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Old 20th Nov 2016, 9:34 am   #41
russell_w_b
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I remember 'Watch with Mother', and another programme which I'm sure followed it, of which I particularly liked. It was about people at work; a sort of 'day-in-the-life-of'. I distinctly remember one episode about men going to work down the sewers.

I'm sure the programme is out there somewhere, but I can't think of the name of it!
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Old 20th Nov 2016, 10:41 am   #42
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I remember that. It was "Going to Work". It is featured on the BBC website; here's one example:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026gpbp
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Old 20th Nov 2016, 10:52 am   #43
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

Quote:
Originally Posted by merlinmaxwell View Post
I had forgotten about the TV engineering programmes, the little chap installing a TV, how to do convergence... I would happily sit for ages watching them, proper telly!
'The colour television receiver', available on Youtube, along with 'Its the tube that makes the colour'.

My first TV memories were the late 50's, we had a Sobell TV rented from a firm called 'Rentaset'. Mum used to take me down with her to a sort of very large semi-empty house in a district of Southampton where a chap sat behind a large desk in a large room with bare floorboarding where Mum would handover the weekly rent in cash. There was an orderly queue.

As to programming, no doubt the most indelible memory was watching the Southern TV local start up sequence which was quite something to see. I vowed as a young boy that I would become a TV engineer and work at Southern. That's exactly what happened in later years.

Last edited by Brian R Pateman; 20th Nov 2016 at 3:50 pm. Reason: If you mean Youtube, then say so!
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 3:02 am   #44
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

The earliest I can recall vividly was watching a seemingly infinite number of sets showing 'camberwick green' -all images reversed by reflection in the mirrors on the back of the service benches on which they sat. The sets were, of course 'naked', and I spent many happy childhood hours on the floor of British Relay/Telefusion /TAM workshops where my dad worked.

It also had the advantage of having access before any of my peers to Teletext, and occasionally the odd telly tennis game when one showed up for repair.

It's inconceivable now that H&S would tolerate infants in a workshop, but i wasn't the only kid there -and I knew what 'live chassis' ment before I could read the difficult word 'chassis' on the warning labels on the back.

PS....And the smell- the evocative mix of fag smoke, solder and ozone that doesn't seem to occur anywhere else.

Last edited by Croozer; 21st Nov 2016 at 3:09 am. Reason: PS
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 9:39 am   #45
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

Another 'secret' programme was at 9.00 on a Monday morning when they showed the new commercials for the week.
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 10:18 am   #46
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"Monday's Newcomers"
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 10:51 am   #47
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I well recall pleading with Mum & Dad to get a TV back around 1950. Some families had them ( including my barber!), but my parents convinced me that the signal in Doncaster from the Sutton Coldfield transmitter wasn't worth watching. Probably true - houses with TVs were notable for the massive multi- element band1 aerials straining at their chimneys.

Later in 1951, with the opening of the Holme Moss transmitter, signals were excellent on a simpler H aerial and Dad bought a Pye FV1 12-inch set which created great excitement. I think it was around £100 altogether - a fortune in today's money.

ISTR childrens' TV, including Whirligig and Billy Bunter. Only on special occasions was I allowed to stay up until the evening programmes, which didn't begin until 8 pm.

Martin
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 10:57 am   #48
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

My first recollection of radio was an old toaster style Bakelite radio in the kitchen with my mum listening to womans hour I'm sure.
Also slightly later with the same radio listening to radio Luxembourg fizzing in and out late at night.
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 9:08 pm   #49
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I used to listen to Dick Barton special agent on the wireless.! ( Radio !!!! )
I can't remember what year that was or how old I was then.
I do remember the wireless was a wood cased one though.
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Old 21st Nov 2016, 9:35 pm   #50
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I was not yet eight.

My grandparents mothers side TV had caught fire and was put out in the Dutch Barn.

Every time we visited the farm (my birthplace) which was around 6 times a year or more I explored the abandoned TV a bit more.

I was told to leave it alone advice it seems I totally ignored.

My interest was rewarded Christmas 1964 with a Philips Electronic Engineer EE8

The Farm was always awash with interesting items Fencers, Tractors, Pumps. Generators and refrigeration to name just a few items.

To think I could have had a life free of Electronics

Cheers

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Old 26th Nov 2016, 5:03 pm   #51
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I was 4 years old. My dad was STC's chief engineer for Wales and the West and he would give me bits and pieces to play with (transformers, valves, bits of wire etc, an old loudspeaker - nothing connected obviously). I had assembled some of these bits in what I deemed to be a radio set together with some candles to represent the valve heaters when one of his engineers was around for dinner. Spike was a bit of a joker and, while I was out of the room, he connected the speaker to our radio. When I came back he told me he had been looking at my radio and he thought it would work if I turned it on (I think my on/off/volume control was a defunct rheostat). Very dubiously I wound up the control and nothing happened. 'Well of course it won't work yet' said Spike, ' you haven't lit the candles!' While I was lighting the candles, of course, he turned on the radio.....
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Old 26th Nov 2016, 6:12 pm   #52
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

My earliest memory of TV was from about 1973,I was 3,and I was watching Ron Ely's Tarzan on an unknown B&W TV...
My earliest memory of radio/Hi-Fi was about the same time,it was on an ALBA,maybe separates system (I think,it was in at least two boxes,Amp/Radio?,and a turntable).My old man had this 50's/60's stereo test album,and I used to constantly listen to it.
When I was about 5-6 I ended up with the ALBA,as the old man bought a 'WHY' (?) music center,and gave me his old system.I spent many hours tuning that in to one station or another!.
My first portable transistor radio was a 'Tom & Jerry' radio!.
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Old 12th Dec 2016, 7:39 pm   #53
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I think my earliest radio memory was at the infants section of our primary school. (1945-6) The programme was, I think, called "Music and Movement", where the class had to run and group together in various formations according (I suspect) to the whim of the lady presenter. I remember one of the songs we had to sing along to was about a hen that ran off down the lane from the farm, and was killed by a fox! Last line went "Poor little thing, I could not save her, now I will never, never see her again.
" "Real life and hard knocks" education in those days, no "Don't frighten the Kiddies" then!
Although only Six, I did notice the radio was a Burndept, some kind of floor-standing model, possibly a radiogram, and very often the 3-4 yard long piece of wire that passed for an aerial could not be found, and some unlucky person had to stand with their finger on the aerial socket for the duration of the lesson. Tony
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 12:06 am   #54
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

My earliest recollection of a radio programme where I can remember its details, was an episode of "Journey into Space" where Mitch and Lemmy were on Mars, walking down a tunnel that had what we might now call motion-sensitive lights that only illuminated the part they were in, a fact they established by separating and noting it went dark between them.

We had a Bush TV in time for the Coronation, but I don't remember any of it. I do remember watching Whirlygig and Billy Bunter, and being fascinated by Sir Mortimer Wheeler talking about some exhibits from the British Museum, but my most vivid memory is being allowed to stay up and watch the end of John Ford's film "Stagecoach", on the strict understanding that I had to go to bed immediately it finished. I still remember the feeling of relief, cuddled up with dad, at the end when the cavalry turned up just as the husband was about to use his last bullet on his wife to stop her falling into the hands of the Redskins (how politically incorrect that would be these days).
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 12:30 am   #55
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

If Boxdoctor is citing School's radio in the '40s, I guess I can add my bit. Who remembers the School's broadcast of Pilgrims Progress. Jeremiah Clark's Trumpet Voluntary was the accompanying music. Not sure what year but I would guess 1947. At just six years, I recall it was not exactly cheerful. Castle Despair is hardly what you will find on CEBEEBIES today I suggest. A couple of weeks ago at our local Amenity site, I found an undamaged but very old copy of the book, in a protective cardboard outer. I just had to pick it up, but really don't know when I will allocate the time to read it.
At home we had a prewar Cosser radio. Around 1953 it packed in, and as the "senior male" then, I tried to fix it. I clearly remember diagnosing a faulty 41STH frequency changer. I think it had a top cap with broken connection. I had no idea what a frequency changer was, but that is what the valve was described as. I think that was the point when we bought a little used twin speaker Raymond from a pal's mum and the Cosser was sidelined. Can't remember what happened to it, but just MAYBE if such set appeared in front of me, I might consider its repair and rehoming. If I can find time.
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 9:27 am   #56
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

I vaguely remember 'Music and Movement' from my primary school days between 1948 & 1954, and other schools programmes, including one describing an eruption of Mount Etna.
No idea what radio was used at the local primary school, but at home we had a battery operated (with accumulator) pre-war EKCO set .
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 10:22 am   #57
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

Mum listening to 'Waggoner's Walk' on BBC R2 on a VHF Roger's tuner in our front room, enjoying a sit down and a 'Consulate'. Must have been pre '77, because she gave up smoking when she was pregnant with my sister!

And for telly - trying to watch 'Play school' ('what's through the round window?') on a monochrome set whose picture migrated around the tube alarmingly, and whose push-button tuner occasionally ejected buttons across the room. It's Telefunken colour replacement regularly had the TV man in attendance, but when it expired again during the Moscow (?) Olympics it was replaced with a Hitachi, which never went wrong. I guess that's a tale which many 'trade' folks here experienced from the other side...
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 11:56 am   #58
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

For radio my dad bought me a shortwave radio for my birthday when i was little and i would say up all night listening to stations in a America

As for TV can still remember coming home from school and my dad had bought our first colour TV from the Co-op in Croydon and the first programme i watched was Button Moon plus at school when we watched a video a bloke in a white coat would wheel in a VCR on a trolley

PS it's always funny trying to explain watching snooker on a black and white TV to my little nephews
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 12:24 pm   #59
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

My earliest memories of TV & Radio all occur in the early 1960s:-

Radio - Being fascinated by the family's Pilot Mariner (which I still have), and my dad trying to get a good signal on the Philips valve car radio in his Renault Dauphine in the centre of Manchester.

TV - Patiently sitting through hours of the testcard and music, then a boring program in Welsh, then watching Andy Pandy on a Baird TV (which I have never been able to locate the model of).
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Old 13th Dec 2016, 12:57 pm   #60
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Default Re: What is your earliest memory of radio, tvs etc

"Music and Movement" was still going on schools radio in the v.early-1960s when I started at infants school.

I don't remember what radio (if indeed they had a radio or if it was piped from the headmistress's office radio to a speaker somewhere) but I do remember being expected to leap around barefoot and how cold the lino floor was!

In the school hall they had a wooden-cased gramophone (must look at the various C&S models as I suspect it was one of them) on which "Morning" by Grieg was *always* played as we trouped in for morning assembly.
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