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Originally Posted by trinescope
I found this one semi-locally. Missing knobs but everything else appears to be there. I don't have a real way to test, but the getters on the CRT at least appear to be OK. I'm going to try to get this thing working little by little starting with the horizontal sweep section and go from there. Lots of paper/wax capacitors in here! You all think I should try to maintain appearance and restuff the paper caps or just say screw it and put the modern yellow ones in there? I don't see where any components have been changed on the bottom of the chassis, and most of the tubes appear to be original Westinghouse (mostly rebranded RCA and GE) except the horizontal output tubes and one 5U4. One question: Is the chassis copper plated or is it just some sort of copper colored coating?
Serial number MW005779, chassis number ME000552
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I hope you can restore this TV to its peak condition, as this was the first color television receiver to be marketed in the United States. (You can test it if you have a VCR, DVD player, or a cable box.) I did a Google search on the model number and found a site which mentioned the price of this TV was just under $1300. This meant not many such sets were sold; in fact, most of the sets Westinghouse manufactured that year did not sell for that reason and, not surprisingly, there was very, very little color programming on the 3 networks (NBC, ABC, CBS) at the time, so even folks who owned this particular TV did not see much as far as color shows went; that is, the new Westinghouse TV would display a picture, but in b&w.
Color TV was definitely a status symbol in the 1950s, with most existing TV stations not yet equipped for color telecasting, so even if you could afford this Westinghouse small-screen roundie TV, you would be watching mostly b&w programming on a pitifully small (by today's standards) round screen.
Color telecasting did not "take off" in the US until the 1960s, and even then the sets were prohibitively expensive for most folks, so most stayed with their old reliable b&w TVs; this did not change until later on that decade. Think of when the first flat-screen HDTVs went on the market shortly after the DTV transition of 2009. These sets sold for well over $1000, with very little HD programming available. Now, nine years after the introduction of HDTV, flat-screen TVs, even large-screen models, can be had in some cases for under $100. Early color TV went almost exactly the same route. By the 1960s into the 1970s, color boomed in the US; more and more homes were getting color, relegating their old b&w TV to the basement or rec room or discarding it if the CRT went bad, or the set had developed expensive repair problems. This also is the story of the evolution of today's flat-screen HDTVs and how they have completely replaced analog sets, but that will be material for another thread.
BTW, I am not sure where or even if you will be able to find a set of knobs for your Westinghouse TV. You could put an ad for such knobs on VK's own classifieds section; that failing, I would search eBay or Craigslist to see if one or more of these knobs turn up there. I would try to find a set of period-correct knobs, as this TV was the first mass-produced US color set; it would not look right with just "any old" knobs on the control shafts.