I have a noticed in a few posts, when someone asks about a brand X or Y color set, someone will identify it as a CTC- whatever, I thought the CTC- series were RCA chassis designations. Did RCA make chassis for all other companies except Zenith or did they just sell the blueprints to other brands? Or was there a lot of industrial espionage going on in the 50's and 60's? Logan

Well, some of the other brands' chassis were either built by RCA or using RCA designs under License from RCA, who was the dominant force in color t.v. in the early years. By the mid 60's however, most of the other companies had designed their own chassis, with the exception of a few that produced both their own and RCA-based chassis designs (such as Philco).


Dumont-First with the finest in television.:yes:

When color 1st came out you had several to manufacturers entering the color market with chassis' of their own design. Then as the fifties came to an end only RCA and a couple other tv manufacturers were still in the ballgame, but of those who stayed around, Rca would sell the chassis to those manufacturers and they would install them into their own cabinets.

As the sixties progressed, eventually companies like Zenith re-entered thmarket. Zenith in 1962, I guess they saw the writing on the wall and decided that the American public would warm up to color television. Walt Disney's wonderful world of color was one of the biggest reasons for the increase in color sets. Eventually just about everybody was in color by the mid-sixties. Still a lot of those companies were either paying patent fees to RCA for use of their design or there were companies like Wells-Gardner were churnning out sets for Sears, Western Auto, Mongomery wards and so-on.

You can go to several sites that go into great detail regarding color history, Ed Reitan has an excellent site, Steve D. has another great site. Check them out

Cool, that was something i didn't know. Thanks for the info Truetone and Larry!

Yeah, they licensed their technology. Sets vary from chassis RCA actually built, to chassis that look identical to an RCA, but built by someone else, to things that look similar but have a few different tubes, to some that might have an RCA circuit, but completely different layout.

Circuitry is very comparable between brands. Even among the brands who fiercely resisted this, and designed their own stuff, it is remarkable how similar most of the design is. Chroma demodulators show the biggest most obvious differences.

The CTC-15 is probably the most cloned thing on the planet. It truly is the textbook color TV set. Although a roundie, there are also a whole bunch of rectangular sets of various brands based on it too.

John

Not only were there close similarities among all the RCAs and RCA clones, but basically, the circuit didn't change much all the way from 1957 (CTC-5) to the last RCA console tube set in the early 70s (CTC-39).

Zenith was always their own design, maybe because of the lawsuit from Sarnoff about the prototype Zenith color set in 1953 with a counterfeit 15GP22. But even that set; a chassis 43M20, was a pure Zenith design (except the aforementioned stolen tube). Zenith didn't come out with any color set for another 9 years (29JC20Q), and that one used an RCA design tube.

Charles

Well, its a well-known fact that Sarnoff & Commander Eugene F. McDonald-the ramrod at Zenith- could scarcely stand each other. McDonald was a patrician WASP & Sarnoff was most assuredly was NOT. RCA was a bigger company, & had the RCA laboratories, but Zenith always gave them a good run for their money. Designing a color set using as few of RCA's patents as possible took some technical savvy. Reading between the lines, I'd like to think BOTH of them liked to get each other's "goats" as much as possible.

Well, its a well-known fact that Sarnoff & Commander Eugene F. McDonald-the ramrod at Zenith- could scarcely stand each other. McDonald was a patrician WASP & Sarnoff was most assuredly was NOT. RCA was a bigger company, & had the RCA laboratories, but Zenith always gave them a good run for their money. Designing a color set using as few of RCA's patents as possible took some technical savvy. Reading between the lines, I'd like to think BOTH of them liked to get each other's "goats" as much as possible.


Sandy,

I think that sarnoff and Gen. George Patton had a lot of similarities as far as both being pig-headed and both premadonna's

Sandy,

I think that sarnoff and Gen. George Patton had a lot of similarities as far as both being pig-headed and both premadonna's

THAT about hit it on the head. The apochrophal quote of Sarnoff's I always liked was: "I don't GET ulcers, I GIVE them !" But give the devil his due-w/o flamboyant characters like him leading the way, radio & home entertainment might not have gotten as big as quickly. It IS a shame what he did to Armstrong, however, even though Armstrong apparently was about as bull-headed as Sarnoff was.

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My Silvertone CTC-15 clone has a nuvistor tuner. I don't think it's the same one RCA used. Mine has a 6ds4 nuvistor, and a 6ea8 (if i remember correctly). I believe the RCA versions used a 6cw4 nuvistor and a 6gh8. I think it is an RCA tuner, just not the one RCA used on the CTC-15.

My UHF tuner uses a glass tube. I believe RCA CTC-15's used one with a nuvistor.

John

For whatever reason the nuvistor just didn't catch on with the other makers. I think my Admiral roundie uses one, if memory serves; that set is not a clone.

My Zenith roundie has the option for a nuvistor uhf tuner or the glass tube {6AF4} I believe, but my set does not have uhf.

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I don't know, that's a good question.:scratch2: Maybe you should hook 'er up to a big antenna if you have a nuvistor and let us know.:yes:

There is a theoretical adavntage to them. Some of them are very quiet and have exrtremely high transconductance. In the early 60's, not much could touch them for an RF front end. There are glass tubes with similar performance, but I think they came along later.

Do nuvistor tuners actually work better

I want an HDTV ATSC tuner with a nuvistor! :D
Considering some of the issues with intermod de-sensing in ATSC front ends
http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0072/t.7434.html
and tubes supposidly being good at intermod immunity in radio front ends...

I have two RCA portables connected to cable. These have the nuvistor tube as the RF amplifier and work well on cable. I have also connected GE portacolors and a late 1960s Motorola B&W to the same cable system with much poorer results-inter channel interference, etc. Because of my experience with the above, I believe that they do work better.

The CTC-15 is probably the most cloned thing on the planet.

There were lots of clones of the CTC-15, that's sure, but my nomination for most-cloned manufactured product would probably go to the Singer Model 15 sewing machine.

[Hmm. Interesting that both product numbers involve "15".]

Singer themselves made the 15 (with some incremental improvements and changes in finish/styling) from 1879 to at least the 1960's (!), thus making it their longest-production model, but it spawed *gobs* of clones, many from Japan. Find any Japanese-made sewing machine from the 1950's or 60's, and there's probably at least an even chance it's a Singer 15 clone.