Hello, I am trying to find out about the Conrac 17" Color Monitor (CYA 17) that came out in 1963. Unlike all the other color television monitors, whether consumer or broadcast that were 21" roundie sets, this monitor was a 17" rectangular unit that could fit into a broadcast rack unit.

I first saw one when I was on a television station tour at WHEN-TV ch. 5 in Syracuse, NY in the spring of 1963. Even though, this was a Conrac set, it was dressed with a RCA logo and was mounted in a rack as it monitored their RCA TK-26 color film camera.

Any one know who made the CRT since it was rectangular and not round as there were no consumer 17" color sets out in 1963?

Attached is an ad from a broadcast magazine from Nov. 1963.

Guessing the tube had to be Japanese.

Toshiba site claims 17 inch tube in about 1960
http://museum.toshiba.co.jp/toshiba_history/firsts_products/1958tv.html

Yeah..We had a 17-19" RECTANGULAR Sears color set, c. 1963-64...It was a Dog, but it WAS color, & on the 3 days we had it that it worked, I remember it had a VERY good picture...The CRT never was the problem, it was always something else that would let go..

Don't even ask how I found this.
The book "The Phosphor Handbook" (1999) found on the Google website had this to say (chapter 18, page 839, section 18.5.1).
Paraphrasing the book (cause I couldn't lift it) "In 1958 the first rectangular 17" color CRT, 70 degree was manufactured entirely of Japanese parts".
My question is: did they make a second CRT, was this a production CRT, etc.?
One thing for sure, I won't lose any sleep over it.
Phil

The 17" CRT for the CYA was made by Hitachi.

Conrac was shocked when Hitachi, without notice, discontinued the manufacture of that CRT. There was no advance warning, as legend ahs it. The company produced ads that ran in industry publications acknowledging that they had a delivery problem, but later struck a deal with RCA to make the CRTs. Conrac was promoting the controlled phosphor (tight tolerance) concept in order to allow closer matching of monitors. The SMPTE C phosphor set is the Conrac (C) coordinates.

Conrac produced modification kits for the CYA that would permit the newer RCA tubes. The original Hitachi tubes were 70 degree tubes, so the modification may have included a new yoke, FB,etc. I do know that there was a Mod "G" version that included many updates, including a DC filament supply.

Later, RCA stopped making the controlled phosphor tubes, and Conrac turned to Matsushita, who also later discontinued production of these low volume CRTs. The Model 6100 used Matsushita CRTs and yokes.

There was also a 21" version of the CYA, and maybe for the CYB.

Hope this helps.

JB

"Just" $ 2450.00 in 1963?

That is nearly 19K in todays money !!

One can get a cheap NEW CAR--for that money--and right now--a MUCH better car--during model year closeout--for that same money.

A high price was certainly justified for a tube with controlled phosphors. They would be affected very easily by contamination, so applying them without getting contamination from/to a mass production run for TV sets could be a difficult project; might involve wasting material and time due to cleaning equipment before and after, etc.

Also, developing the controlled phosphor in the first place could be a problem. I wonder if Conrac negotiated shipping controlled phosphors from a single batch to the successive tube manufacturers? Seems I recall stories about the existence of just three barrels of the controlled phosphors that were used for all tubes.

430CB22 was the Toshiba tube IIRC. It was always a special order tube, and listed by Empire rebuilders as a "studio" tube, along with camera viewfinder CRTs. ZERO interchangeability with any US(EIA) tube.

Same socket configuration as the 21CY/21FJ.

Cheers,

A high price was certainly justified for a tube with controlled phosphors. They would be affected very easily by contamination, so applying them without getting contamination from/to a mass production run for TV sets could be a difficult project; might involve wasting material and time due to cleaning equipment before and after, etc.

Also, developing the controlled phosphor in the first place could be a problem. I wonder if Conrac negotiated shipping controlled phosphors from a single batch to the successive tube manufacturers? Seems I recall stories about the existence of just three barrels of the controlled phosphors that were used for all tubes.

SO then--a garden variety 21FJ tube with sulfide phospors--would not be good enough here ?

And--has ANYONE_-seen one of these beasts still "in the wild"--today ?

SO then--a garden variety 21FJ tube with sulfide phospors--would not be good enough here ? ...



Definitely not a sulfide red, which was the most orange of any of the reds used over the years and moved significantly more toward orange at high beam currents. The rare-earth red is actually quite close to NTSC red, and mainly appears wrong in later sets due to the large color demod/matrix adjustment needed to compensate for the yellower sulfide green phosphor.

Hi all-

Wayne could be right about the scarcity of controlled phosphors, but I do recall seeing many jars of different phosphor types at the RCA Lancaster plant.

In any case, controlled phosphor tubes were expensive to produce-the rectangular tube used in the Conrac RHA/RHB was around a kilobuck in the late 70s, but the networks were willing to pay for consistentcy. We owe people such as Tony Lind of RCA, Charlie Rhodes of Tektronix, and those at Conrac thanksfor their tireless effort in improving color display uniformity. If I have forgotten some other names, my apologies.

Charlie for one tried to strike a compromise between EBU phosphors and SMPTE C in order to reduce costs, but no one would budge. In the 1990s, NHK proposed a phosphor set that found its way into Sony hi-end products, but the networks and post community here in the US balked. They,too, were trying to produce a single tube that would satisfy everyone.

Regarding sulfide tubes, I had one in an old RCA TM-21 and it had a very pleasing, saturated colorimetry, but lacked the luminance of the newer rare earth type. It was sent out for regunning, but what came back was a rare earth tube! That's before I knew about Hawkeye-live and learn.

Regards,

J Ballard

Hi all-

... We owe people such as Tony Lind of RCA, Charlie Rhodes of Tektronix, and those at Conrac thanksfor their tireless effort in improving color display uniformity. If I have forgotten some other names, my apologies...



Add LeRoy DeMarsh at Kodak to the list.

Oh, yes, Roy Demarsh from Eastman Kodak-"Mr. Colorimetry." Thanks. RIP, Roy.

W.N. Sprosson from the BBC also.

Regards,

JB

Don't even ask how I found this.
The book "The Phosphor Handbook" (1999) found on the Google website had this to say (chapter 18, page 839, section 18.5.1).
Paraphrasing the book (cause I couldn't lift it) "In 1958 the first rectangular 17" color CRT, 70 degree was manufactured entirely of Japanese parts".
My question is: did they make a second CRT, was this a production CRT, etc.?
One thing for sure, I won't lose any sleep over it.
Phil

I wonder if this was the same tube used in the consumer 1958 model Westinghouse sets? I thought that was a 22" though. If they were different I wonder if our rectangular color CRT came out first?

I wonder if this was the same tube used in the consumer 1958 model Westinghouse sets? I thought that was a 22" though. If they were different I wonder if our rectangular color CRT came out first?

Those CRT's were made by CBS-Hytron. The earlier 19" rounds that Motorola, CBS and Raytheon used, were made by them, as well.
I guess, you could consider the 22" first, but it was a flop, where the early 60's Toshiba, must have been considered a success.
I'm one of the sorriest people on earth, that I dumped the Toshiba-built Sears set, years ago. I haven't seen one before, or since. :sigh:

We all let go of something, and come regret it at least once...Occupational hazard of being a collector.

I wonder if this was the same tube used in the consumer 1958 model Westinghouse sets? I thought that was a 22" though. If they were different I wonder if our rectangular color CRT came out first?

The Photofact (357-12) for the Westinghouse 22" rectangular sets is dated 5-57. By 1958 Westinghouse had ditched the 22EP22 and replaced it with a 21CYP22.
The US made tubes rectangular likely were first:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/22_inch_color_tubes.html

jr

Paraphrasing the book (cause I couldn't lift it) "In 1958 the first rectangular 17" color CRT, 70 degree was manufactured entirely of Japanese parts".

I wonder if this was the same tube used in the consumer 1958 model Westinghouse sets? I thought that was a 22" though. If they were different I wonder if our rectangular color CRT came out first?

According to my copy of Peter A. Keller's 1991 book "The Cathode-Ray Tube: Technology, History, and Applications" (an interesting book, BTW) section 6.10 "Rectangular Shadow-Mask Color Tubes" on page 184-5:

The first commercially available rectangular color tube was the 22-inch, all-glass 22EP22 (figure 6.22) developed by Westinghouse Electric Company in their Elmira, New York plant (1956). A 24-hour-long pump cycle combined with a high-temperature bake (400 degrees) resulted in a very good vacuum and long life. The 22EP22 was used in a television receiver manufactured by Westinghouse, but economics doomed it after only one year of limited production. The long pump cycle limited production and Westinghouse was unable to compete with RCA who was selling receivers at a loss in order to develop the market.

http://www.saturn-tech.com/~drussell/pictures/television/misc/22EP22.JPG

He then goes on to talk about the 25AP22 with no mention of the years in between or any of the Japanese tubes, unfortunately:

It remained for RCA to produce the 25-inch rectangular tube in 1964 before the rectangular screen format spread through the color television market as it had the black and white market 15 years earlier. Rectangular color tubes made their successful commercial debut with RCA's 25-inch, 90-degree deflection 25AP22.* Rectangular tubes had long been the norm for black and white television, but the less-critical round tube had served the color television industry through its comparatively long incubation period and by the early 1960s the process for mass-production were established and well understood. The 25AP22 had a living room-sized screen while being over four inches shorter than the round 21-inch series of tubes. Several new features were introduced in this tube, including a flatter screen, an aluminum foil electron shield between the edges of the shadow mask and the bulb to prevent scattered electrons from reaching the screen and degrading contrast, and a more compact electron gun. The latter allowed the use of a smaller diameter neck (1-7/16-inch (36 mm) versus the previous two-inch diameter) which reduced the deflection yoke power and size requirements, and improved convergence by placing the electron beams closer together. Also new to color picture tubes was the hard-pin stem which eliminated the need for a separate base by employing short, stiff, feed-though wires on the stem as pins to mate with a socket -- a trend initiated in the late 1950s for monochrome picture tubes.

With the 25AP22 and the soon-to-follow 25BP22, 19EXP22 and 19EYP22 by RCA in 1965,** the floodgates opened for new rectangular color picture tubes by all of the major U.S. manufacturers. Up to the late 1960s all tubes utilized the early dot-triad screen with the three electron guns arranged in a triangular fashion about the neck axis in what was termed a delta-gun configuration. (Sections 6.12 and 6.13 discuss the further major evolution of the shadow mask color picture tube in the Trinitron and the slot mask / in-line tubes.)

In the late 1960s picture tube faceplates became somewhat squarer and tube designations changed as a result of a Federal Trade Commission ruling requiring actual viewable screen dimensions to be advertised rather than overall glass dimensions as previously used.*** The letter "V" was added after the screen size in EIA tube registrations to indicate viewable inches, e.g., the Rauland 19VMJP22. At that time tube type numbers had become quite lengthy.

* Morrell, A.M. and Hardy, A.E. "Development of the RCA 25-inch 90-degree Rectangular Color Picture Tube," IEEE Trans Bcst TV Recvrs, BTR 10, pp. 15-22, 1964.
** Morrell, A.M. "Development of the RCA family of 90-degree Rectangular Color Picture Tubes," IEEE Trans Bcst TV Recvrs, BTR 11, pp. 90-95, 1965.
*** Federal Trade Commission Trade Regulation Rule "Deceptive Advertising As to Sizes of Viewable Pictures Shown by Television Receiving Sets," pp. 1-4, effective July 1, 1966.

...

I have a Conrac monitor,it has the rectangular Hitachi tube
http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/ff289/grimer66/con01_zps5f6af02f.jpg

Here are some pictures of my Sears/Toshiba. The cabinet was completely falling apart. The sides and top were made of a single piece of very thin plywood that was bent at the corners. I have replaced the sides and top, and I just need to finish it so I can put the CRT back in and restore the chassis. It has a lot of bad caps in it, but the CRT tests good.

I remember seeing one of those at our local Sears store. I wanted one, but my dad wasn't ready to spring for a color set yet. I remember one time, the picture was upside down, as an attention getter. They (I think) turned the yoke upside down?

All it takes to flip the picture up side down on any set is to reverse the vertical yoke leads...On most large neck color sets it was especially easy since the leads individually plugged in to the yoke.

Wonder if the model number "CYA" stood for "cover your ass" :D Intended to be used say at the transmitter site, so the engineers there could verify that the video signal was good, to CYA... :D