Speaking of 23" B&W Sets...
 

What's the newest large screen B&W set you've had or seen?

I have a 61 Zenith Space Command with a 23" tube sitting in my garage right now also a 21" Curtis Mathis combo in my living room, a huge heavy console.

Years ago, like in the mid 70's I had a pretty large metal cabinet Zenith B&W set from the late 60's , probably 21-23" the crt was toast in that one so it got junked.

I think they made B&W sets in large sizes (like 19") till the late 70's early 80's maybe?

I think there's a discussion about it here somewhere.

Pretty positive that the last large screen console or table model B/W sets were in 1978, 9 at the latest. Anything sold after that will be old stock.

The newest large screen B&W's that I've seen would be a '79 23" Admiral built Truetone (Western Auto) solid state console and a circa '78 23" solid state table model Zenith in a steel cabinet. The Truetone was at a friend's house who used to fix TV's for WA and he told me that it was from the '79 model year and was built by Admiral. The cabinet was very cheap; but, the set had a great picture. The Zenith set was one that I actually owned when I was a kid. Should have kept it.

I had a Philco 19" B&W from around the mid '80's. I think it was a rebadged Samsung. I think I remember seeing some 19" B&W's in the JC Penny Christmas catalogs from the late '80's. I also had one of those oddball Zenith 19" B&W's from around '84 with the digital tuner.

And, I'll add that these "last gasp" large screen B&W's are probably very rare today. I suspect the only people buying these by the late '70's were older people that refused to switch to color and people who couldn't afford a color TV. I've known and heard of many older people who would not have a color TV if they were given one. They had the attitude about color like some of us have about flat screens.

If your friend still has it I hope you told him you would want it if he decided to part with it. That was probably the last B&W console set ever marketed.

I had a 27" "black and white" TV. It was black and white because at the time I couldn't fix the color control knob.

I can't find the thread now, but I seem to be remember one of the Italian posters (tritwi?) saying that B&W sets latest longer over there than perhaps anywhere else. That 23" B&W sets were common well into the 80s with some having digital tuning and remotes while retaining a hybrid tube chassis. If anyone has pictures of such a set I'd like to see them.

The latest I've personally seen would have been a batch of early 80s 23" B&W monitors that I found in the early 90s that came from a race track where they were used to display race results from a videotext based system, but they don't really count as they didn't have tuners.

I once read on a British forum that one of the TV rental firms there had a number of customers that refused to pay the increased license charges for color sets. When it was no longer practical to maintain the existing B&W sets they had to supply color sets with the disabled chroma decoders. I wonder if a cheaper B&W TV license still exists and if any are still on the books today.

Newest b/w set I've had larger than 12" was a 1971 19" Zenith, newest 12" b/w set a 1988 Admiral, newest b/w console a 1963 23" Airline.

I had a 12" B/W RCA i got from Kmart with a date code of '89 on the back.

That was back in the mid '90's and, unfortunately, he no longer has it. The set was actually found stashed in the warehouse of the place that he used to fix TV's for and was given to my friend. It had sustained some cabinet damage and the horizontal hold coil was busted off. He replaced the coil with a part from a junk board and sold the TV for, IIRC, $40. That was back when we could still sell any kind of working TV. Big, small, B&W, color, tube, or SS. It didn't matter as long as it worked.

My friend no longer fools with TV's. I wound up with most of his stuff (BPC crap) and he moved into an assisted living center. I used to get a lot of tube sets from him back in the '90's. The three most memorable ones were a 23" steel cabinet tube type color RCA mural TV w/ all the jacks on the back, an early '70's 19" tube type RCA color hospital set, and a late '60's Emerson/Dumont metal cabinet B&W TV with screw on legs. We were all the time trading TV's. I'd give him sets to use for parts or whatever and he'd give me the stuff he didn't want to mess with. I'd either use them for parts or fix them. I think he was one of the last guys that would fix a tube set. He had the attitude that if the customer had the money and wanted the set fixed; then, he needed to fix it.

Last time I saw a 23+ inch B&W console was back in '06 at a thrift in Hopkinsville, KY. It was a Sylvania made in late 1980 (probably September, but not sure), made in USA. It had really basic construction and was surprisingly lightweight. You could pick up that whole set, but with that build quality, you shouldn't. It even lacked casters!

I passed on it, but it was $7.

Seen any of those?

Zenith & Admiral seem to have been the volume producers of these in the seventies. I really don't recall seeing one newer than the early 70s in person. (I have a Zenith from '70) That Sylvania sounds like a rare one! Maybe that series was discontinued when NAP took over? I do have a solid-state Magnavox 19" bw portable...it looks like something from the late 60s/early 70s but was actually built around 76+.

In 80/81 my uncle was "grand pooh bah" at the Masonic lodge; they had a father-son dinner but his son was an infant so he took me along. One of the things I recall about that night was everyone got a very nice booklet put out by NASA highlighting the shuttle program as well has the innovations that the space program had led to. There was a photo of a Zenith showroom which always intriguied me, and the article made mention of some advancement that had been applied to, as I recall, larger B/W Zenith TV sets. Can't recall what it might have been. The photo included a shot of one of those "last-gasp" 23v consoles that Zenith had. At the time I assumed it was B/W-I certainly recognized it as old-fashioned looking. I don't think I knew the scoop on those color sets until I found AK!

I think the killer with bw consoles was that you could buy a small screen color set for about the same price. I agree it was probably older generations that kept them alive as long as they did. I think of my grandfather; probably where I get by own tight-fistedness from! I don't recall the set he had in the mid-70s but photos show it as an early 60s bw portable. (I think it was an Olympic) This got replaced with a GE bw that was probably 15"; I think it was from the "Performance Television" era. It wasn't until about '84 or so that he broke down and bought a 13" GE color set. (knob tuned, natch) He could have easily bought the nicest 25" stereo combo console in the store (heck, he could have bought the store!) but that just wasn't the way he worked...

I wonder if RCA and GE made any large screen B&W sets any later than the early '70's. I do know that RCA built a 23" metal cabinet B&W Lyceum TV for school use sometime in the early '70's.

Except for a 19" Zenith color that went up in smoke in 1973 after six months, we had 19" black&white Zenith and RCA portables as the family TV set up until 1981.

Tom