Just one more, non-broadcast related. They're vintage photos of Toronto from the 1900s. Believe it or not, the shot below is from Yonge and Bloor - back in 1907. If only traffic there was this good today!

 
Vintage Photos That Show What Toronto Looked Like in the 1900s

RadioActive wrote:

There's a great site you may never have heard of called "Rare Historical Photos." It's exactly what the name implies, with rare and mostly excellent pictures from the sometimes very distant past, often going back to the beginning of photography itself. (One page features rare colour snaps from 1900.) 

But it was this one that caught my eye - a page of old 1950s TV ads designed to sell you a set in an era where it was still a new thing for your living room. There are all kinds on display, including a then-amazing and very early "ray gun" remote control for a Zenith TV and several with built-in record players. My favourite of these is the one that boasts:

"You can not only play 33 1/3, 45, 78, but all intermediate speeds - thousands of them - from 10 -85, including the coming new 16 RPM!"

Yep, that 16 RPM certainly caught on! And the mention of "life-like FM sound" from the built-in radio back in 1951 is astounding. 

 
You can see all of them here. 

Admiral Television sets were the Gold Standard and always the most expensive. That 1953 model with the already built in UHF must have cost a small fortune.

Great ads.   Sometimes I look up old versions of The Star online from the Toronto Public Library and I get a kick from the electronics ads.  The prices are mind blowingly high when you account for inflation.   A freaking VCR I remember purchasing in the mid 1980s translated to about $800 - $1000 today for example.   Computers were pricey too.   
It's too bad there aren't prices in these ads because I bet they were very expensive in today's dollars.
 

newsguy1 wrote:

I bought my first VCR in the mid 1980s.
It was a Fisher brand and cost over 600 dollars.
plus you had to turn little manual dials to set them to the TV stations you wanted to record off.
the "remote" devise was a box with physical wires.
Still I loved that machine and it gave me hours of great movie watching which I rented from both a local mom and pop video store, and of course, Blockbuster.
"Be Kind, Rewind."


 

 
I bought my first VCR in the mid 80s too. I recall it too cost between 500 and 600 dollars, or at the time for me, almost a month's take home pay. It was a shockingly extravagant purchase, but I loved it.
It was an RCA model with a wireless remote and one of the first models to feature on screen programming, which made recording a breeze. I never missed Letterman or Coronation Street again. 😀

Our first VCR, if I remember correctly, was from the late '80s, a re-badged Hitachi model from Granada rent-to-own... had connectivity for a separate camera. First colour TV was a 19-inch GE that we picked up at Zellers in Lindsay.

35+ years later, I now do videotape and film transfer to digital, among other services as a business owner and freelance announcer/producer, and the tape decks are a Hitachi VHS unit, a Sony Super Beta hi-fi machine, a Sony Hi8 camcorder, and a Canon GL1 MiniDV camera. Hoping to eventually track down an SVHS deck, and the ultimate would be some pro formats such as Betacam and 3/4", esp. Sony's BVW and BVU models respectively.

Last edited by Forward Power (June 29, 2023 9:46 am)

Wow, a colour set back in 1963 was very expensive. We didn't get ours until 1969, when they were just becoming more common in Canada. Good for you guys growing up with the full hue on whatever shows were made in colour back then. 

Here is a TV commercial for Electrohome stereos that ran during the 1972 Grey Cup.  This is an unusual 60 sec. ad with rather "trippy" music and interesting visuals.  Electrohome was known for their cabinet stereos but were also one of the first to get into smaller modular units.  https://www.google.com/search?q=electrohome+tv+commercial&rlz=1C1GGRV_enCA751CA751&oq=electrohome+tv+commercial&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160.6439j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:045e97e2,vid:GiQ9GwFKgGQ

Moses Znaimer's MZTV Museum has a ton of old sets on display. But what you may not know is you can see many of them online here. Some of them are absolutely astounding. Most are accompanied by multiple videos and pictures, that allow you to get a good look at them over the web. Worth a visit to the site if this interests you. 

But while the MZTV Museum may be the best known for this kind of stuff, it's not the only one. There's a place called the Early Television Museum in the small town of Hilliard, Ohio you could visit if you're ever in the States. 

"The collection is one of the world’s largest, rivaled in North America only by the MZTV Museum of Toronto. About 180 television sets are on exhibit, arranged in chronological order, with another 50 in storage."

It also offers an online gallery that lets you see some of the most unusual early sets ever made. Fascinating for those who are into this stuff. 

This Ohio museum shows that TV is older than you might think

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There was recently a thread about earliest memories of remote controls on another forum that I am on and I took pictures of the two remotes below which I still have both from the mid 80's.

I still have the components that go along with them as well. The Sony receiver has AM stereo  of which I was never a fan back in the day ( was mainly a FM fan) and have sort made amends more recently by buying a AM stereo transmitter.

The JVC VCR was/is a great machine that can record a secondary stereo audio track to go along with the primary one for the video. One can control the audio levels with it. My machine was definitely under-utilized for audio but I did record a few radio airchecks which I have up on the website. You could literally fit 6 hours plus of audio on one tape at slow speed. The machine's tracking no longer works properly and I wish I could find a fully functional version now.

The first remote I remember in the house was one of those wired TV converters that you would slide for the channel selection in the late 70's. Never got near a Zenith Space Command but I am sure I recall an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show from the 60's where Rob or Laura were using a remote control.

Here's the two remotes from the mid 80's:

 

Last edited by Fitz (July 30, 2023 6:12 am)