The 1950s - Chapter 1 - Televisions
This essay is based on my subjective opinions and experience, not any actual credentials. I will therefore brook no disagreement. Just kidding. I will allow all manner of dissent, as long as there’s no name-calling involved. I’ve always wanted to use brook as a verb, so there it is.
The insidious nature of television, staring at programmed entertainment rather than doing something useful, influenced the 1950s in a way that has most certainly persisted to the present. If you or someone in your household has a smart phone, you know this. To understand our fascination with television, you should consider what a novelty they were, and a stunning accomplishment after a much-less-than-impressive beginning.
No Big-Screen Spectacle - More Like Early Auto Air Coolers
Although televisions were invented in the 1920s, they were very crude concepts that would ultimately wind up in museums. Television inventions picked up a little steam in the 1930s, but they were still novelties — like air conditioning in cars.
You didn’t expect this essay to stay on topic, I hope. The first car air conditioner I saw was in a 1950s Cadillac, though they had been introduced earlier. Cold air was distributed through plastic tubes arising from behind the rear seat, under the back window. When I saw this system through the back window of a parked Cadillac, I gasped at the sheer perfection of it. I could visualize huge tubes of ice cold air being blasted at my neck as we traversed the Arizona desert. I hoped my parents would think of getting this astonishingly modern space-age car.
No such luck, though I am sure my mother liked the idea. She didn’t much relish the idea of not having air conditioning for long periods of time, say 15 minutes. Without guaranteed air conditioning, she’d have to dress casually, an unappealing prospect for any 1950s woman.
In the final analysis the first “air conditioner” my parents had was in a 1950s-something (I think) Vauxhall Victor Estate, a small British station wagon made by an American company. If memory serves, it looked something like this, but it was a black station wagon. Now that I think of it, the woman pictured in this ad is not completely unlike my mother. I could imagine her setting up a snack like that before a long road trip.
The “air conditioner” used in that car, whatever my ancient memory has managed to piece together from random fragments, was a window unit. I’m not joking. It fit into the right passenger window. It resembled this one:
I’m not sure about the details. Further research uncovered explanatory information about car window units in an ad for the “Winter Breeze” motorized car cooler:
Would you look at that, readers! “No ropes or chains to pull.” I have to assume that’s what would have sold Mom on it, if this is the one she had. She would have chosen the “neutral hammered metallic grey.” But where was it plugged in? So probably it was that first unit, the one that was little more than a tube of water.
At any rate, Dad filled it up and we sloshed down Route 66 to California. Yeah, that’s right: We drove down the highway with a box or tube of water affixed to the car window. Either device used water evaporation (theoretically) as a cooling technique. As we breezed down the two-lane highway at speeds approaching 55 mph, the water cooler rattled in the window, occasionally puffing damp air into my mother’s face. I vividly recall my mother complaining that this modern wonder was turning her hair into a flat, moist remnant of what she had carefully styled that morning. I assure you the car wasn’t as much as one degree cooler. Mother promised us that this unit would not be used again.
In those days, as an aside to the previous aside, and as you have astutely figured out by now, most cars weren’t air conditioned. They would overheat if stressed too much. It was common to see people driving in the desert with canvas bags of water affixed to the front of their cars. Just in case.
No Dependability
Can you imagine being stranded in the desert, thirsting for water, and all you’ve got is an insect-encrusted canvas bag of hot water that’s been riding on the grill for hundreds of miles? Actually, it was for the car. Somehow cars used water in their engines. Fortunately, I knew radiators need water when I encountered an overheated radiator one day in the Mojave desert, but that’s another story. Oh well, if you insist.
I was driving home from a convention in New Mexico. Several hours earlier, I had stopped for a large iced tea to get me through until the next stop. About 40 miles later the car began spewing steam from the radiator. I pulled to the side of the road and waited for it to cool off. It didn’t, so I poured my iced tea on it.
I was traveling with a friend, who handed me the car manual. I sat down on the ground to read it. Steam was rising from the ground. It was at least 105 degrees. The manual declared that the water was supposed to go in the radiator. But don’t open the radiator when it’s hot or it will send a jet of boiling water right into your face. (Loose summation.) But I had no water, and there was nothing nearby . . . unless . . . I spied what looked like a barn in the distance. Might be worth a look.
I carefully crawled over a barbed wire fence, just as Grandma had taught me. I walked toward the barn, carrying my empty iced tea cup. A water trough appeared, unless it was a mirage. I ran for it and began dipping out water into my cup. I worked hastily, not wanting to think about what might lurk therein.
When the cup was almost full, I looked up and saw a bull ambling my way. I began backing toward the fence, and then I turned around and ran, trying to remember what I saw, and was it really a bull? Maybe it was just a cow. Or a dog. Anyway, I was not as careful the second time I crossed the barbed wire fence. I was wearing shorts, and I ripped a gash in my leg with the barbed wire.
To make a long story short(er), I wound up riding in a tow truck, with the driver giving me directions to the hospital for wound treatment and a tetanus shot. It took four days to get my car fixed. We didn’t have cell phones in those days, and this was in the 1980s.
Now that you have a rough understanding of how primitive we were in the 1950s and for the next 30-plus years, let’s move on to the less-than-sleek television sets we used.
When I describe the barely functional initial forays into the television industry, you will see televisions were nothing compared to the 4K razor-thin wall-hangings of the 2000s. In the 1920s and 1930s inventors were scratching their heads and thinking “There must be a way to make money off this.” Televisions were an idea with no market. For example, the screens on some early televisions were round discs about the size of a coaster, encased in huge, elaborate cabinets. Try to find the screen in this one, which these two people are patting with undisguised affection:
Other manufacturers determined it was best to have the screen lie flat at the top of the cabinet. The hinged lid of the cabinet, when raised, displayed a mirror of the image. Television watchers needed only to view the image in the mirror, alleviating the necessity of hovering over the thing to watch it.
For many reasons, not the least of which was the strain of squinting at a 7- to 10-inch screen or viewing an image projected onto a mirror, televisions were not commonplace until the mid-1940s and 1950s. Now you know why the pictures of your great-grandparents always show them in eyeglasses.
I grew up in the 1950s. By 1950 less than ten percent of U.S. households had televisions. The sets featured wide glass screens with cathode tubes to display the picture. These CRTs were implanted in fine cabinets simply to make them acceptable. Yes, these cumbrous devices with their uncertain future were sneaked in with the furniture. No one would have wanted the thing if it had interfered with interior decor. I know my mother wouldn’t have, and Dad still owed her for debacles like that humid Vauxhall ride.
The use of attractive cabinets helped televisions gain acceptance in 1940s and 1950s homes. They fooled everyone, and most middle-class working families were proud of their televisons. It’s not unusual to see prom pictures taken with the happy senior standing adjacent to the television set.
Be reminded that remote controls had yet to be invented. Consequently, frequent family squabbles erupted over who would change the channel. For that reason, many families fondly remember bickering in front of the television, watching something like Ed Sullivan. Children didn’t particularly enjoy it, but snacks were available and there was no telling when another fight would break out.
Not all televisions were as stodgy as those manufactured in the U.S. One example is a West German television set, the Kuba Comet, highly sought by collectors today. This high-quality modern television was manufactured from 1957 to 1962.
The next photo is a guide to televisions, printed in 1927, which would be during my grandparents’ time. The product being admired in that era were worthy of those who put something called “doilies” on furniture for no apparent reason and insisted on using their own pickle jars instead of the ones the pickles came in. One of my grandmothers collected ceramic bulldogs, too. But at least the ornate, admirable television set wasn’t spying on viewers. We know that because the CIA didn’t exist yet.
Notwithstanding the fancy cabinets, the back portion of the cabinets holding the CRTs were not so attractive. There were wires and tubes everywhere, with vents or air holes to allow heat to escape. An array of small tubes, like the example shown below, allowed the set to work. These tv sets predated transistors and as far as I can remember, preceded soldering, too. TV sets ran on fragile tubes. Like light bulbs, tv tubes would eventually burn out.
When a tv tube bit the dust, the television stopped working. A tv repairman in a crisp uniform would be summoned. He made his living on televisions being undependable.
Years would pass before it became cheaper to get a new television than to repair the old one. Services weren’t as expensive in the 1950s. As yet another in an endless array of asides, several services provided in this rather spartan era were needlessly extravagant. For example,
We frequented grocery stores, but milk was delivered to the house in glass jars.
My mother drove to a woman’s house to deliver clothing to be starched and pressed rather than to do the work herself. Mom worked hard so I know it wasn’t because of a sudden surge of indolence. (Was that an oxymoron?)
Until the 1970s, we didn’t have to pump our own gas. A service station attendant pumped the gas, washed the car windows, and sometimes gave away free merchandise. Nowadays you’d have to bid on eBay to get that gas station merchandise, even the jelly glasses.
You may surmise, by this point, that whatever programs we watched must have been rather rudimentary. You would be right, and we will discuss those in the next chapter of this substack, yet to be finalized. Sufice it to say there was nothing in the 1950s that seemed to perform as advertised. Did this situation presage the conundrum in which we now find ourselves, vis-a-vis our government and its innumerable, superfluous agencies? I say that to mollify those who appreciate an occasional poitical issue being broached.
Happy trails.
Elaine