Dirty TV screens
Submitted by Member: Nuvistor
When the direct view Mullard Panorama CRT’s were introduced around 1965 they quickly attracted dirt to the screen. The owners cleaned the screens but like windows didn’t get into the corners.
More than one occasion I had to go on a call to confirm to the embarrassed owner it just needed cleaning and not faulty under guarantee.
The first CRT’s of this type had to have a mask to cover the metal band, the mask got very dirty as well and of course we had lots of open coal fires in living rooms which didn’t help.
I think the first Panorama CRT’s I saw were in the Bush TV135U television, A47-18W.
Example in this thread https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/community/black-white-tvs/bush-tv135lu/paged/4/
Now, perhaps the customer should have been told that they have been watching too many dirty programmes…..
Many years ago I called at a house where the customers were very heavy smokers. We had the tv in the workshop for the repair and cleaned half the screen. The set was returned to the customer without any comment.About a year later we had another call on the set, the screen was still in the half cleaned state.
I remember the various kinds of grime inside the sets. There was dust which would just vacuum out, there was paraffin heater gue that wouldn’t budge, but worst of all there was heavy smoker gue which bound the dust into an orange paste and stank.
Even though I and my father were smokers at the time, our TV was clean. I can only assume the windows were never opened at these premises.