My first TV had folding wooden doors you had to open to see the 13 inch screen. It had 4 main dials - VHF, vhf fine tuning, UHF, and uhf fine tuningI'm just so grateful that there are other members here who remember black and white tv.
At my house you had a choice of the 2 VHF channels that you could get off air. Though if you wanted to play with it, occasionally you might find a UHF channel (though not always). A few years later we got a 3rd VHF channel (ABC) and right before I graduated from High School we got 4 channels.
It used to take about 5 minutes (or at least it seemed that long) to warm up the TV so you had a picture. It always started with a little dot and got bigger, and when you turned it off it did the opposite.
It finally died and TV repairmen had quite making house calls, so we got a color 19" TV! Suddenly "In Living Color" made sense (though many of the shows were still black and white).
I kind of miss the old TV now. I remember watching Johnny Quest on it while hiding behind the hassock (scary). The cabinet it was in would probably be worth some money now also.
-Actually my first TV was a 13" black and white portable that my Dad got so he could watch the news while eating dinner. After TVs got light enough so that they could sit on a wheeled cart and he could turn it toward the dining room I inherited the portable. I actually used that TV for around 20 years off and on.
After the hit and run I had to sell my belongings to pay my doctor bills, and it was my only TV (wasn't worth selling) and except for reading it was almost my only entertainment. Just before it died I found a 25" color counsel TV behind a TV repair shop and borrowed a friend's car to get it home. I figured if it didn't work I'd scavenge parts from it, but the only thing wrong with it was the color guns needed adjustment -score.
