Andrea?

[Dave A]

My bro found this pic and wants an ID on the set. Looks Andrea like to me. 1949 or so. I rely on your genius to give the good answer. And probably lead tinsel on the tree.

[Eric H]

Crosley 9-407 with a Dumont chassis.



http://www.vintagetvsets.com/crosley.htm

Forget the TV, that pedal car would be worth a fortune today!

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by Dave A

My bro found this pic and wants an ID on the set. .

Wow! I bet that family either smoked heavily or lived in a coal-heated house.

I took one look at Dave's picture and thought of the RA-103C/RA-110-like Crosley set built by Du Mont, but those cabinets did not have the dark circle above channel selector and radio dial.

I've never seen a speaker grille turn that dark!

Just wondering, since Eric's picture reminded me, has anyone made reproduction CRT (foam?) rubber masks for these sets? I've never seen one in any condition. other than complete melt. It apparently snapped on to the plastic protrusions behind the CRT mask.

James

[Username1]

We use coal, it don't smoke, smell, and our roof has no soot on it like our neighbors
who all use oil..... And why would there be any soot inside...?

I like that mini-Olds !

.

[Paul Knaack]

Originally Posted by Username1

We use coal, it don't smoke, smell, and our roof has no soot on it like our neighbors
who all use oil..... And why would there be any soot inside...?

I like that mini-Olds !

.

I was thinking its a Pontiac,
How does coal compare cost wise to ng or oil? I don't think you can even get coal for home heating around here anymore.

[old_coot88]

Yep, Pontiac. '55

[Username1]

They have coal right down the street $255/ton, I get it myself in my pickup 1/2 ton
loads at a time. Less time consuming and easier to manage than wood. My house has
electric heat. Heat pump supplemented with 12KW toaster coils, like a big hair dryer
in the middle of the house. Also air solar panels in a room behind the garage. The solar
panels save us over 20% heating most years. Back there is a little room with the solar
plumbing, so I built a coal furnace that uses the solar plumbing on cloudy days. This year
I made a extra duct switch to gang the two together, so on solar days I can also use the
stove, just pass the hot air through both.

This area I call un-improved, as it has wells, septic, and no natural gas. So the trucked
in fuels are used here for everything. Most is home heating oil. For some reason our
house was kinda modern with all electric stuff inside. I was not thrilled with it, but
over time made improvements in the heater, and solar, and added the coal....

This guy was not always a coal dealer, when I built my stove I got the coal from a guy
in Pa. but I think the cost of diesel made it harder for him to compete on long hauls.

I have no idea how much heat my stove/furnace puts out btu wise, I use to run it all
day and night, but it is just too much as it needs to eat every hour or two. It's not automatic.
So now it runs days, and I have it shut off around 12 midnight and the coils run if needed....
I have various fans running blowers on appliance timers turn it off 2 hrs after
the last feeding. Same timers run the solar fans, just turn it off for cloudy days.
I will say that our electric runs up to $5k on the worst winters before I
repaired the solar, added the coal, and turned off the heat pump. The heat pump worked
ok until the defrost would kick in, then the 2 hours it took to get the house warm
would be wiped out in 15 minutes when it would reverse to unfreeze the outside
unit. It was a stupid system for this area, and the heat-freeze cycle was never
ending, I think the O&R people had our house pay most of their stock dividend
each year.... They must have thought we had a pot farm in the garage....

At first I thought it was a chevy....

.

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by Username1

We use coal, it don't smoke, smell, and our roof has no soot on it like our neighbors who all use oil..... And why would there be any soot inside...?

Hummmm, methinks you need to do a little mental time-travel.

Back in the 1940's, when I was growing up in rural Western Tennessee, my parents rented an apartment in a very run-down Colonial Mansion that predated the US Civil War. Our apartment came with three open fireplaces for heat.

Natural Gas was not available at the time. Wood was too expensive to use. To install an oil furnace in that rental house would have cost much more than my father made in a year. Electric heat was too expensive, as we were outside the TVA supplied area, and heat pumps had not been invented.

My father's choice was to use found wood and newspaper to start a fire, and once that was burning hot, to throw in small lumps of coal.

We lived there 6 years. The first winter, my father sealed off two of the three fireplaces and closed off those rooms during the cold. That was the dirtiest place that I've ever lived. Fun times during the Summer, miserable during the Winter.

Shortly before the second winter, the gas line had finally been installed on our street and our family was the first to connect to that line. The other family living in this house waited over two years before they converted. The third apartment was never occupied during the time we lived there. It had no fireplaces and could only have been used in the summer.

James

[Username1]

Well While I continue to search CL for a working time machine, I only have today's
energy to look at. And while I have seen many pictures of really smokey smoke stacks
from many years ago, my experiences with coal are quite different. I can hardly tell when
my stove is running, both inside, and outside. But when any of the neighborhood wood stoves are
on I can tell, And the roofs of the oil burners are all pretty dirty compared to mine....

I am sure most stoves are not really that efficient, especially from many years ago, and
smokey fuel rich fires were sources of lots of smoke.... But coal needs a good draft,
and fuel rich air starved coal fires go out, they tend not to smoke.... I think most
of the smoke from what you remember was non anthracite coal fires, or mixed fuel
fires, like yours was, or really poor fire place designs....

I guess I just can't imagine living with something that smokes inside....
Or did I just get lucky....

.

[Tom Albrecht]

Originally Posted by earlyfilm

Wow! I bet that family either smoked heavily or lived in a coal-heated house.

I took one look at Dave's picture and thought of the RA-103C/RA-110-like Crosley set built by Du Mont, but those cabinets did not have the dark circle above channel selector and radio dial.

I've never seen a speaker grille turn that dark!

Just wondering, since Eric's picture reminded me, has anyone made reproduction CRT (foam?) rubber masks for these sets? I've never seen one in any condition. other than complete melt. It apparently snapped on to the plastic protrusions behind the CRT mask.

James

The melted material is only a thin rubber pad between the strap and the CRT. The mask is fine. Usually the rubber CRT pads on these do not melt like that.

Tom

[stusnyder]

Originally Posted by Username1

Well While I continue to search CL for a working time machine, I only have today's
energy to look at. And while I have seen many pictures of really smokey smoke stacks
from many years ago, my experiences with coal are quite different. I can hardly tell when
my stove is running, both inside, and outside. But when any of the neighborhood wood stoves are
on I can tell, And the roofs of the oil burners are all pretty dirty compared to mine....

I am sure most stoves are not really that efficient, especially from many years ago, and
smokey fuel rich fires were sources of lots of smoke.... But coal needs a good draft,
and fuel rich air starved coal fires go out, they tend not to smoke.... I think most
of the smoke from what you remember was non anthracite coal fires, or mixed fuel
fires, like yours was, or really poor fire place designs....

I guess I just can't imagine living with something that smokes inside....
Or did I just get lucky....

.

We have a heat pump, but when it gets real cold, we fire up our harman magnafire coal stove. It's self feed, wall mount thermostat control. Has harmans version of the coal - trol. When the thermostat is not calling for heat, the feeder stops for 10 minutes, then runs for 2 minutes, and continues like that untill the thermostat calls for heat, then the feed kicks on full bore.
Keeps the house within 2 degrees of the thermostat setting. It uses rice coal. the hopper hold 100 pounds.
Our prices are a bit cheaper than yours. We are right in the heart of anthracite country. And you never see nothing out of the chimney, just heat waves.

[decojoe67]

Great to see a classic early post-war tabletop TV in a period photo. 9 out of 10 times it's always a console. It's strange that so many small 7" sets were sold, including the 3" Pilot's, but you almost never see a period picture with one of those in them.
BTW, the Pontiac pedal car would worth a couple of thousand dollars today.

[Username1]

Originally Posted by stusnyder

We have a heat pump, but when it gets real cold, we fire up our harman magnafire coal stove. It's self feed, wall mount thermostat control. Has harmans version of the coal - trol. When the thermostat is not calling for heat, the feeder stops for 10 minutes, then runs for 2 minutes, and continues like that untill the thermostat calls for heat, then the feed kicks on full bore.
Keeps the house within 2 degrees of the thermostat setting. It uses rice coal. the hopper hold 100 pounds.
Our prices are a bit cheaper than yours. We are right in the heart of anthracite country. And you never see nothing out of the chimney, just heat waves.

Great to hear it ! I'm sure the stuff I use comes from there !

My stove I made myself, it's in it's 5th iteration, each rebuild makes it a little
more efficient. And it's made as a furnace, not an actual stove. It has provisions
to make it automatic, but right now it's manual feed, with appliance timers
running all the fans. Same as the air handler, timer over-ride so I can
have the coal stove heat the house or solar, and the coils stay off...

No smoke here either, you can't tell when it's on by any smell, just when
you start it with wood first off....

As mine is manual, I can use any size coal, last year the local guy ran out of
rice, I generally use nut, he has it, they all seem to have nut pretty abundantly.

Funny note: Watched the Honeymooners last night, Norton and Ralph took a
civil service exam, one question was about math and heating, and they gave
coal cost at $15./ton..... Ralph made $62./week as a Dus Briver....(another episode)

.

[stusnyder]

[QUOTE=Username1;3122715]Great to hear it ! I'm sure the stuff I use comes from there !


No smoke here either, you can't tell when it's on by any smell, just when
you start it with wood first off...

I found a easy way to light mine off. I use a 120 volt heating element out of a rv refrigerator, just bury it in the coal, plug it in and turn on the combustion blower. Within a few minutes you got a line of coal burning. Unplug and lift it out of the coal.

[Steve D.]

Not to dwell on the pedal car, but it is a 1956 Pontiac. Similar to the '55 but the side chrome trim, ect, is different. The '55 is on the left. '56 on the right.

-Steve D.