http://cgi.ebay.com/1970s-ZENITH-16-inch-B-W-TV-PORTABLE-NEW-IN-BOX_W0QQitemZ230069372410QQihZ013QQcategoryZ73374Q QrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Wow! :jawdrop:

I would bet that drh4683 will snap it up. :yes:

polaraman

That set is a very fine and well-preserved specimen of a 1970-vintage Zenith b&w portable TV. I wonder if it still works. :dunno: However, I have to question one part of the seller's description: "(Do you) remember when there was no such thing as cable?" Cable television has been around almost as long as commercial TV itself, though the first systems were analog, mainly in mountainous areas miles from local stations (or in some cases any TV stations at all), and weren't nearly as sophisticated as today's 200-plus-channel digital service. The very first system was located in Lansdale, Pennsylvania in the late 1940s-early fifties; it brought in reception from Philadelphia stations, nearly 20 miles distant (just the Philly TV stations and maybe a crudely-implemented local weather channel, no HBO or other pay services we take for granted on cable these days; I know the type, as I used to know people in West Virginia in the '70s who had just this kind of cable service--the system in their town just brought in channels from Wheeling and Clarksburg, WV, Pittsburgh, PA and Steubenville, Ohio, with a local weather channel that showed little more than temperature, humidity and barometer readings taken by a TV camera scanning weather instruments, probably at the local airport). I just Googled Lansdale, PA and found that it's a town in the middle of nowhere; no wonder they needed cable to get decent reception from anyplace, especially in TV's early days when most folks were still listening to radio for their evening's entertainment. (The same could probably be said for the small town I live in today, as the TV reception here without cable is awful and may have been even worse years ago, although in the fifties-sixties there were only three VHF stations in Cleveland and a lot less interference, so maybe OTA [over the air] reception out here was better then; who knows? :dunno:). Today's kids would probably be flabbergasted (if they would believe it at all) if anyone were to tell them people actually lived without television fifty-plus years ago.

Nice little set. It's actually a 1967 model though. Wonder what the original box looks like.......

i guess it would need to be recapped?

and i like the hangtag that calls printed boards "production shortcuts" :D

We had cable here by the mid-sixties...including a local weather channel.