Can anyone ID this set?
 

I've found this old picture of the inside of a tuberculosis sanatorium that was across the street from my mother when she was growing up in the 1960's. The picture is a little earlier than that, I'd be willing to wager circa 1950-1954. There is nothing written on the back of the photo other than the watermark of the developer. I'm not familiar with late 1940's-early 1950's sets, can anybody tell what kind of set it is and how early in the 1950's it is? I'm surprised that they even had a television, as the area was rather out of reach and rural at the time. I thank anyone who takes a stab at it.

It's a Philco 20/21 inch 1953 or 1954 model. It even has the optional UHF tuner.

Yup, beat me to it. Split chassis Philco.

Check this out (from the tv history site)

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1954-Philco-Brochure1.jpg

Closely resembles the Philco “4000” near the bottom right of the page.

jr

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1954-Philco-Brochure1.jpg

.

That was easy !
Reason for UHF tuner is Montgomery had one of the earliest,
WCOV ch 20. Also that was NTSC days. VHF over the flat terrain
could go an easy 75 mi to way over 100 depending on the antenna,
set, elev etc. I stayed in a hotel on Mt. Equinox VT. ( elev < 4000') when
I was a kid. Room had a busted up Westinghouse POS TV. Philadelphia
was easy at apx 300 mi.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

It's interesting when you look at that room with all the old furniture. That corner probably first had a wind-up phono there, then a console radio, and ultimately, a TV set. The old stuff, including that TV eventually, was probably brought up into the attic for us to unearth decades later!

Wow guys, that was quick! Thank you very much! Mobile, ALA. didn't even get UHF until the early-mid 1970's I think, so they were definitely ahead of their time then.

My Jan. 1954 Radio Electronics magazine lists WKAB-TV on channel 48 in Mobile. Perhaps it failed early as it is only mentioned in the Wikipedia history for WNCF-TV as being on channel 32 in 1964. :scratch2:
The history of the station is somewhat complicated.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WNCF

jr

Many UHF stations signed on in the 1950s, only to go dark within a couple of years.

I'm impressed how well they did on getting a suitable exposure to capture the TV picture so well. Most shots like that completely fail to get a nice looking picture on the TV!

The bright light coming through the window helped a lot.

Wow! Thanks for digging around! I asked my two grandmothers what if they remembered any UHF channels when they first got television (1955 and 1957) and they both said they didn't. Who knows, if I ever find a break from either college or summer jobs I might go to the city archive.