Philco Prewar Console Television

[ChuckA]

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

[ChuckA]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

I should've have known, as the set has a speaker grill.
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.

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

[ChuckA]

Originally Posted by vts1134

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?

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

[tubesrule]

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

[dieseljeep]

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.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by ChuckA

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

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

[Don Lindsly]

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

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by ChuckA

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

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

[Don Lindsly]

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

[Steve McVoy]

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.

[ChuckA]

Originally Posted by Steve McVoy

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.

Steve,

I looked back on my emails to John Chatten and Bruce Sunstein, when we thought we found the holy grail of color TV's. That was in early 2009, where did the time go?!

Chuck