Saw a CT-100 for the first time
 

The ship I am working on makes regular stops in Pugent Sound, WA. A few days ago, while docked in Ferndale, WA, I got a opportunity to go to Bellingham and visit the Spark Museum on Bay Street where they have a working CT-100... along with a nice handful of other TV's. They've got all kinds of early electronics out the wazoo! EVen got to see some early shipboard radio gear... that was wild!

Anyway, my reason for going was to see a CT100. At first, the guy wasn't sure if it was working... mentioned a HV problem but thought it may have been fixed. Well, it was fixed. After he got it on, there was Porky Pig on a Looney Tunes short. It was pretty cool looking, and certainly worth going there for.

We always see these sets on the internet... whether still photos or video posted to You Tube. But seeing one in person... that was really neat! Makes me want one even more.... Dammit!

Also, just a few doors down from the museum was a place to get Cajun food. Hmmm... Cajun food in Washington?? Well, make no mistake about it... they knew what they were doing there in Bellingham! The jambalaya they served was awesome. My nose started running and my head started sweating after the 3rd bight!

So, if you're ever in Bellingham, WA, you can go downtown on Bay Street and see a nice CT100 and get some good Coon-Ass food as well! :tresbon:

http://www.sparkmuseum.org/

http://www.bayouonbay.com/

Had the pleasure/honor of helping get that CT-100 operational a few years ago. Glad to hear it's still wowing visitors. :-)

Pete

You are a LUCKY MAN, indeed..

CT-100 is the kind of thing that you mark milestones around:

1979--first saw a picture of one.

1991--first saw one in the flesh

2002--first watched a working set

2010--bought one

more to come . . . ? :)

Were CT-100s ALWAYS valuable ?!? I mean, were they widely known to have been "The First" & therefore, worth hanging on to ?

As much as the 630 is considered the Model T of postwar TVs, the CT-100 is relatively famous as the first color TV. Only twenty years ago the going rate for a clean one was pegged at $500 in a well-known book's first printing, while the Westinghouse and CBS sets were said to be worth over twice that, probably based on rarity.

...I preach the gospel of Old TVs anywhere/everywhere I have a chance. My wife has a pic of my Zenith Porthole on her cellphone, it NEVER fails to "Oooh, & Ahh" people...Then I tell 'em what a WORKING CT-100 could fetch, they pay attention...Even a pristine non-working example is worth keeping an eye out for...Most "Civilians" don't realise they even HAD TV back that long ago as my Porthole, & having COLOR in '54 ? That was only a few years after the LAST Dinosaurs shuffled off this Mortal Coil, right ?!?

No. At one time they were just considered to be an old small-screen, big-box color TV that didn't work very well and had a doubtful supply of replacement CRTs available. Got mine for $35 in the early 70s, from a tuner rebuilder shop. :)

jr

Though I'm no judge of southern food (I'm from New Jersey), there's this funky place in Bellevue WA, on Northup next to I405 that looks like an auto body shop. Dixie BBQ

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-J...c-k/2012-10-25

Not sure I'd be up to the care and feeding that a CT100 would need.

Hell I still want to see one play. I've seen one in Minniapolis at a Radio Museum but it's not in working state yet.

I turned one down in Memphis for $75. It was mid 70's, and I was selling used sets. I didn't think I would ever be able to sell a console with such a small picture. This set had chroma, but no video. The CRT looked good though. Sure wish I had bought it. I would still have it. Kicking myself.

Is that the Pavek museum? I may be out that way some time this spring.

Phil Nelson

Ye bested me jr. My first CT-100 cost $45 in the early 60s.

Pete

Well, he *wanted* $50, but my boss haggled him down. He had rebuilt a number of tuners for us "poor starving young engineers" that were keeping old tired CTC-4s & 5s going for cheap color viewing, so I guess he felt sorry for us.

jr

Just theu the Missionary Ridge Tunnels on US 11-64 in Chattanooga, there was a semi-funky area of town called "Brainerd". When I was there as a student at McCallie School, there was a used TV/radio sales/repair shop there, & in 1974/75 when I was a senior there, the guy had a PRISTINE looking funky old TV in the window, "!957 CT-100 Color, $200". From what I remember it looking like, it COULD have been a CT-100, & he was just off on his date. But $200 was a king's ransom for a broke boarding-school student in '75, much less where would I have PUT it, & how could I have GOTTEN it anywhere... I didn't make it back to Chattanooga after I graduated in May '75 for something like 3 years, & by then, the TV shop was long gone. Sigh...

Thinking wayyy back, one of the most amazing CT-100 events that I can recall, was a "clearance sale" of the sets. This was around 1962 or so, when an ad appeared in a local Sunday newspaper offering "Color TVs" for something in the neighborhood of $100 (perhaps $150). There was also a little note at the bottom of the page stating that replacement picture tubes were no longer available for these sets. I convinced my parents that we should go to the sale and perhaps buy something cheap that *might* last until rectangular screen sets became available (which is what they were waiting for). Mom grabbed the checkbook, and we drove to the sale in the pick-up truck (both promising signs).
The sale was located in a store front in an older small shopping center in the suburbs. The windows were covered with tarps, with a big homemade looking sign "Color TV Sale". It was almost pitch black inside, save for the dim glow of about 5-10 CT-100s sort of operating inside. Several others sat along the walls that were not in operation. A few of the sets looked fairly good and I pleaded that we should take one home, but my parents were VERY unimpressed. Most people just walked out, shaking their heads. We went home empty handed. :(
The next weekend the same ad appeared with the price reduced to $75. I pleaded again, but my parents did not want one of those "ugly purple tinted sets" at any price, and waited a few years to buy a 23" Sylvania. I suspect that many were scrapped after that second weekend sale.

jr

Clearence Sale
 

Ya know, it is possible that you just might be able to find one of those ads on the web. There are those sites dedicated to old newspaper archives... I've come across some pretty neat items in old papers I've found on the internet. Sure, you have to pay a little bit for it, but if you know the name of the paper and approximate dates, you just might come across what you're speaking of.

A while back, i came across a local early-60's ad that had one of my RCA roundies in there for about 630 bucks.

Do you know the name of the paper?

Phil Nelson

Fairly sure it was the Oregon Journal.

jr

My "if only I had known" story is the four or five GE 4TM-15 color 15-inch monitors that were for sale at the electronic surplus store where I worked in 1979-80. Three or four were new in their crates, one other was on the sale floor parked in a corner (it had a full cabinet with casters) priced at $75. When the store was about to go out of business in early 1980, all of them were sold to two or three men who just took the CRTs and left the rest for scrap.

The thing is, if people had kept them when there were more of them around that would decrease the value of the remaining ones; though I guess they sold so few to begin with the difference might not be much.

-J

If you ever get inspired to look for that ad, the University of Oregon has microfilmed archives of the Oregon Journal from 1902-1982:

http://library.uoregon.edu/govdocs/micro/papers.htm

Phil Nelson

Purchased my first CT-100 in the mid 60's for $50.00 at a used TV store in Burbank, Ca. I had the owner of the shop power it up. He did and a picture appeared. No color show on I recall, but there was color snow on an unused channel. He was glad to get rid of it. I had to rent a trailer to haul it home.
-Steve D.

I find it interesting that people first saw a CT-100 in say 1960 or 1970. I saw
my first ones in, naturally, 1954. First one was at station WBAP ... at the very first.
By that I mean I was actually there in the station when they turned on color. I was
a 9 year old kid, interested in electronics, and mightily impressed. (I was there
because I was friends with the weatherman's son.) (I also saw the color monitors
they had).

Later my uncle had a loaner one while his B&W monster was being repaired.
He was impressed and soon bought a 21AXP22 set. In Ft. Worth we always
had plenty of color shows since WBAP did all local stuff in color.

Doug McDonald

Doug,

As I mentioned in my above post, I purchased my 1st CT-100 in the mid 60's at a used TV store. But, like you, I viewed my first color TV program in 1954. It was at a TV dealer's store. I don't recall if the set was a CT-100. I had no knowledge of the various makes as a 9 year old kid. I do remember how small the screen was compared to the 21" B&W sets next to it. The show I watched was the 1st west coast to east coast live color broadcast on CBS from their Hollywood TV City studios. "Life With Father" was the program. Seeing this had an enormous impact on me and spurred my life long interest in color tv.

-Steve D.

Your uncle obviously dealt with a first-class place that smartly loaned color sets to their B&W repair customers. Entrepeneurship at its best! :thmbsp:

You HAD to be a special sort of person to want to keep a CT-100 going by the early-mid '60s...Who in their right mind would want a cumbersome SMALL screen color set that likely was gonna be "Finicky" at best, & a REAL "Problem Child" at worse ?!? RCA prolly would have LOVED to have bought up all the "Service contracts" for those dreadful sets, & been DONE w/them...Given bright, shiny, NEW 23" Rectangular color sets for the old '54 warhorses..

By all means set aside at least a couple of hours for a visit to the Pavek...fascinating place. If you're a ham, be sure to have your license along...there's a cool vintage ham station, too.

Yah, I have been to that museum before (we have family in the area). I don't recall seeing a CT-100 there; perhaps it was added after our last visit a few years back.

Phil Nelson

I envey you guys that got to see the first in color. My first show I seen was Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on a 21" 1963 Curtis Mathis TV. The chassis was a CMC21. Wasn't the most dependable but still was great to see color Tv.