(May 31, 2018 at 7:38 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: I remember when we got our first TV. I wasn't in kindergarten yet. (1955/6)
I swear on my eyes this is a true story.
Our first Telly, late 50s took twenty minutes to warm up before anything resembling a picture appeared. The pictures? boxing, Dixon of Dock Green, boxing, The Black and White Minstral Show, boxing, The Wooden Tops and boxing. But I digress...
After 2-3 hours our eyes were beginning to stream from the fumes emanating from this wonder of British technology then the flames would begin to creep out of the cooling vents. The trick was, pull the plug out of the wall and let it cool down for an hour then plug in back in. And I kid you not, the fucking thing would work!?!
No, there was no panic this had been going on for a week.
Dad insisted "it's just the newness wearing off". No dad. Old stuff can and does burst into flames without warning, new gear shouldn't do that. But guess what, he was right albeit for the wrong reasons.
Those early Tellys were as heavy as a Scammell gearbox, this is because they were packed solid with big fat massive copper coils covered in some sort of soft black insulating shit and immediately below the highly flammable insulating shit were banks of long white ceramic resistors. After about a week there was no black shit left to fuel the fires.
It was about that time I was diagnosed as asthmatic.
Happy days.
It's amazing 'science' always seems to 'find' whatever it is funded for, and never the oppsite. Drich.
