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Old 13th Dec 2016, 2:27 pm   #61
russell_w_b
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

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"Music and Movement" was still going on schools radio in the v.early-1960s when I started at infants school.
We had that at infants' school too. And 'Singing Together'. The teacher would wheel out a large square baffle-board with a loudspeaker at the centre and plug it into a 1/4" jack. The other end of the circuit would be, presumably, in the school office.
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 4:12 pm   #62
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I remember what must have been Music and Movement at infants' school c.1960. The one piece I do remember moving around to in bare feet on a polished wooden floor is "Peter & The Wolf". I've never liked it since. (And the ending doesn't seem particularly appropriate for small children!)
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 6:11 pm   #63
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I too remember Music and Movement at primary school back in the early 60s but I was always fascinated by the radio in the school hall. I've no idea of the make but I'm sure that there was a front panel with no case so you could see the "workings". No health and safety in those days.

The school also had a tape recorder in the headmasters office so programmes could be recorded and played back in classrooms via the speaker distribution system. I have a memory of one teacher, who must have been in her 20s at the time, trying to fit the 1/4" jack plug into the mains socket until someone pointed out the jack socket on the wall.

At home I do remember Listen with Mother on the Home Service and later Saturday Club on the Light Programme on a Saturday morning. I wired up an extension speaker up to my bedroom so I could wake up to the Today programme with Jack De Manio. That was until I got my own radio in 1965.

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Old 13th Dec 2016, 6:31 pm   #64
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

One I for got was "Journey Into Space" on the radio and of course "Watch With Mother" on the television.
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 9:57 pm   #65
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

"Get yourselves well spaced out..." I think that will have been Music and Movement, still running in the mid to late '60s and brought to us by a Hacker Mayflower II which must have arrived at primary school at about the same time I did. Always fancied a Mayflower II for myself and none came along until one in Durham's indoor market took a £15 bite out of my first year student grant. The remainder of the school's audio-visual equipment amounted to a Dansette Conquest and a 25" Decca monochrome TV on what seemed at the time an exceptionally high stand, raising the base of the set to probably four or five feet off the floor.
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Old 14th Dec 2016, 9:16 pm   #66
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

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"Get yourselves well spaced out..." I think that will have been Music and Movement, still running in the mid to late '60s
Hey, I remember that! (From mid-late 70s). That's one of those things one doesn't notice as a kid but later strike one as very funny. A bit like my drawing no implications whatever from Tony Hart's artistic demeanour and florid cravats on 70s BBC children's telly!
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Old 14th Dec 2016, 9:50 pm   #67
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

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One I for got was "Journey Into Space" on the radio and of course "Watch With Mother" on the television.
I recall Journey into space - we used to crowd around a dreadful radio (which you could just about hear) while at boarding school.

My fondest memories were Music while you work - instrumental only, no DJ's or waffle - just half an hour of good stuff played by a live band. Wish I had kept a few recordings!

Les.
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Old 14th Dec 2016, 10:36 pm   #68
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

'Listen with Mother' on an Ever-Ready battery set. Fascinated from a very early age by how things worked, I was convinced that the radio contained a smoothing iron for some reason, as the shape of the divided loudspeaker baffle visible through the expanded metal grille vaguely resempled that of an iron soleplate!
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Old 14th Dec 2016, 10:41 pm   #69
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

Hi, I guess that my earliest memory of radio would be the Westminster radiogram that my parent's owned in the early 1960's, also the Dansette Junior record player which actually belonged to my grandmother but spent more time at our house in my older sisters' company.
I spent many hours listening to "Mr's Dales Diary", Jimmy Clitheroe, family favourites et al on the radiogram and also listened to lots and lots of vinyl before being sent off to primary school at the tender age of five years old...
The radiogram was never modified to be able to play stereo records and I recall one of my sisters bringing home a stereo pressing of Mary Hopkins "Postcard" album which had to be returned to the record shop (before it was played of course) and replaced with the mono pressing.

Television wise, my parents didn't own a set till I was around seven years old but I recall my grandmothers Bush TV99 and then a plethora of sets of different manufacture which were supplied by her nephew (my mothers cousin) who was "in the trade" having being demobbed from the RAF and then trained as a radio and telly repair man.
My Grandmother also owned a Dansette 222 transistor radio which was a source of great interest to a five year old interested in electrical/electronics stuff.

In my later early years, as it were, I encountered those wonderful Clarke & Smith units which seemed to feature in every school in the land, and various models of radio and television in friends and relatives houses.

I could go on for ever about the number of radios and other equipment that passed through my hands as "the lad in the village who messes around with radios" but that's probably the subject for a whole new discussion

Andrew
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Old 15th Dec 2016, 12:26 pm   #70
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

Workers play time too I think.A lot of this stuff was released on cd a few years ago If you could find it in the retail outlets.

I have one or two of these cd,s in my collection.
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Old 15th Dec 2016, 1:22 pm   #71
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

At my junior school in the mid 1950's we had to sing along to "Time and Tune" reading from song sheets supplied from the BBC. I remember the speaker in the classroom resembled a truncated four sided pyramid, possibly a Clarke and Smith type.

There was also a wooden cased record player mounted on a wheeled stand with the large speaker fixed between two of the legs. There may have been a tape recorder, but my memory is unclear on that point.
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Old 15th Dec 2016, 4:17 pm   #72
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

Hi. My earliest memory of a radio is seeing my great auntie & great uncle's Philips 834A radio at their flat in Seacroft, Leeds in the 1950's. He used to listen to plays on the radio, such as Edgar Allen Poe horrors. They were given the radio as a present in 1933, and it lasted until the 1960's when they replaced it with a Defiant transistor radio. I remember my father repairing the Philips about 1960.
We had a K.B "Gavotte" radio in our house in Whitkirk, Leeds, a small blue radio with a mixture of red knobs and white buttons. These are now fairly rare.
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Old 17th Dec 2016, 12:34 pm   #73
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

I have one 'Worker's Playtime' CD (CD41-039), which is recordings of the 16 February 1943 broadcast, plus recordings of Jack Warner, Norman Long, and others, taken from various wartime editions of 'WP'. Other radio related CDs I have include 'In Town Tonight' ('Once again we stop the mighty roar of London's traffic'), and two 'Music While you work' discs. 'WP' ran until the 60s., and 'In Town Tonight', which was, IIRC, also on TV, was one of the first 'Talk Shows' in the 1950s, although I only heard it on the wireless.
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Old 17th Dec 2016, 1:35 pm   #74
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

I was at Primary School in Doncaster in the late 1940s & early 1950s. William 'Pip' Appleby, presenter of 'Singing Together' was the very dynamic Doncaster Schools Music Director, so BBC schools music programmes were mandatory listening.

I recall that each classroom had a speaker (probably 8-inch) mounted in the middle of a 2-foot square portable baffle board. An on-off toggle switch and volume pot were also in the baffle board. Twin flex connected the speaker to a 2-pin socket wired to the main set in the hall. I think it was a 5A mains socket, which could have led to problems!

I remember being surprised that there was no transformer involved, my early sketchy understanding of Ohm's law getting me interested in voltage drops in the long lines. However it all worked rather well, with plenty of volume and respectable quality.

I wish now that I'd paid more attention to the main radio feeding these speakers. It lived in the wings of the stage in the Hall and was a walnut-cased table radiogram with a 78 turntable incorporated along with the radio. I've no idea of the brand. Often enough, we would get 'The Headmaster's Music' as he played his choice of classical records throughout the classrooms while we waited for the BBC broadcast to begin.

I have a particular memory of the day of the death of King George VI in 1952. We all paraded from our classrooms to stand in the Hall to listen to the Home Service playing solemn music, with John Snagge periodically announcing 'The King is Dead'. The Hall was supplied with two of those baffleboard speakers, one at the front and one at the back. Audibility was very good.

Shortly after that, we learned that the 'old faithful' school radiogram had died. I remember the teacher saying 'well it was 20 years old, so is due for replacement'. Allowing for a bit of exaggeration, that would have dated it to the early 1930s, about the age of the school buildings.

I do remember its replacement was a Sound Sales radio in a metal cabinet - by that time I must have been senior enough to explore the wings of the stage! I remember that rather puzzling unfamiliar logo in the characteristic cursive script. The odd thing is that, although it was clearly a purpose- designed school radio, it never worked satisfactorily, with very poor level in the classrooms. The main set was then typically turned up to maximum volume which only resulted in distortion. The installation must have been incompetent. To this day, I've wondered whether that new Sound Sales set had a 100V line output which had then been connected directly to the low impedance speaker network.

30 years on, when our own children were at primary school, professional radio installations had been replaced by radio-cassettes carried round from room to room. I suppose they worked, but can't believe their performance was a patch on those 1930s baffleboard speakers fed from that radiogram with its low impedance output!

Martin
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Old 17th Dec 2016, 6:24 pm   #75
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

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30 years on, when our own children were at primary school, professional radio installations had been replaced by radio-cassettes carried round from room to room. I suppose they worked, but can't believe their performance was a patch on those 1930s baffleboard speakers fed from that radiogram with its low impedance output!
It wasn't! I remember our school used BASF-branded radio-cassette players and tapes, and the teachers turned them up and subjected us to unbelievably-distorted programme material. It left me with the lasting impression that BASF gear was unusably bad - not what the manufacturer might have hoped for on landing a schools contract!
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Old 21st Dec 2016, 12:25 pm   #76
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

This question got me thinking, so this is my rambling answer.
Listening in amazement to the sound coming out of a pair of tin headphones during the blackout (WW2) from this tiny little crystal set, which my dad, who was away in the army, had got me, this was the start of a lifelong love of the subject.
Listening to some 78rpm records on mechanical record player, also putting toys on turntable to play, good way to learn about things.
Listening to Dick Barton special agent on my first homemade trf radio later my first superhet, and so it goes on.
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Old 6th Jan 2017, 5:13 pm   #77
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

A memory I did not mention in my earlier post was as a very young lad, finding and listening to "Air-met" aeronautical weathear forecasts on about 1200 metres on my mum's Marconi 272 radio.
I was not sure what it was about, but it all sounded a bit "Secret Agent" to my young ears! Tony.
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Old 6th Jan 2017, 6:53 pm   #78
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

I don't recall the Air-Met weather forecasts at all, though I do remember most of the Radio Programmes mentiomned in earlier posts, and listening to R. Luxembourg, AFN & VOA, amongst others.
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Old 7th Jan 2017, 10:56 pm   #79
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

Definitely remember "Music and Movement" at junior school circa 1968-70 ish. The radio was a Clarke and Smith mounted on a trolley with wheels and a large baffle speaker below. It had a record deck on top but this was rarely used. A lot of years later I managed to save the whole thing from being thrown out and still have it. I ditched the trolley and can't remember what happened to the deck, as I must have been about 15 or 16 when I got it, when they were clearing out the school and turning it into a village hall.
Alan.
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Old 10th Jan 2017, 12:16 am   #80
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, TV's etc?

We had a KB television when I was little in the early 1960's. It was about 3 feet high with the speaker in the bottom of the case under the screen. I remember my dad working on it regularly and one day he told me he was putting a bigger tube into it. It originally had a 14" tube and the new one was a 17" with a big transformer screwed inside the case. I remember him swapping valves including an EY50? HT valve (3 wires coming out of it). It had a turret tuner with lots of positions but only 2 "sides" BBC and ITV. I remember watching (or did I just dream it?) a demonstration of colour on the black and white screen in the mid 60's where the BBC showed a green spot in the middle of the screen. Was this possible? Was it just a dream? It wasn't a green phosphor screen.
Our wireless at the time was a large short wave and medium wave only set that I have looked for ever since to identify it, unsuccessfully. My dad said it was intended for export so it didn't have long wave. The speaker was on the left front and the tuning scales were on the right behind a square or rectangular glass. It had a knob on the left end that you had to turn if you connected a "pick-up" to play records. The valves were all IO and it had a tuning eye which I loved. Up in the loft was an Eddystone 659 that I still have and it still works even though I haven't done anything to it. My dad got it off a ship when he worked in Palmers Ship Yard in Hebburn some time between 1939 and 1960ish.
David
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