Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
I remember my Uncle Walter and Aunt Eva getting the first or possibly second television set in town. One of the local taverns got one at about the same time so I'm not sure who's was first. That must have been in the late 1940's as I was quite small at the time.
The thing was a huge mahogany piece of furniture in art deco style, and had a small hole in the middle of the front of it. If you peered into the hole you could see a six inch round piece of glass that would glow an eerie green with some black blobs moving across.
In my childhood naivete, I couldn't see any use for it, though it must have cost a fortune. As I sit in front of my 70" UHD, I reflect on how little I realized.
|
My parents always had the big wooden console TVs with record player and radio built in. They were big, bulky, and heavy, and you are absolutely correct in that they were furniture and not just a TV. They made a statement just like the rest of the living room furniture. And since they were vacuum tube electronics, they were often easily fixed with a trip to the Radio Shack store where you could test all the tubes and replace any bad ones. And also the vacuum tubes helped heat the living room in the winter!
I wish I had a dollar for every time mom yelled at us, "Get back farther away from the TV or you will ruin your eyes."