Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tekcrl!tekgvs!toma
From: toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: BULLEish on Zenith Data Systems
Message-ID: <6198@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 20 Oct 89 15:54:25 GMT
References: <3938@blake.acs.washington.edu> <75800071@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 43

In article <75800071@p.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@p.cs.uiuc.edu writes:

>I read that Zenith practically invented (color?) television.  It's
>gone from our collective memory now, but Zenith used to be as amazing
>in television as Cray is in computers.  They were always the most
>innovative company [...]

Well I speak from experience, having repaired TV's for spending money in
the 60's (which means I repaired TV's made in the 50's and 40's too).

As far as B&W TV is concerned, by far the most advanced early TVs were
made by DuMont. In about 1967 I saw a working 1945 DuMont "teleset". This
set had all its original tubes including a 15" DuMont manufactured picture
tube (typical sets at the time were 5" or 7", or projection sets intended
for bars). The set had no vertical or horizontal hold controls because
it didn't need any (net people familiar with old TVs will appreciate the
significance of this). I saw an early 50's DuMont. It too was very overbuilt.
As far as I know (and I don't really know at all!) they went out of business
because they couldn't be price competitive with the sets of the day that
used half as many tubes.

Disregarding the abortive CBS color system which involved a spinning color
wheel in front of the screen (YES!), color TV as we know it was invented
by RCA, with the first "compatible" color TVs, with 15" screens, appearing
in 1953-54. I saw a '54 21" model ($1500 purchase price at the time) by
RCA that had 70 tubes. You could heat a house with it!

When other manufacturers joined in, they simply copied the RCA design --
once you knew how to repair an RCA color TV, you could repair them all,
*except* for Zenith. Zenith sets were completely different, which as far
as I was concerned made them a real ***** to repair. The one thing good
about them was that they didn't seem to break down often.

Zenith continued to use I-Q axis color demodulation long after RCA abandoned
it for cheaper, less satisfactory, methods. But on the other hand they
continued to use the "hand-crafted chassis" (read "point to point wired")
long after other manufactures switched to circuit boards.

Tom Almy
toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com
Standard Disclaimers Apply
(I should note that many, many years ago my employer, Tektronix, and DuMont
 were competitors in the scope market)