It's cool how something as simple as a TV set from your childhood can flood the mind with memories.
Just reading this reminded me of the first set my parents bought that had a remote control.
We had two sets in the house in the early 1970's. A large 21 inch console TV in the "Living Room" that only my parents were allowed to use. The "Living Room" got the least living done in it as my parents would watch TV in there after the kids were put to bed. That's where they watched ADULT programming like SOAP, TAXI and ALL IN THE FAMILY, with all "On the Edge" adult subject matter!
The "Family Room" is where the kids were corralled. My dad built a shelf, high up on the wall near the ceiling where a 19 inch Sanyo color TV was placed WELL OUT OF THE REACH OF US KIDS! A great place to put a 70lbs appliance in earthquake prone Los Angeles!
I remember the remote control had 2 buttons! The on/off/volume button and channel selection button.
To be honest, I always thought the remote control was a terrible design. First, my parents could reach up and turn on or off the TV with a push/pull switch / volume knob on the TV. So if they wanted, they could turn off the TV and we couldn't reach it, since it was up near the ceiling on a shelf which made the remote useless.
When you wanted to turn the TV on via remote control, you would press the On/Off button and it would turn on the TV at the highest of three volume settings
. So what ever volume setting the volume knob on the TV was left set at, will be the MAX volume the TV starts at, usually BLASTING! You then needed to quickly click the button one time for medium, two times for low and if you went to far you turned the TV off again and needed to start over! :annoyed:
This always sucked for Saturday morning cartoons, because I would get up early, turn on the TV and it would come on ROARING and wake up my dad who would come out a yell at me for waking him up!
Also, when you pressed the volume button, it would make this massive "CLICK/CRUNCH" sound as a mechanical switch was remotely cranked over from one setting to the next. Terrible design!
The channel switching button wasn't any better. When you turned the TV on, it always started on channel 2. This set did not have a mechanical rotary channel changing knob, it was the new "High Tech Japanese Revolution" system of electro-conductivity through the tip of your finger!!! If you could reach the TV (which I couldn't) there was a vertical row of dots with station numbers next to them and all you had to do was lay your finger on the dot and it changed the channel!
I remember this being such a huge leap forward in technological advancement that my parents had the neighbors over. :gathering:
I remember my mother dressing up, making snacks, my father buying extra beer and showing everyone how great it worked by slapping me in the back of the head and telling me to go over and demonstrate it (this of course when it was still at ground level!). I demonstrated the system in between fetching beers and making sure people had ash trays near by! Keep in mind I was probably 6-7 at the time.
I remember my dad catching me running my finger down the dots, speed changing the channels.
I thought we was going to kill me! :grim:
MY DAD - "Do you know the kind of damage you will do to the set by doing that?, I paid good money for that set. Do you know how long I had to work to buy that for you, your sister and your mother? All so you can play with it like it's a toy!!!"
I'm certain it was my "Speed Channel Changing" that facilitated the building of the shelf and placement of the TV out of reach of us kids!
The remotes channel changing system simply scrolled down the channel list and when you got to the bottom, it started at the top again. So, if you missed your channel, you had to go through them all again. Starting at channel 2 it was 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13, then back to 2 again. Thankfully we only had a handful of channels or you would be there all day. If you wanted UHF, you had to get up and switch a manual knob from VHF to UHF. We also had the best roof top mounted antenna you could get from Sears, so we got all the channels crystal clear. It was a real luxury for a family in our tax bracket.
The remote was some sort of sonic driven tech. It had a little radar dish behind a little wire grill on the front of the remote and if you were more than 10-15 feet away from the TV and not right in front of it, it didn't work. So if you were on the couch, you would have to get up and walk 5-10 feet toward the TV to change a channel or turn the volume down. Real convenient :annoyed:
The TV was 20 feet from the couch. Can you imagine watching a 19 inch TV from 20 feet away. Back in the day, our parents said sitting to close to the TV would hurt your eyes. The truth is, it's a miracle I'm not blind from sitting that far away! Us kids had bean bags, so we would sit about ten feet away, laying down staring straight up to the ceiling to watch the TV from below. WTH were we thinking back then?
Cable TV was still a decade way!
Best of luck finding your childhood TV set Ghetteaux Les Fabulous!
