital is perfect geometrical rendition”. I could see at a glance what was wrong with the early widescreen CRT television pictures but the trade and customers loved them. It really was a case of “never mind the quality, feel the width”.

My word! I remember designing and knocking up a crosshatch generator to help with convergence – used a small handful of TTL chips – 7490s to count lines down and “pixels” across – and a 74121 to generate the narrow verticals! The heart of it was a crystal-driven Ferranti ZNA134J – one of the early LSI chips (add a single xrystal and you have all the pulses you need, line sync, line blanking, field sync, mixed blanking – including the interlace. Talk about memories… That beast was pricey – about £25 – and ran very hot!

You might see a couple of my circuits in PW and PE – they used to send me £5 postal orders if I sent a good one in!

I found a few good ones in there too – including a car burglar alarm using relay logic. Loved relay logic.

It’s possible I might have constructed one of your circuits then. My main interest was in faultfinding – I relished the challenge of diagnosing and fixing faulty electronics. Many of the faults in TVs etc were the result of dry joints in hand-soldered connections.

I detested Veroboard etc. for my own projects and produced my own boards, first using spray-on photoresist and then using pre-prepared boards. I could buy ferric chloride and sodium hydroxide from our lab stores at work and use one of the lab UV lights, which was more predictable than sunlight. Being able to design circuit boards on a computer and print a mask on sheets intended for overhead transparencies made life was a big step from using a permanent marker to draw the circuit tracks. At work I taught a couple of my technicians to produce circuit boards so that we could build our own research equipment at a fraction of the price of the equivalent commercial product.

I have just been looking at one of my burglar alarms that is destined to become electronic waste. It has 12 DIL relays plus a standard one. Happy days.

You might have done Wave – I sent in a few clever relay things their way. The one I was most proud of though used TTL (as well as the ubiquitous relay!) – which I was disappointed never made it into print, it was a wiper intermittent circuit that didn’t need any new holes drilling, reliant instead on the existing control and a rewire under the bonnet. Basically a flick wipe started a timer, and if flickewiped again within ~15 sec would remember the delay – and do the repeat flicking at your timed interval. If you flicked it before the time was up it would reduce the interval to the new time – and if you flicked it while it was doing a sweep, that cancelled it. I thought that was quite clever – still do actually! Oh – and I never actually built it as my father’s car (1961 mini) didn’t have a flick wipe so there was no point! It was probably too complicated – a master oscillator formed from a crude 74123 cross coupling with an output pulse every second or thereabouts, two 4-bit counters (were they 74163?) , the odd flip flop and a quad comparator. I was I think 15 when I penned that. Halfords were selling aftermarkiet kits for a few quid – the cost of this was higher in parts alone – but oh so elegant in operation it would have been!

Once the PCB layout process progressed to software I left it to professionals (who used to report to me by then!). I was a Chartpack man myself! – and our firm (EEV Chelmsford) had a decent photoreducer/dark room to produce photoresist masters, and a huge vat of Ferric Chloride. As you say, happy days!

I only made simple wiper delay units but what you say makes a lot of sense because the system adapts to your needs. Cars provided plenty of opportunity for experimentation. I did not have a car but my father was amenable. I built several designs of electronic ignition systems, the first based on a circuit from the June 1971 PW during the summer vacation when I was a student.

I did not build any sophisticated circuitry but had access to the services of electronics, mechanical and glassblowing workshops that could produce what I and my colleagues wanted for the cost of the parts.

We are hopelessly off-topic but I’d like to thank Kate Bevan for the opportunity to indulge in nostalgia. 🙂

My first car – 17th b’day present – a white mini of dubious history (7 + previous owners, a milometer stuck on something ,999 that clicked… and clicked… Was very useful as a 1 mile audio trigger to enable speed trials with a stop watch in one hand 😉 This had more mods than original wiring, switches and adaptions before meeting its maker finally. BFN 807 B. Wiper delays, warning lights, burglar alarm, Very comfy seats from an 1100 (nobody in the back after their fitting). Having installed switchgear around the column from a later car, the original floor mounted dip switch served as an “all warning” button. I’d removed the latch mechanism but pressing that down gave a full compliment of additional hooters and headlight. Hooters went off when you took your foot off, headlights stayed on f r 5 seconds I think.

This is a tad off-topic 🙂 . Maybe this convo on dream cars would be a good place for this discussion: https://conversation.which.co.uk/motoring/car-christmas-stocking/

Apologies Lauren. Feel free to create a topic entitled, say, “Antique electronics”. I’m sure that most if not all of the above off-topic stuff would fit in there (with authors’ consent of course). Dream cars would be polluted by this.

Lauren – I propose that Roger is invited to write a Convo on antique electronics. 🙂

LOL – I should report that post …

Joking apart it would be my pleasure. But not before 24th May.

Go for it Roger. I’ll look forward to it.

Meanwhile, back on black & white TV, I read that some might be paying for a b/w licence and watching colour TV.