Vintage Televisions
How a Refugee Escaped the Nazis to Become the Father of Video Games
By Arthur Molella — It’s perhaps fitting that the man recognized as the father of the video game, that quintessential American invention, was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, whose personal story converged with America’s at a critical time in the nation’s history. “I had the misfortune of being born in a horrendous situation,” Ralph Baer told the Computer History Museum, of his birth to Jewish parents in 1922 in southwestern Germany. When the Nazis came to power, Baer was still a young child. They threw all...
Steve McVoy is Tuned Into Vintage Television Sets
By Maribeth Keane — In the 1950s when I was a teenager I used to work for a television repair shop and we’d get sets from the 40s every once in a while and I was fascinated by them. So in 1999 when I sold my business and went looking for something to do that would be challenging and different, I decided to collect television sets. I didn’t know much about television history except for television during the war. With the first 3 or 4 sets that I bought, I met a number of collectors. It’s a pretty small...
Tacky Treasures: TV Lamps of the 1950s
By Maribeth Keane — I’ve always had an interest in the tackier artifacts of the 1950s and '60s. The cheesy stuff, the kitsch. Old B movies, monster and sci-fi movies, the stuff you can poke fun at a little bit. When I was growing up, we didn't have TV lamps around our house. But there was a book called "Turned On: Decorative Lamps of the 50s" written by Leland and Crystal Payton in 1989, about different kinds of lamps from the 1950s. There were so many in that book that were really tacky. I just remember...