Philco Prewar Console Television
 

I took a road trip this weekend and picked up my first Philco TV. The set came from a collection in Philadelphia and the owner told me he purchased the set from the son of a Philco engineer who was cleaning out his father's home after he passed away. He said the engineer took it home, installed a postwar 12 channel, and used it as his bedroom TV. The engineer must have used it for a good number of years as the CRT (originally a 10AP4) was replaced with a 10BP4 in 1952. The cabinet is in amazing condition. The collector from whom I purchased the set had only very clean sets in good or better condition. He said he turned down a 7" Philco tabletop with a five push-button tuner because it had gotten wet at one point and the veneer had begun to separate. He said he was the only person at the home interested in televisions and it was almost certainly pitched in the dumpster after he turned it down. He said some time later he regreted turning down that set. It was hard not to cry after hearing that story :yikes::pity::dammit:.

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very cool. I see philco liked using loctals even back then. I assume this was a prototype set right. The cabinet is very cool looking as well.

I assume this has line-powered HV_-but does it come from the main tranny--or is there a separate HV tranny?

Very cool set! Great condition.

Gregb

I'm not sure what you mean by postwar 12-channel. Was it just the tuner that was replaced or the entire chassis?

What a rare treat to see that set! It's so rare to see any Philco television produced before the 48-1000. I have seen that console in early promotional pictures only and never knew one actually existed. Very cool piece.
http://www.philcoradio.com/history/images/image059.jpg

Just the tuner and associated components... this is pretty common on pre-war sets that were used in the post-war period. I've seen it most often on RCA TRK-12 sets. Chuck A's prewar Philco also had the original tuner swapped out for a post-war 8 channel unit.

There is only one chassis in the set. I haven't pulled it to inspect yet. It's a heavy son of a gun and I just wanted to get it in the house for now.

There's at least one more of this model surviving.


Chuck

John

When you get to looking at the chassis, see if the IF tubes are the original hard to find 1231 (1938) or the common 1232 or 7G7/1232 (1940).

Also did they still use a 6V5 for audio and 6AH5 for H sweep?


Chuck

I've written the museum where the other set is supposed to live, but haven't heard back from them. I'm hoping they can send photos of theirs. Does any one know if the set at the Philadelphia History Museum has the same cabinet as mine, or is it the other style with the wooden slats over the speaker?

http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/philco_3.jpg

It looks like to me, that the HV transformer is the potted block style Behind the HV rectifier.
I wonder what they did to the audio circuit, as the Philco's didn't use an audio output circuit. They transmitted the audio to a Philco radio, around 8mhz. They must've converted the AM audio to slope detection.
Looking forward to more information on this set. :scratch2:

Oh okay, not bad at all. Congrats on your find. :thmbsp:

Check out the schematic on ETF (scroll down to 10" Philco) looks to me like a 7B5 driving an electrodynamic speaker in the set:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/tv_sc...ms_prewar.html

jr

From the ETF site:

-Steve D.

I should've have known, as the set has a speaker grill. :yes:
I wonder how many of those strange tubes used in the sweep and HV are available. I see, they also used their favorite 5X4G's in the LV power supply.

Only the small 6" table set didn't have audio circuits installed. The 1938 MIL set had audio as did the larger 1942 10" console with radio.

The 6" table model I have had audio added around 1942, for some unknown reason Philco decided to use their own version of the 6V6, a 6V5 for the audio output.



Chuck

DaveA is the only one I know who has seen that set when it was in the old Atwater Kent Museum. I talked to him a few weeks ago to see if he could stop by the site and see if it is still there.


Chuck

6" table model pre-war Philco?? WOW!!! I have never heard of that... could you
post more info? CRT number? Was it electrostatic or magnetic deflection?

jr

Here:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/philco_7in_prewar.html

I emailed the museum about 10 days ago to check on this and they have not answered. I saw it almost 15 years ago at the old AK version of the museum. It is now in new hands and no idea of what has happened in the attic.

Odd timing. I emailed a week ago. I'll try to see if I can get any answers via telephone.

You'd almost have to swear that Philco was slightly ahead of the game!
Magnetic focus and deflection, a slightly advanced CRT design, that could easily be converted to a newer 10BP4 type.
I realize that the RCA and others had magnetic deflection as well, but the old CRT's were harder to sub. :scratch2:

The 9" GE HM225 and 12" GE HM226 from 1939 used short Philips crts that were magnetically deflected and focused. The 9" MW-22-2 and the 12" MW-31-3 crt's are nearly identical in size and deflection angle to post war tubes.

IIRC they also were experimenting with high definition too; something like 800-900 horizontal lines...Unless I'm confusing them for another maker (I know some maker in the US wanted more than 525 before the war).

WHAT A FIND!!!

Where I live we get excited when we find a 1957 Philco... what you found is kind of a "Holy Grail" of TV collecting... congratulations!!!:thmbsp:

Wasn't France using 819 lines at the time? Britain was using 405 lines until 1967??? :scratch2:

The French 819 standard didn't start until after the war in 1949. The English 405 system ran through 1984. They started 625 PAL color broadcasts in 1967.

France used 819 lines at that time. A pity that their TV programming was really crappy in those days, it was a waste of their technology. They had only state television, and the programs on the air were very boring. That is one of the reasons why France had only 1 million TV sets in 1960.

I took the front cover off of the tuner today to see what I could see. It's not much to go on, but does any one know who may have made this tuner? Is it a Philco?

http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/...psxxub0xzi.jpg

Under the replacement tuner bezel you can see 5 residue spots on the wood cover arranged in a circle. Could these be the remains of 5 channel labels from the original tuner?

http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/...pssij6a6yg.jpg

One other thing I noticed while looking up at the set from below was that in typical prototype fashion this set isn't quite "finished" 100% as you can see in the shots below. It almost makes me wonder if they re-used a radio cabinet and re-fashioned the center for TV use.

http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/...pstr36hvej.jpg

http://i1075.photobucket.com/albums/...pstubkj4qc.jpg

What is interesting about the Philco pre-war sets is that of all 4 verified existing sets found so far, all had come from original Philco engineers' estates. Seems Philco had an open door policy about their test TV's when they were finished with them.


Chuck

The 6AH5 is probably the hardest to find, but with some wiring changes on the sockets you can sub the 6V5 with a 6V6, and the 6AH5 with a 6L6. The 6Y3 is an odd one, not much to sub for that one.


Chuck

John

How many positions on the tuner? 12 or 8

The part number looks like Philco numbering scheme. You need to get to the chassis for pictures. Looks like the hole in the wood panel was hacked out, originally it probably had the 5 channel rotary tuner instead of push buttons. You should be able to verify that when you get the chassis out and see if the front was punched for the 5 buttons.


Chuck

There's a guy on ebay now with NOS National Union 6V5GT's for $5 each. Jim Cross has NOS 6Y3G's for $8.

The tuner is a Standard Coil. Philco used them in a few of their models. 12 channel.
The 8 position tuner was the Philco post-war tuner.

That's the best policy!
I'm sure, other firms did it as well.

Standard Coil. Philco used Standard tuners briefly in the early 50s to fill in during strikes and change over from the 8 position turret.

And yet (as I understand it), *NO* examples of the beautiful Apple CRT beam index color prototype sets are known to exist... did Philco change their policy by the mid 50s?

jr

Philco-Ford sold the technology to Sony when Ford decided not to develop it further. The prototypes, IP and technical data would have turned over to Sony as part of the deal. The remaining would have been destroyed. One could argue that Sony did not need or use much of the technology, it did avoid patent litigation and got a jump start on color. The Indextron comes pretty close to the Apple technology.

Some of the wood test stands shown in 50s magazines were converted to 21" for TV 123 chassis.

Don

Take a look at this story:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/uniray.html

There was a surviving Uniray set. We were contacted by the Sunstein family, who paid for a set they believed to be the Uniray, to be shipped to the museum. Unfortunately, it was a common RCA CTC-7. The Uniray was apparently disposed of by someone in the family.