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Meagain
04-16-2006, 02:47 PM
I remember our first TV set.
Musta been 1955 or so. It was a black and white Majestic. Had a little brass flying eagle between the knobs and was contained in a wooden box. Had a 12" screen I believe.
It sat on the hand built counter in the living room of our foundation. The upper part of the house wasn't built yet, so we lived in the basement. The roof was flat and coated with tar paper so when it rained we'd put buckets and pans around to catch the water that dripped through the leaks.
The house sat on a hill with farms to the north and east, an old strip/shaft mine to the west, a four lane highway south, and across the highway another farm bordered by an old deep shaft coal mine.
During the day you could see for miles in any direction as most of the trees on the hill top were gone, at night the western sky would light up from the steel mills in Pittsburgh twenty miles away.

All the TV stations would sign off about one o'clock at night and return at five or six in the morning. We'd get up early saturdays and watch the test patterns until RFD #4 came on with the farm report. But that was later when we moved upstairs.

fylthevoyd
04-18-2006, 01:04 AM
Yeah I remember the early days of black and white tv with two channels ..maybe...if you were lucky....and they signed off about midnight...maybe later on week-ends....but always signed off with the star spangled banner...and then a test pattern for the rest of the night if you were lucky...other wise it was all snow and static.

I remember when we got our first color tv...that was in like '66...and that shit was just too cool....hell we even had 3 stations by that time:)

great thing about it is the shows we watched then are still being watched today...

Meagain
04-19-2006, 01:34 AM
We were lucky enough to have four channels CBS, NBC, ABC, and PBS which started in Pittsburgh. We we watching Mr. Rodgers way before the rest of the U.S. found him!

Remember having to turn the TV on about 5 minutes before your favorite show so the tubes could warm up in time!!!