Found this really cool Motorola catalog online for 1956. It shows all of their televisions for that year.... LOTS of B&W models, and the 19 inch color models are in the last few pages. I kinda wish the photos' file sizes were a little larger, but still a cool bunch of photos to look thru.

At the right, click on the smaller pic to look thru the pages.

I put it here in the B&W forum since most of the sets are B&W.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hollywoodplace/3427553041/in/set-72157616473752201/

THere's a slideshow button at the right as well... makes for a better look

thanks for posting

Eye-conditioned TV! I love the pic of the guys inside the chassis -- reminds me of the show Land Of The Giants.

Phil Nelson

Eye-conditioned TV! I love the pic of the guys inside the chassis -- reminds me of the show Land Of The Giants.

Phil Nelson

Amazing how much BS they had to expound to sell TVs by '56...It wasn't quite a "mature" product yet, but it was getting close to it..The only real innovation was color, & they were Mucho Dinero, & there weren't many color programs on at all. B&W sets like these, the only real differences were cosmetic, & screen size choices..

Thanks for posting! I have a mahogany 24K10 and it's one of my most prized possessions.

Amazing how much BS they had to expound to sell TVs by '56

Yeah, like the new Automatic Beam Stablilizer or Improved Miracle Interlace. They come up with some pretty fancy names there, don't they? Funny... I don't recall seeing any "compensator tubes" on the tube diagram of my Motorola sets!

Could you imagine what kind of names they'd have today if they were still trying to BS people?

Could you imagine what kind of names they'd have today if they were still trying to BS people?
Go look at any "feature" list for Sony TVs of the past 15 years or more and you will see plenty of over-hyped and mis-named junk. "Dynamic" this and that, "Digital Reality Creation" (I'm serious-they really used that term!), "x.v. Color" (another dumb corruption of an industry term for an obscure feature of dubious value), and many more.

Actually--the brochure does hype one feature that you wouldn't think of as important, but is actually a great improvement: the pushbutton on-off switch. As the brochure points out, with the on-off and volume using the same control, you have to guess at the volume when you turn it on, and more likely than not, get up and adjust it when the set warms up. With the button, you set the volume and leave it! A truly useful innovation.

Was looking at some other pics at that site and saw this...

Terry