I was wondering when the "real" USA based Emerson Radio Corp. sold out to foreign hands and who they were originally sold to? What got me to thinking about this was a real POS 25" '94 Emerson that someone gave me today. The CRT is labeled Orion but was actually one of those bad Zenith built tubes. And, yes, it really was bad. The chassis had many problems including almost every power resistor having poor solder connections. "Real" Emerson TV's seem to be harder to find than Motorola TV's. I remember seeing a metal cabinet B&W console and a 17" B&W portable from the '60's. IIRC, they were both branded "Emerson-Dumont". So, if anyone has any information as to what happened to the "real" Emerson and when, I'd appreciate it.

Here is what I know (I would like to know more)

Emerson took over DuMont in about 57 or so. I think this was still the independent Emerson but I don't know that for sure. In the 1960s, I think in the early 60s, National Union Electronics (the old tube company) bought them. Towards the end of that decade they were having serious trouble competing with the influx of Japanese brands; Emerson (and, increasingly DuMont) had staked out the lower end of the market, which was just where the Japanese were targeting. NUE sued, in Federal Court, what could be called "Japan, Inc." stating that the big companies over there were dumping sets here-in other words, selling them below cost to gain market share. Eventually the lawsuit was won, but too late. In 1970 they closed their factory(s) though they did not leave the business. By studying chassis photos in Sams from before and after 1970 I determined that later sets were rebadged Admirals.

An interesting point: I own a 1970 DuMont color set (built by NUE) and most of the original tubes were made in Japan. The company was pushing its DuMont line of tubes in the 60s, but apparently the old National Union line had been discontinued by then.

I lose track of the company in the mid-70s. Since they weren't making TV sets anymore it didn't matter much, I guess, where they were made. I think there was a change of hands at some point but it is my understanding that the company remained American owned. There was a good overview of this on the Emerson website, under "company history", but I haven't looked at it for years. I think the DuMont name got seperated along the way but I don't know for sure. (it seems to have ended up lumped with Capehart as a name on cheap stereos and such, and still shows up from time to time) Emerson also made Quiet Kool air conditioners, and continued to until fairly recently. They have since sold that line. It is possible that Emerson is still an "American" company today; the last I looked they referred to themselves as a sales company, since they didn't actually make anything.

Emerson seems to have come on strong in the 80s with those imported, Orion built TV sets. They were a big seller at discount department stores. They were also huge in the VCR business.

Well, I guess that is about all I "know". I hope it helps...I hope any mistakes get corrected. I really enjoy reading the later history of the old companies; often it gets ignored. Neat to know what happened to them, I think.

Thanks for that information!

I used to find many Emerson sets from the '80's and '90's made by Orion. Some of them also used a GoldStar chassis. Sometime around '87, my Dad bought a 13" Emerson rotary tuner color set for $149.99. He used it up untill he passed away in '97, at which time I sold it because it was no longer needed. For the exception of the two '60's B&W's I mentioned, about '83 is the oldest Emerson I've had my hands on. I consider the ones made in the '90's to be total junk and the ones from the '80's were not much better. It is interesting that some of their sets from the '80's, even though they were cheap, used an auto kine bias circuit.

About 15 or more years ago, I had an Emerson tube color TV set. 19 inches I think. It eventually died, think the CRT got weak.

One thing I remember about it was that it had the usual video detector and more unusually a color subcarrier detector, that was separate from the luma video detector. Both detected off the 45MHz video IF. The bandpass filters for the color subcarrier were done at 45Mhz, and then detected.

Emerson had a TV manufacturing plant here in Italy, in Florence, i think it was opened in the late 50s and closed in the early 80s

Early Emerson sets made before the early-mid 60s had a lot of american technology into them, they had American-made tubes and CRTs and an American designed (i think) handwired chassis, later sets had an Italian designed PCB chassis fitted with European tubes.

Emerson was a luxury brand here, their sets were very well made and were usually fitted with motorized tuning, remote control, automatic contrast, two way "hi-fi" speaker systems with large woofers and so on

[QUOTE=Kiwick;1832433]Emerson had a TV manufacturing plant here in Italy, in Florence, i think it was opened in the late 50s and closed in the early 80s

Some nice history on Emerson here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Radio

In the mid 80s, I used drive past their Jersey City, New Jersey plant on the way to the Holland Tunnel...

I have 2 Emersons from the 80's, One has a itermittent vertical sweep problem, and the other works but tends to bloom quite often. I'm debating on fixing the one with the vert. trouble 'cause when it works, it has a great picture. I have 3 from the mid to late-50's that work quite well, of course that was before they started building them overseas.

I have 2 Emersons from the 80's, One has a itermittent vertical sweep problem, and the other works but tends to bloom quite often. I'm debating on fixing the one with the vert. trouble 'cause when it works, it has a great picture. I have 3 from the mid to late-50's that work quite well, of course that was before they started building them overseas.

The one with the vertical problem may just need to have the vertical output IC resoldered.

In the summer of 1969, my family was renting a summer house not too
far from Montreal, and an old TV was included in the deal. Having found
out that the TV set was inoperative (I was too young to note the make
at the time...),
my parents decided to buy a small portable unit, and they settled for an
Emerson, which must have been a 15-inch set or so. I remember the
furniture store where we bought it. They had a Quality Control counter
where a clerk unpacked our brand new Emerson, plugged it in, ran it for
about two minutes and put it back carefully into its box, telling us that
everything was fine. Back to the summer house we went, sure that we
would watch the Apollo 11 mission in peace.

A few days later, the Emerson died, and upon returning to the store,
we traded it for a 19-inch Canadian built Philips (still B&W) that lasted
about twelve years, until its picture tube was completely run down.
By the time this set was near the end of its life, I had played with it
often enough to know that it was a hybrid, with two transistors on the
big PCB, and possibly a transistorized tuner as well.

I have often wondered what was the true identity of that Emerson we
briefly owned, I guess it will remain a mystery...

I owned a 1985 emerson and a 1987 19". Both had nice pictures but were pretty flimsy sets. I would love to find a 'true' old Emerson one day...

[QUOTE=Hawkwind;1833009]

Some nice history on Emerson here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerson_Radio

QUOTE]

I hadn't read that before-looks like I wasn't too far off on my information-darn, I must have been paying attention for once!

I've never thought highly of any Emerson TVs. The early ones (pre-1955 maybe), were less cheaply-made, I guess. By the 80s, they were crappy cheap Korean sets (either Fevsy or Orion). They had horrible power supplies which would blow SCRs and be impossible to troubleshoot. The plastic cabinets would rot, and would fall apart into razor-sharp shards by surprise. But all that said, I guess the pictures were OK. They had smoked glass on the front of their better sets, which I do like.

Charles

My father hated vacuum tube era Emerson sets; he said that they had a habit of burying components under other components in their chassises. A bit of a PITA to repair.

His mother-in-law had an Emerson AA5 AM radio. I was trying to fix it and he was saying "don't waste your time, it's a POS". But one of his relations on his side of the family had a Zenith AA5, and he had a completely different attitude to spending time to repair that radio... :scratch2: :D

If your father hated Emersons, he would have loved the GE console I am working on. It is of around 1951 vintage. To save the cost of a power transformer, GE made designed it as series string set with Selenium rectifiers.
Appearently, UL must have been pressuring manufacturers about hot chassis at this time also as GE mounted all components on vertical PC type (pins, but no traces) boards under the chassis. They then ran a ground seperate from the chassis. This makes the set very difficult to work on. I comparison, the Emerson that I restored was constructed similar to other sets of the era(early 1950s) and was not difficult to restore at all(other than finding a good CRT).

After all the extra work GE went to to isolate the chassis on the set that I am presently working on, I do not think that they saved any money over using a power transformer. Seems to me that the GE design was poorly thought out.