Roundie-daze Anecdotes...

[Big Dave]

I had a great-aunt that had an RCA roundie, possibly a CTC15 or 16. As various family members told me, she had nothing but trouble with it. A great-aunt and uncle (now in Florida) had a roundie, perhaps a Zenith. Another great aunt and uncle (both gone now) had a 16, verified from a photo. I think they replaced it with a rectangular before I had memory. In the early 90's, I decided I wanted one. Now I have 6. They all work, but most need a proper restoration. I paid the best price for all of them... FREE!

[Carmine]

When I was in my prime trash-pickin' years, say mid/late 80s, I never saw a roundie in the trash. Mostly RCA CTC-38s. Except ONCE...

I made my parents stop the car. Luckilly they had just bought one of those new-fangled "minivans" that are great for TV haulin'.

It was a 64-ish low-level Zenith. As I recall, it worked fine, lol!

Every roundie I've had since then has been a trade/etc. Never new anybody who had one either... My whole cheapass family waited until about 1968, but it was always Zenith, so I guess they just waited to buy the good stuff.

Never seen a roundie in the trash since, or even an estate sale.

[nasadowsk]

The first roundie I ever saw was at a garage sale, it was a low end metal cabinet one. The round screen was insane - I had only seen rectangular ones. CTC-38s used to pop up in the trash all the time back then (last tube RCA color set I saw in the trash was about 5 years ago, but was a newer rectuangualar console andwouldn't fit on the back of my Harley )

For whatever reason, I saw very few tube TVs of any type being tossed when I was young. Oh well..

[jstout66]

As a kid I used to work in my Uncles TV sales/service shop. He was a Zenith dealer. The first roundie I ever saw was when I was 7 or 8, which would have been in 1974/1975. I went to a friends house and they had an Admiral with the tilt out control panel. I thought it was so cool! My parents first color set was an RCA CTC-19 mini-console, so I wasn't even aware of round screen sets until going to watch cartoons at my friends. As for working with my Uncle.... There weren't very many roundies on his service route when I started helping in 1978. Mainly CTC-16's and a few Zeniths. In our area the RCA dealer must have had a HUGE sale on CTC-38's because that is what we ALWAYS saw. And with those it was ALWAYS flybacks....I could tell you some horror stories of what we would find in sets. I remember a dead mouse in an RCA portable. My Uncles main bitch was when we would go on a call and the customer had fiddled with the service controls. A few of them had gotten into and twisted every knob on the convergency panel. He reallllyyyy hated that! LOL!

[truetone36]

We had a CTC-7 in our living room when I was a kid in the early '70s. I'll never forget watching Saturday morning cartoons on that set.


Dumont-First with the finest in television.

[roundscreen]

My aunt and uncle bought a remote round screen color rca set in 1963 and it was the first color set I saw in person. They were vary fussy when it came to the color adjustments and it had a vary good picture. I was the one who would crank up the color when watching cartoons and sit about two inches away from the screen. My aunt would tell me to sit back from the tv or I would go blind but I never did listen to her and I still do it now. { I am 48 years old.} That set was in service till 1975 and was on 8 to 10 hours a day. The flyback burned up in 1966 and the crt was replaced in 1970 if I recall correctly. { My uncle would show me the repair bills.} The first round color set I owned was a ctc15 that my step dad gave me when my mom bought a new one in 1972. The crt got busted when I moved out of the house in 1973. When I bought my house in 1979. I started collecting round screen color and b&w sets and now I have a large collection of round screen sets. I had no clue that there were other people that collected old color sets untill I met Tim in the 90's. Now I see people collecting 70's and 80's sets and I think that is so awesome. I hope our collections will be around for a long time for other people to love and enjoy just like we do.
Ed

[Pete Deksnis]

I remember generally being pissed because I was seventeen and hadn't seen color television yet.

It was in the spring of 1957 that it happened, complements of an after-school job at a local butcher shop that included delivering orders in their '54 Chevy panel truck. The first time I delivered to a bar in West Conshohocken I saw a 'color TV' sign over the front door.

Walked in and there it was: a metal table model 21-in. roundie IN OPERATION SHOWING COLOR!

I didn't know it at the time, but I stood there watching "Matinee Theatre," a live color broadcast being beamed cross-country from Los Angeles.

I hung there mezmorized far longer than an underage kid probably should have in a 1957 bar. I didn't care.

That was a long time ago.

But hey, you can always remember your first time.

[oldtvman]

Pete I guess that's what makes us a different breed. As I said earlier, nothing I have seen in my life nothing has come close to the impact of seeing color television in the 50's, It was almost surreal. Color television was very good but almost out of place in that era. And although HDTV is a major improvement, it almost goes unnoticed in today's busy world.

[Sandy G]

Altho I'd seen Color TV before, one of the 1st times that made an impression on me was seeing myself on TV in color at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. Of course, those poor roundies had been on 24/7 I guess for nearly 2 years at that point, & your face was a glorious shade of purplish green on one, & greenish purple on the other one. I'm amazed RCA would have let their star attraction go all to shit like that-especially the way they were ballyhooing it-SEE YOURSELF ON.....COLOR TELEVISION !! Here ! Now ! Live ! And each letter of "color" was a different color... There must have been several million people who saw that display, & lots of 'em probly said- "$600 for this ?!? They got a lotta nerve!" Too bad Sony didn't have Trinitron ready then, that woulda skunked RCA but good...

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

...although HDTV is a major improvement, it almost goes unnoticed in today's busy world.

It's also been a slow starter for sure. I've seen people buy a widescreen HDTV, feed it with only NTSC, stretch the 4.3 sweep to 16.9, and proudly show it off to neighbors.

MeThinks HDTV is still too technical for most to wrap themselves around, but unlike the gestation of color, HD is being legislated into acceptance.

Originally Posted by Sandy G

...one of the 1st times that made an impression on me was seeing myself on TV in color at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

You and other AudioKaramans were fortunate to have been there in front of an operating TK-41. My parents lived in Manhattan at the time, and so my Dad and I took the subway out to the fair one day. Keep scratching my butt but don't have specific memories of the RCA pavilion. I do seem to remember roundies on view around the park, but the Chrysler turbines keep popping up and fog my vintage TV recollections. Found a few slides of that trip a few months ago; drat it, no roundies to be seen, but we were both wearing suit and tie! That certainly was a different time. I barely own a tie today, and those turbines are dust. Viva color TV!

[old_tv_nut]

When I visited the NYWF in 65, the color adjustment at RCA didn't look so bad to me. However, it was really hard to see yourself in the live display with the lights shining in your face. The taped delay as you went around the turntable was better, but I didn't photograph it too well - the guessed exposure was way overexposed, plus the film saw it as bluish, so my avatar has had a LOT of color correction.

Here's a shot of the control room with a better exposure.

[Dave A]

OTN,

Those sets look like TM-21 monitors. The best RCA had to sell to broadcasters and logically used in the control room at the fair.

I'm curious about the "tape delay". When you went through, did you see yourself later as you exited?

The only way to tape delay 2" tape (the only thing available then) was to record it on one machine, let the tape spill out to a basket (which I did in my broadcasting youth) and feed the basket to a second machine for playback. About 14" per sec record speed as I remember.

Dave A

[old_tv_nut]

A full write-up on the RCA pavilion starts at:
http://www.nywf64.com/rca01.shtml
especially the "see yourself" part at
http://www.nywf64.com/rca04.shtml.

They used a series of rollers, rather than bins, between the machines. I was absolutely floored when I saw it. I have been pissed with myself ever since that I didn't take a picture of the arrangement.

The technical difficulty was of course completely lost on the average visitor, but I was well aware of the "tape banding" that would show up frequently in on-air programs at the time. I think this was a tremendous bragging piece within the industry, to have three machines that were completely compatible with no "tape banding" visible. The servos and automatic correction circuitry had only recently reached this level of performance.

Some people I know in the TV industry have told me of doing both roller and binned delays. One binned setup, I was told, could do a 30-minute delay!