Symbol of an Era
 

I received this photo recently from a friend. This nice display shows vintage German TV sets. They are on the Volkswagen Museum in Germany. The people in charge of the museum thougt ( very correctly, in my humble opinion ) that such display would be a perfect symbol of the era ( late 40's and early 50's ) in which the first Volkswagen Beetle cars began rolling out of the assembly lines.

The two curious things about this picture is that among the TV's there appear to be a JVC Videosphere - but wasn´t that model projected to work with american standards? The other thing is, you can probably notice that the crt's are much more "square" than on American or other European sets of the same vintage. This is due to the fact that the Germans already had a completely square crt in 1939! I wonder how on earth they managed to pull that off.

Looks like a couple of American sets in there too, I think I see a 1956 GE 14T model in the back and maybe a Motorola at the top?

The Videosphere was early 70's so it's completely out of place in a 40's-50's display.
The Square set looks like it's been retrofitted?

Eric,

Yes, the Videosphere is completely out of place, probably it´s there because the Beetle was manufactured until 1978?

About the square crt's, I´ve seen a German set that should have reached the market in 1939 ( but didn´t, because of the war ) that have a completely square crt. The information I have say that all producers of electronic equipment in that country have combined their forces to produce such a TV. I do have the name of that model, it´s somewhere among my papers, whem I find it, I will post it right here.

The set was the E1, which was made in small quantities by a number of German manufacturers:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/e1.html

The CRT was indeed rectangular, but no more so than the American tubes of the mid 50s. I doubt if the set in the display has the original tube.

Yes, is that model. I only saw it once, in a filmed recording of it's presentation to the public in 1939.

It appears that some of the other vintage sets have pictures on them as well, pictures that don't fit the screen like there is a small color set inside.

You think they've heard of Harry Poster? or Herr Poster:p:

Wow that site is a gold mine!!

I was fascinated looking thru the ELECTRONIC TV section!!

Hi to all,

@Dude111,

Eckhard Etzold's site has been archived on the ETF database.
He was a German Protestant priest and passed away around 2010 (from memory). He had great knowledge about pre-war television.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/Etzold/tv-e.html

more info & detailed photos on the E1 "Volks Fernseher" prototype, see link.
The 1939 true rectangular CRT was 15 years ahead of its time, it used a flyback EHT generator, revolutionary in 1939 and only 16 tubes.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/Etzold/e1-e.html

E1 schematic:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/Etzold/Images/e1.jpg

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

Thats sad I didnt know he passed away!!!

I hope his site stays up :)