To those old enough to remember 60's TV's when they were still being used in the 70's-80's, when did you first see Cataracts or Green halo? For that matter, how about the oily lens seal on a 21FBP22 that would break down and leave a vapor halo around the edge of the screen. Those oily lens seals would also make a mess inside the bottom of the cabinet.

Im just curious as when I find these sets with green halo etc., it would be interesting to know about how long they have been in this condition. I imagine many nice TV's were junked over the years simply because of cataract related conditions.

Hi Doug,
Good question. I worked in my Uncles shop from 1978-1982.
Surprisingly not a ton of roundies were in service. I don't ever remember cataracts on them tho, and NEVER saw them on rectangular tubes.
However, I DO remember the green halo on Zeniths. So... you figure if I saw a halo on a 67 Zenith in 1980, that set would have been 13 years old.
I've seen some of the "early generation" Chromacolor tubes now that have the halo, but not any made say past 1973. Hummmm......

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I first saw it around 1990 on an early Motorola rectangular CRT table set. The set had been stored in a basement for years; but, it still worked other than the SEVERE cataracts. The cataracts was probably why it was taken out of service.

I saw my first cataract in 1982 on a RCA CTC16 combo that i had bought. It was severe enough that when i removed the tape, the safety glass fell off. So it had to have been that way for several years before i bought it.

I first saw it on a CTC-16 in 1989.

Well, I got you guys beat by a mile. My folks' 1966 Packard Bell had a noticeable fuzziness at the edges by 1974. The repair man told them there was nothing that could be done about it short of picture tube replacement, which wasn't happening.

The PB was still hanging on into the early 80s (despite my rubber band and chewing gum repairs to it) by which time I had moved out and was using it as my primary set, ignoring the slowly growing cataract. It finally quit late in '83 and rested out on the porch. By the early 90s, the halo covered at least half the screen.

This set was, btw, a 23V type.

I remember seeing in the "lounge" area of our county airport, an early rectangular set that was beginning to look "Funky" by late '71-early '72. Don't remember what kind it was, & this place was frequented by SMOKERS...Guys who "Lit one offa one" over & over all day & all night. I DO remember the screen was a deep olive green, some of which undoubtedly was nicotine stain. I wonder if nicotine helped speed "Cadillacs" along...It would kinda make sense if it did...

I remember a Magnavox that Dad put a new CRT in because it had the green debond disesase (cataracts). This was in 1977 or 1978, before he moved to the big shop. It was probably a 23EG or 25AX tube, definitely not a roundie.

That said, I worked as a counter salesman for Cain Electronics in the early 80's. When we sold Channel Master CRTs, we had three tests for each CRT - check for label (to ensure the tube was indeed a dud candidate), check for air (used the sparky pencil - there's another thread on VK about it) and ask if the safety plate was debonded/had debond disease. We had to ask because the boss didn't want anyone of us sales folks removing CRT duds from cartons. If the dealer brought in his dud, he did the swap. Lots of CRTs went out the door sans the carton.

We sold a lot of 23VAL/23VAT "universal" 25" CRTs in the early 80's. We had Channel Master 2 year "Monarch", 3 year and Lifetime tubes. We also sold Empire Video rebuilt CRTs in the most common sizes for 2/3rds the cost of the Channel Master CRTs. Empire had problems with shorts after a year or so, but they were 1-yr warranty tubes, so very few got the warranty replacement.

Oh how I hated the Channel Master truck. Luckily, my brother was a suck-up and would come in early to help unload. I was happy to watch from the sidelines.:thmbsp:

Cheers,

For me...it was in about 1978, and it was on a Motorola 23EGP22 set.

A grade-school friend had one, it was his parents " main set", I remember it had the dual--HO tubes and such. I SWEAR it also had some kind of "vertical channel readout", but with a mechanical tuner. IIRC, the set was becoming problematic by then, and there were 3 capacitors in a group in front of the big square power tranny, and one had been "knocked over" and was hanging by the leads.

The moved about the fall of the next year, I was about 12, and that moto set was NOT working right, I rememebr a TV guy there, and he changed a number of tubes, the 1V2 I am SURE of, and some others. The set was then working , to some degree... but the cataract was getting bad by then, and I remember asking about it, and the TV guy told me "it is the glue going bad that holds the glass on in the front of the tube". For some reason...they decided NOT to fix the set, and replaced it with a 19" Mits set.

I BEGGED for the set, but I did NOT get it. Jeff's mom did NOT like me very well, and no doubt convinced his step--dad who DID like me(and my mom too, to a degree..)that it was "too dangerous" for me to have the set. I have little doubt it ended up in a packer--truck. Not long after that--Jeff's mom's jealousy of his step-dad's attention to me and my single mom got to a peak...and she convinced his SF that I was a 'bad influence on Jeff",(in reality...it was the other way around..) and ended our friendship soon after.

In about 82 or 83 my uncle gave me a GE table model, probably from around '67. (KD? Something like that chassis) He mentioned that the picture tube was new so it should have lots of life left in it. This always puzzled me since it had a pronounced cataract, something which always annoyed me. (along with all the other bad traits of a 60s GE color set)

I started dragging home sets by the truckload in '90. Thinking back, most did not have cataracts, but I did end up with several roundies that had them.

I remember seeing the green halo on , believe it or not, a 13" motorola hybrid that used to be in a sandwich shop out in Orangevale in 1987. They had it down off the shelf once when I went in. They were repairing the rabbit ears on it.

A friend of mine and his Mom had an "early" model CTC-17 (25AP22) and that set was about ten years old with a bad cateract. First time I ever noticed such a thing. That CRT was still going strong though and had a nice gray scale.
Funny thing about that one was that it was occuring from the lower right side, about a third of the tube. Must have been a bad bonding job from the start.

I saw the green ones on Zeniths as early as the late 70s, but later on roundies. I'd say 12-16 years was the age when the cataract would show up. The fix in the 80s was to have the local rebuilder remove the face glass and band the tube, which was the acceptable repair. Rebuilt tubes came that way also. On the oily 21FB, I saw that for the first time in 1977, when I was given my first color TV to play with... A Packard-Bell 21CT7. It showed up as a rainbow halo which would be visible on a white screen.

Charles

in the mid 70s when began to get the halo and cataract crts.i do remember the first halo.it was a zenith 23v in a drexel cabinet.strong tube but the owner wanted it replaced.really good set and the halo wasnt really an issue.replaced with a genuine zenith.the first cataract was a ctc11.we didnt really understand it then,so the crt was replaced with channelmaster.nice looking tube when finished,very sharp.the old crt was put away and i think mr dixon did the "surgery".it was used in another set and actually it was a better crt.no safety glass reinstalled.late 70s saw a ton of these issues.looking back,it was good times!

CTC 11 RCA. Terrible and that was around 1967 when I saw it.
The little RCA color hybrids had em bad too!

There is a picture of me taken around '75-'76 in front of my grandparent's 1968 Zenith and you can see the green halo.

My uncle had one of the last all-tube rectangular screen Zenith color sets, and we noticed the halo effect happening around 1978. The set had a hard life running an average of 17 hours a day. He replaced it after replacing the flyback 3 times in 3 years.

Our CTC-40 did not develop cataracts in the 20+ years we had it. My CTC-68 had a severe case when I obtained it last year and I suspect that was why it was taken out of service around 2001.

Guess it was the "luck of the draw."

I think they started using a different bonding material around the CTC-40 era. I have a CTC-40 with the original HiLite CRT and the bonding agent is perfect! Then I have a CTC-17 with a replacement colorama CRT from 1980 and it's perfect too, but then I have a Maggie from 68, and the CRT was replaced in 69, and, green halo. It's almost like somewhere between 1969 and 70 they used a different bonding agent. Correct me if im wrong of course.

Factor in heat as a cause for debonding, and you'll see why solid state/modular set CRTs fare much better. I can't recall too many that had cataracts - most were older tube sets.

While in the Navy, I was once stationed where the battery "locker" (the lead acid and NiCad battery charge and servicing shop) had a small 12" black and white TV with a foggy, almost out of focus picture. My only guess was the battery acid fumes had managed to etch or otherwise mar the CRT face.

Cheers,

Our CTC-40 did not develop cataracts in the 20+ years we had it. My CTC-68 had a severe case when I obtained it last year and I suspect that was why it was taken out of service around 2001.

Guess it was the "luck of the draw."

And, that CTC68 was a '74, correct?

The only solid state sets that I remember seeing with the green halo were a late '60's Quasar WID console and two early '70's RCA XL100 consoles. I don't recall seeing, in person, a SS set with the moldy looking cataracts. Now, my RCA CTC25 combo has cataracts and according to a receipt I found in the cabinet, the CRT was changed in '78. I don't know what brand as the rats, roaches, or whatever ate the label off the CRT.

I first noticed it on a large 60's rectangular console in what must have been the early 90's. It had dots of fungus starting to show up around the edges.

My grandma had a portable 19 or so inch B&W TV set (long gone, and forgot what make and model) that had dark spots around the outer regions of the screen. This was back in 1980 or so, and it was a mid to late 60;s set.

Findm's story about the etched tv screen reminded me of a lab I worked at. Back in the storage room, we had a couple of specialty cabinets, including the blast proof metal cabinet, and a wooden one with metal hinges where we stored corrosives (18M HCl and HF acid, for instance). Well, the crap in that cabinet was impossible to keep, it would dissolve the caps to the bottles they were kept in, badly etch nearby glass containers, and most dramatically, dissolve the hinges on the storage cabinet itself!

I recently pulled the crt from a set I am getting rid of, a Halolite from the early 60s. It must have been among the first to use a bonded tube. One unique aspect is that the faceplate is larger than the front of the crt and has ears made onto the glass for holding the picture tube in place. Were the bonding to fail I don't see anything that would have prevented the tube from simply falling down on the chassis. The PVA on this one looks great, though. Appears to be the typical Sylvania type which turns greenish. The edges that are exposed to air are viewable only from the backside of the crt and they have just barely turned color. The faceplate actually wraps around the edges of the crt; pulling it off would be a bear, I think. The old tube is all but dead, but I will get some close up photos before I toss it.

And, that CTC68 was a '74, correct?

Yeah, '73 or '74 - can't remember and it's pretty inaccessible in the shed right now :(

Thanks for all the replys. It seems that people then started first seeing it around 1975ish, but it became a common occurance around 1978 or so. Very interesting.

I've done some of my own experiments with the PVA material. I save a few peices of "good" PVA from cataract jobs I've done in the past just to see what happens over time being exposed to air. So far, I've only noticed that the clear PVA over time turns cloudy.

I have seen some RCA sets from the 60's for example have zero cataracts, while others from the same year are terrible.

I agree with charles though, you don't really see cataracts after about 1969 model sets.

Its interesting how this happens and I'd really like to find out why some sets experience the problem and others do not and what environmental factors contribute to this happening. Is it sunlight exposure, or air? Perhaps its the TV usage that contributed to the problem, such as heat (sunlight can also contribute to the heat factor). Not sure. I wonder if there was a study published on this that had some definite conclusions as to why.

My grandmother had a large dual-speaker VHF-only Zenith roundie. The picture went out in 1975. My uncle who repaired TV's tried replacing a few tubes... still didn't work. He told her he would not fix the set because he thought it was too old. He was a firm believer in solid state. She just put another set on top of the Zenith. The set stayed there till she moved out of that house in 1983. It never developed the typical Zenith halo during those years. The house did not have A/C, and being on the Gulf Coast, it lived it's life (and death) in a warm humid climate.

Probably just needed a capacitor. What a waste.

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I remember seeing the greenish halo on some sets back in teh late 70's, seems like Magnavox and maybe Zenith.

At the time I think I thought it was some kind of feature, like a shaded windshield on a car.

Dunno about the cause, but the two attached laminating resin patents discuss "prior art" and mention some of the problems with shrinkage and discoloring of early resins used to attach safety panels to CRT faces. Perhaps the "cure" for cataracts was in better resins? :scratch2:

Cheers,