Wells-Gardner
 

Found thier site and thought I'd pass it along W-G

For those who don't know, W-G was a supplier of many private label sets including Sears and Monkey Wards. Seems they now mainly make computer monitors and coin video arcade game displays and automotive apps.

Anthony

I came across their site about a year ago and it really did my heart good to know they are still around. From what I read on there it seems PacMan saved them! I am curious what the last W-G tv set was. I have found Sams from about 1981 for a Truetone color console they made and looking through the index shows some a little newer than that. (easy to tell the W-G models offered by some stores because WGC seems to be in the model #) One old tv site I visited lately listed the date of last production as 1990 but gave no details at all. My inlaws have a mid-80s Montgomery Ward 25" color table model & I can't tell who made it from the outside. Doesn't look imported. Will have to find an excuse to dig into it someday!

W-G videogame monitors
 

This is something I can sink my teeth into!

I used to be a BIG videogame collector. Consequently, I became rather familiar with WG monitors (as well as the other big name Electrohome). I never knew about WG's TV sets until one day while dumpster diving I saw a chassis in the trash that was obviously a TV (old rotary tuner) but it bore an amazing resemblance to a K4600 monitor chassis (multiple vertical boards). I suspect the K4600 monitor used in many early vids was just a tunerless version of the TV I saw years ago.

On a related subject, one of my greatest videogame finds invovled a gent who used to work at the WG plant. This was about ten years ago and he had just left WG. Anyways, they let him pick junk out of the scrap pile after he left. The stuff he pulled was probably of little interest to TV collectors but to me it was &$#@-ing GOLD. 33" videogame monitors. Dozens of boardsets for the arcade game "Tempest". Then there was a strange wooden box with some cords hanging out. He opened it up and inside was the complete guts of an Atari "Space Duel" (a color version of the arcade game Asteroids). He said it was a special jig they made up for testing the special color vector scan monitors they made for Atari (I think it was the K6100). I bought it for $15 and took it home. Since I didn't have the monitor to use it with, it sat downstairs for a few years until I took a closer look at it. The serial number on the boardset was "0016". AFAIK this is the earliest remaining Space Duel machine known to exist. I considered tossing it in a SD cabinet I had restored but the historical significance of the jig was just too much to consider.

Quite a character. I think he also had a side career in the porno movie business. Now I remember his name "Bob Hartlieb".

i still grab teknika tv sets when i see them as they have a wg chassis similar to a k4600.
i service vintage videogames here.

Did a quick Google on the history of video games and the amount of info on this subject is second to only the number of porn sites!

Was gonna post some links but I gave up as there are just so damn many of them. Real interesting stuff there. I recall the Magnavox Odyssey machines when they first came out. At the time they had a showroom on Rockefeller Center looking out toward the skating rink (and towards the RCA building).

My Mom had just taken me and my brother and sister to tour the NBC studios and afterwards we (at my coaxing) stopped into this store, so I can now boast about playing with a demo model way back when! What a great night that was for a young vidiot!

Anthony