Dad’s DIY TV set served us royally
WHEN I was 11, my father, who was a marine engineer, bought a Viewmaster build-your-own TV set kit so the family could watch the Coronation 65 years ago. He worked against the clock in the outhouse with soldering irons, valves and goodness knows what else. Unfortunately, there was an accident with the cathode ray tube and a replacement had to be bought at some expense. There was one gizmo that perplexed Dad because it fitted in two different ways. So he guessed, and the first picture we saw on the TV was of a bean shoot growing downwards! The TV was put in the corner of the dining room and dad tinkered behind it with a large mirror balanced on a chair in front of the set so he could see to tune it. When he went up onto the roof to adjust the aerial, my younger sister and I had to shout through the open window whether the picture was getting better or worse. Our aunties, uncles and cousins were invited to watch the Coronation on the new-fangled TV: it was standing room only. Mam was busy serving food and missed seeing most of the event, including Queen Salote of Tonga waving to everyone from her open carriage, despite the rain. Later, Dad made an 18in screen and to make it a ‘colour’ set, he bought a plastic sheet with suckers on the corner and put it over the screen. It had multi-coloured lines, so anyone on TV was a different shade from top to bottom. Though we soon gave up on the colour idea, we must have been one of the first families in Britain to have two TVs. Dad’s Coronation TV ended its days in a boys’ school science class.
nOrMA SMitH, Ottringham, e. Yorks.