[ohohyodafarted]

I was about 10 years old, and the year was 1957. (I will save you the math calculations, I am 59) My dad was doing business with a cabinet maker near the Milwaukee airport. The cabinet maker's shop was in an old barn, and his home was also on the property. While my dad and the cabinet maker sat at the kitchen table I went into the cabinet makers living room where the tv was on. I was astounded to see TV in color. It was the local evening news on WTMJ NBC chanel 4. The set was probably a ctc7. It had the knobs on the side and the chanel indicator window on the front of the set. WTMJ was the 7th station in the country to receive their shipment of color broadcasting equipment from RCA. I believe the year was 1954.

I also remember watching Bonanza and Walt Disneys Wonderful World of Color in the early 1960's. On Sunday night, my brother and I would go to a neighbor's home 3 doors down, and watch on their Admiral 21 inch roundie. In my estimation, the 2 aforementioned shows on NBC did more to stimulate the purchase of color sets than anything else the television industry did.

In 1965 my parents bought a 21 inch Zenith roundie. We sat it next to our 21inch B&W Philco set and only watched the Zenith color set when a color show was on, so as not to weaken the tubes in the Zenith unnecessarily. That Zenith is still sitting in my late father's bedroom in my mom's home. It has a problem in the horizontal output circuit (the plates of the horizontal output tube glow red hot) I think there is a shorted capacitor.) I have not tested the crt but I think it is probably very good as we did not watch it much in the early years. When the set developed the problem with the horizontal output circuit, my parents bought a retangular Zenith set and retired the roundie. That was in the early 70's. As a result the roundie dosen't have a lot of hours on it. The crt has the cataract issue. I am going to dig into it sooner or later and get it up and running.

In 1967 I obtained a used CTC4 from a friend. It had a good 21axp22. I recaped the set with all new Sprague Orange Drops and did a lot of tweaking to the set. It had a beautiful picture. I watched it as my personal color tv until I got married in 1971. At that time I sold it to a friend and bought a "more modern retangular" color set that my wife wanted with a remote control so we could change chanels without getting out of bed. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I still had the ctc4. (the first wife is history, and in retrospect I shoould have traded the wife and kept the ctc4) I have been looking for ctc4 for a long time but so far have not found one for sale.

I recently spoke to the fellow that bought the ctc4 from me. He said he watched it for about 3 years and then sold it to a local Milwaukee tv collector. So hopefully it may still be in the Milwaukee area.

If anyone knows of a Milwaukee area collector with a ctc4, have them get in touch with me. I would be curious to know if he has my old set.

Well that's my story, hope you enjoyed.