1950s Magnifying TV

While there were attachment lenses that could be used on the front of those analog televisions, I suspect Westinghouse tried by varying the strength of the magnetic deflection fields within the tube to produce the magnifying effect. If you are not sure how the old technology worked I'll try to explain:

Electrons are generated by a heated filament (wire) within the tube. The electrons are pulled by an applied electrical charge difference (electrons carry a "negative" charge) to the positive face of the tube where they strike a phosphor coating that will give off some photons. Left alone the stream of electrons would travel in a straight line and form just a small dot in the center of the screen. If you put electromagnets around the tube you can influence the electron stream in horizontal and vertical directions. Circuits in the chassis take the video input and cause the magnets to vary the fields to scan across the screen on both axis. Do this fast enough, analog television used 525 lines of vertical scan at about 30 frames a second, and you can produce motion video. Varying the video some more could produce a zoom effect of the display, but only to the center of the frame.

Modern video equipment works much differently by storing the input signal in digital memory and essentially turning vast arrays of little lights (LED) or "shutters" (LCD) on and off on the face of the screen at so many frames per second. The image is manipulated within digital memory to produce the effects we've come to know, like zoom features.

We had a very similar TV in the 1950's. The magnification was called "Opera Glass" and was achieved electronically by greatly increasing the deflection of the picture tube (something like a two-fingered stretch on your smart phone.) Unfortunately, there was no way to pan around so if you wanted to see something in the screen corner you were out of luck.
Our TV didn't have a radio or record player. We had those in another box. There weren't many FM stations around so it wasn't until several years later that we got an FM radio. I was intrigued by the UHF position on the selector. What was this for? UHF TV channels 14-82 weren't around yet as far as I knew. We didn't have them in Cleveland, OH until the 1960s and we needed a set top converter box to get them.

Fascinating and "enlightening" explanations, guys! Many thanks!

That phonograph didn't look like it would play the 16 1/2 speed records!

Now that you mention it, Expat, a console stereo that the parents had in the early 1960's was capable of handling that 16 r.p.m., but when I questioned my father about it at the time he said that he could not recall seeing any records for that speed. They did have some 78 r.p.m. platters and I have them now. I just can't play them with the component stereo equipment I have but I see new equipment on the market that will. To hear der Bingle croon "White Christmas" again would be a treat.

KDP,

Thanks for the good description on how the TVs worked. In the early seventies I worked in a factory that manufactured a variety of CRT for scientific, industrial and military application. We would get the tubes from the glass maker then install everything else producing a working, ready to go CRT. It was a very interesting process. Everything from 2 inch screens to massive 36 inch round ones use in air traffic control radar Part of the time I worked in shipping and got very good at packaging the delicate tubes.

G.G.

My dad had a tv repair business in the early '70s so I saw a lot of vacuum tubes and neat stuff like that. I remember being told not to go near the old picture tubes behind the shop because if you hit them right (or wrong) they would explode.

The slowest speed was 16 2/3 rpm (not 16 rpm; just divide 33 1/3 by 2 to get the actual speed). I remember getting some spoken word records from our local library that were manufactured to play at those speeds. By the way, nobody who cared about their vinyl records would ever use a stacking record changer, nor would they hold a record like she was doing, gripping it like it was a dinner plate or something. Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of pops and scratches were not manufactured into the vinyl, but were a result of careless handling by the person who purchased the record.

Interesting info on the 16-2/3 rpm format, an early attempt to fit more music onto a microgrooved LP. Some longer jazz sessions were issued on it, it was used as an attempt at an automobile music system, and Seabury had a player that could stack up to 28 discs with 40 minutes on a side, for background music systems. It was built to play the disc on the turntable first, then the bottom of the disc in the stack above it, and go back to the bottom once done. But the main use for the speed was indeed for "Talking Books," which, I believe, could be ordered from the Library of Congress.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record#Speeds

SEEBERG! Stupid auto correct!

AUGGGH! SEEBURG!!