Christmas 1962-Grandma's set. RCA?

[Dennman6]

Here's a photo from Christmas 1962, showing my grandmother's living room in her 1860 house at 25 Front St. in Norwich, NY. I believe this is a mid/late 1950s RCA Victor, based on the dials on the side of the set & the "pencil box" control door on the front. Can anybody come up with a year and model number? The very real Siamese cat on top of the set is Princess, who died at 14 in 1970.

[jr_tech]

Looks a lot like the "Allison" 21-D 645 (u) shown in this 1955 data set, listed on the 'bay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1955...item3cfabf44c9

not affiliated with eBay or the seller,
jr

[Eric H]

Definitely RCA, one thing makes me think it might be newer than 1956 though is it seems to be a slim set with no CRT cup, it looks like it's pushed right up against the wall, unless that's an illusion, or there was a hole in the wall?


This is a 1957 model and it has a long neck CRT, otherwise it looks like the same chassis and controls, I think they went to a slim 110 deg tube the next year.

[Kevin Kuehn]

Almost looks like there are drapes behind the set, or maybe I'm seeing things. But I agree it does not look like a real deep set, like one with 21AMP4 CRT.

[jr_tech]

For sure, the drapes are a confusing factor, hiding the depth of the TV. I think that the true depth of the TV is seen only through the rung of the chair. I made a very crude measurement, comparing that dimension to the diameter of side knob and calculated a depth of about 20 inches, about right for a 90 degree tube?

jr

[Eric H]

The tube cup is only about three inches on those sets so it could just be the curtains making it look narrower.

Probably the "Allison" seen in jr_tech's link, or maybe the "Winfield" since it doesn't seem to have the lighter trim around the edge.

[compucat]

The control door is open. I wonder if the latch is broken or it was deliberately opened for frequent hold adjustment.

[Eric H]

Perhaps that picture was the original inspiration for this?

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by compucat

The control door is open. I wonder if the latch is broken or it was deliberately opened for frequent hold adjustment.

The picture was taken around the time that the caps in the horizontal and vertical hold circuits, needed replacing. The set itself had well designed circuitry but the caps they used were rather poor quality. Until the caps were replaced, the controls needed readjustment, as the set warmed up.
The set shown is a KCS97, 1955,56 model and did use a 21AMP4.
The lighter colored set shown in the other picture was the KCS103, a year later, still used the 21AMP4 and the square cornered pencil box cover.
The cover used springs to hold it either open or closed.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Dennman6

Here's a photo from Christmas 1962, showing my grandmother's living room in her 1860 house at 25 Front St. in Norwich, NY. I believe this is a mid/late 1950s RCA Victor, based on the dials on the side of the set & the "pencil box" control door on the front.

Why did she even bother getting a TV set? She wouldn't get much of anything as far as TV reception goes, from New York City or anywhere else. I looked up Norwich, New York on CityData.com and found that the town is over 100 miles from the nearest TV stations. Unless her area had cable (which I seriously doubt) or she had a deep-fringe TV antenna, her TV would show nothing but snow on every channel.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Why did she even bother getting a TV set? She wouldn't get much of anything as far as TV reception goes, from New York City or anywhere else. I looked up Norwich, New York on CityData.com and found that the town is over 100 miles from the nearest TV stations. Unless her area had cable (which I seriously doubt) or she had a deep-fringe TV antenna, her TV would show nothing but snow on every channel.

Haven't you heard? Cat ears work better than rabbit ears.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Why did she even bother getting a TV set? She wouldn't get much of anything as far as TV reception goes, from New York City or anywhere else. I looked up Norwich, New York on CityData.com and found that the town is over 100 miles from the nearest TV stations. Unless her area had cable (which I seriously doubt) or she had a deep-fringe TV antenna, her TV would show nothing but snow on every channel.

????

Syracuse (about 45 miles), Utica (about 40 miles) and Albany (about 85 miles) all had TV stations as early as 1954... I suspect that reception would have been pretty good in the Norwich area, with larger antennas needed only for Albany reception.

jr

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

????

Syracuse (about 45 miles),
jr

Looks like Binghamton NY was about half that distance. Don't know about the early 60's, but when I lived in Binghamton in 1980, there was a channel 12 there, and a few UHF channels.

Her TV looks somewhat similar to my "Cooper" model, which doesn't have an extension on the back for the CRT.

[jr_tech]

Indeed ! Binghamton would have been another fairly easy target (about 30-35 miles). Channel 12, WMBF-TV is listed in my 1954 list.

jr

[Dennman6]

[QUOTE=wa2ise;3135056]Looks like Binghamton NY was about half that distance. Don't know about the early 60's, but when I lived in Binghamton in 1980, there was a channel 12 there, and a few UHF channels.

I remember two Binghamton stations, channel 12(NBC) and channel 46(PBS). My grandfather told me those were the only two stations they received, and that was with a large antenna on the roof. By the early 1970s they had what we would now call "basic cable", fed into the set via RF cable and directly tuned with the set's tuner. So, channels 2-13. Besides getting the two Binghamton stations mentioned the cable also provided the four Syracuse networks stations, WPIX, WOR, WNEW in NYC. Those last few were crucial to my budding film buff education, as it seemed every major holiday the New York stations would run various vintage film marathons. Copious amounts of Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies, Our Gang shorts, Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers, the Universal horror classics of the 30s/40s. I think we saw "March of the Wooden Soldiers" with Stan & Babe every year! We lived in Schenectady up til 1972, then 3 years near Milwaukee. So from 1975-1982(a move to NE Virginia) my siblings & I would wallow in vintage B&W classics. In 1973 my grandparents bought a new RCA 23" console, B&W, with tubes. That tuner turret couldn't hold up to the frequent "spinning the dial" routine my grandfather gave it when switching between ball games during commercials. So in 1981 he bought a 25" Zenith Chromacolor set that lasted longer than either of them. Gramps pulled a Hemingway the next year, two days after Christmas. My grandmother died in 1993. By the way, we didn't get cable in any form at our house til my dad went off for a week of Army National Guard duty in January 1983. I deviously pre-planned an appointment with Time-Warner in Reston, VA to install cable as soon as he left the house! So our 1979 RCA ColorTrak & 1962-ish Magnavox finally gave us a "window to the outside world"! Dad was pleased once he got used to all those cable stations, but really peeved at my "subterfuge"