Was that 1200 to 2200 lei a year? Ten times the average salary for a color TV?

IIRC in the '54-'55 school year when you could still buy a $1000 CT-100 from the showroom floor (where and when I first saw a CT-100), my spanish teacher was making $3800 a year. Four times more than the price of a CT-100; but it didn't matter, there was no way he could afford one either after living expenses (he had a family).

Yeah, a "big" salary back then would have been $5000 a year...About then, my dad got a raise from $35 a week to $50 a week...but he had to come back after supper & help wash up the presses...He & my mom bought a new '55 Chevy & my granmother, -his mom- raised hell about it. Said he was acting like somebody who made $100 a week..."You gonna have to draw in yo' horns", she'd say. $1000 doesn't sound like so much today, but back then that was about more money than the Good Lord had..no wonder not many CT-100s were sold.-Sandy G.

I wanted to say that the sallary was betwen 1,200 and 2,000 lei.
After all, how many sallaryes cost a colour tv in 1955, 1958, 1960, 1962, 1964?
The first models of "Telecolor" (3006, 3007) where the best. All of the electronical components where G.D.R. Made (except some of the integrated circuits there where Czechoslovakia Made and some capacitors Romanian Made-by "I.P.E.E."). If you where lucky you could get an set equyped with "Toshiba" (Made in Japan) picture tube (my "Telecolor" 3007 got "Toshiba" CRT :naughty: :thmbsp: ). The tv sets could be equyped with wired remote control (I never so a set with remote control because the remote control was dificult to install).
The last models of "Telecolor" (5601, 5602, 5603) where the poorest. The spring from buttons from the programtor where poor, the Polish Made crt's ("Unitra") where also poor. In one word, they sucks! :finger:

In some GE service documents I have there is a letter dated 1977 from GE-Portsmouth, VA, stating that manufacture of the HE chassis was over & done. My guess is that there were a bunch of leftovers that they put in the warehouse & that they didn't get date coded until they were ready to ship. Either that or demand was so great that the General had to put them back into full production.

George Jetson once lamented that "A thousand a week sure don't go far anymore..." :sigh: I got paid about that back in 1991, working for the phone company (AT&T Bell Labs).

Back in 1968, my english teacher mentioned, as they prepared to go on strike, that he got paid only $6K a year. In 1971, when I got my license, gas went for 35 cents a gallon....

Bryan, anyway you could get a scan of that letter...we could store it on our website for historical archive purposes.

next time i go there on a service call i will be sure to take a pic of that portacolor.

porta color 1965
 

I purchased one of the very first porta-color sets in 1965, touted as the first real portable color tv. I paid 249.99 for it.

Yeah, I remember the ads of the time featuring a kid hauling a Porta-Potty around the house. Musta been a strong kid, 'cause altho they weren't as heavy or bulky as a std TV, Porta-Colors were hardly "liteweight". My 7" 1969 Sony Trinitron was fairly portable, but it was still more than lots of people wanted to haul around for the hell of it. Seems like all those early Sony Trinitrons were porky little suckers...-Sandy G.

My minty Portacolor came with this factory stand with wheels on it, actually a very nice little stand, real wood slats, hasn't rusted, removeable wheels, a little rack on the bottom made of wood that you can put whatever on. THIS thing makes it easy to push it from room to room with the touch of a finger on hard floors as yes, the TV is not exactly lightweight. Guess for $250 which was a fortune back then, they had to go a little extra on the quality of the stand... or maybe it was just because back then everything wasn't junky : )
I'm sure it is a factory stand since the front slat has little notches in it for the tv's bottom rails....Frenchy

Who of you all has a Porta-color in his collection?

Wow, I've got a stand just like that somewhere in my storage building. I didn't know that was used mainly for a portacolor or even came with one. Ive got 4 portacolor color sets. I got my first one 8 years ago at a yardsale for 2 bucks and ive used it on a daily basis since then. Come to think of it. Ive never had to take a portacolor apart, replace a tube, or change a cap. Like everybody seems to say, they just keep going and going. Kind of takes out all the fun in fixing them.

Hello everybody! I love portacolors and very other amarican made old color televison, especially zenith ones! I have a 1966 ge portacolor and I'm waiting to get my second that is an european cousin. It's a kuba portacolor and I really can't wait to have it my hands! Unfortunately zenith,ge, rca televisions are very very hard to find here in Italy! Anyway I also have a ct 100 rca. Anyone out there has an idea about when I could find a 15 gp 22 working?
Best regards

There is now one known CT-100 in Italy, s/n B8002539; is that your set, or is this a second set? If so and you wish to share the s/n, it can be found as shown in this link:
http://home.att.net/~pldexnis/potpou...odedAreas.html

--Pete

Telecolor- I have 2 Porta-Colors-an early tube model, & a 1984 solid state model that technically isn't a Porta-Potty,but has that weird not quite rectangulr/not quite round CRT they had.-Sandy G.

Please do-- I'd like to see that as well! Be sure to include a shot where the manufaturing date sticker is visible. ;)

I've got five or six Portacolors ranging from 1966 to 1977, but I'd love to find a 1980 Portacolor..!

As far as weight goes, it's true that Portacolors aren't as lightweight as small portable B&W sets from the same era, but they're still pretty darn light in weight compared with most other 10" - 13" color sets up through the early 70's or so. Try picking up a Sony KV-1210 in one hand and a GE Portacolor in the other hand, and it's no contest that the GE is lighter in weight. No transformer + printed circuit construction + Compactron tubes + plastic cabinet = a rather lightweight tube color TV. Even GE's first attempt at a solid-state replacement for this set (the Portacolor II) weighs more than the ol' all-tube Portacolor (partly due to the power transformer) and the cabinet is basically the same size and shape.

Since we've strayed from the original thread into Portacolor land, here's a neat little Portacolor site:

In Living PortaColor
Address:http://www.rwhirled.com/portacolor/


-Steve D.

Hmmm...rwhirled, Whirled One. Connection?

Yes it is. Whirled is Marty.
Here is another site:
http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold...portacolor.htm
(Translation will follow.)

Still no scanner here at my place, but these snapshots of the bulletin should be better than nothing. That little bit at the bottom was all it had on the HE chassis.

I have 3 Porta-Colors, all pictured on one thread or another. One is an early model, the others are twins from about 1974. Like an All-American Five radio, their simplicity is a curse & a blessing. The performance isn't great but they DO work; & since there is not much to them, there is not much to break. The Porta-Color, to me, embodies everything General Electric was/is about.

Sure is. Just as yagosaga already wrote, that's me. :)