ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Violation Photo Forum Tub and TV

You have a point there....in 1950 TV was relatively new, so most households only had one and that was most likely in the living room/family room.

Plus did any homes even have indoor plumbing in 1950? Or were people still taking tub baths in the kitchen after pumping the water out of the ground via an outdoor hand pump and then heating the water on the stove?

Ahh ya, Zenith.. nothing but the finest of TV's!!
We have had a few from the 70's and 80's, old floor model ones where the clock appeared on the screen, and even one with a built in telephone!
We still have the one with the telephone built in at Gramma's place too bad the sound amp is pooched.. Fixable I think and hope, but wasn't technology great back then too LOL!

A.D

I seem to remember a episode of "Leave it to Beaver" where the Beave let the bathtub overflow upstairs.. Then him and Wally attempted to dry the plaster ceiling with some old style blowdryer or heat gun... the the patch landed on the dining table during dinner I believe that was from the 50's..

My aunts old 1932 house had a bathtub with legs on it, with running water and drainage... I think indoor plumbing hit metro areas turn of the century.. anyone know for sure?

Hhhmm....interesting.

My mother (born in 1951) said growing up they worked/lived on a farm, had an outhouse, had to pump water from an outdoor pump from the well and had to heat the water on the stove, had to rely on a fireplace for heat meaning when they went to bed at night they had a warm cozy house, but come morning it was so cold you could see your breath...they did have electricity she says....she grew up in southeastern Indiana by the Ohio river.

I don't know if that was the normal way of living or if they were just primitave of the time...

Oh, IIRC Leave it to Beaver ran from '57 to '63 on CBS.

[This message has been edited by Dawg (edited 11-03-2006).]

As far as the question concerning bathrooms and indoor plumbing....geez guys, I was born in '52 and my folk's house DEFINITELY had a modern bathroom, with hot and cold running water, the whole works. Here in Kansas, which always runs decades behind the rest of the country, most cities got running water and sewers by the '20's at the latest. Many had them by the turn of the last century. Depending on folk's budgets, I presume most city dwellers had indoor facilities by the mid '30's. For the farm folks, and that included both sides of my family, electricity didn't arrive until around WWII (1941-1945 for you kiddies), and as soon as it did, the woman of the house DEMANDED hubby install an electric water well pump and electric water heater, which quickly led to indoor facilities.

Talking about the older TV's, it wasn't only them that had a hot chassis. Most of the 5 tube table radios that were dominant in the 40's and 50's had the metal chassis directly hooked to one side of the line, and plugs definitely were not polarized back then. Cheaper TV's had the tube's filaments in series, and did not have power transformers, which would have isolated the chassis from the power line. But guess what? I don't think many of my generation were electrocuted by using our radios and TV's. Agreed, it wasn't the best design, but us boomers survived. Uhhhh, yeah I know many of my generation had their brains fried, but it generally wasn't from faulty electronics designs! GRIN

[This message has been edited by Beachboy (edited 11-04-2006).]

Hmm, nice place for the TV. Might want a Mythbusters Brand Blast Screem there.

I couldn't figure out I'd get shocked by a 1940s wall lamp (plug in.) I took it apart, and whichever side was supposed to be the neutral was hooked to the metal! The plug wan't polarized. More food for the scrap pile!

Ian A.

My mother came from a rather poor family. They grew most of what they ate. Her mom hand made her clothes for her. That's probably why they were still utilizing out houses/hand pump wells/fireplaces in the 50's and probably on up to the 60's.

I've owned 2 old radios, a '47 Delco and a '53 Zenith. The Delco was a wooden unit with plastic knobs and the Zenith is a bakelite unit with plastic knobs....so no shocks here. That lamp sounds rather dangerous....was it hooked up the way it was supposed to be?

The neutral was bonded to the metal base of the lamp, and the neutral wire followed to the socket. The plug wasn't polarized, so if the "Neutral" side was plugged into the hot side of the outlet and you touched the lamp, you got a shock. I just looked at where it used to hang, and the paneling was a bit discolored.

Don't worry, the cord is now in the scrap heap, and the lamp's awaiting a rewire.

Ian A.

[This message has been edited by Theelectrikid (edited 11-05-2006).]

Dawg, those old radios from the 40's and 50's were basically safe, despite the hot chassis design. The problem came when the kids would pull the knobs off and lose them, then everyone would have to use the metal shafts to adjust the volume or tuning. Also, all of them had metal screws on the bottom which attached the chassis into the cabinet, which if you touched, would be "live". As I recall, the connection between the main power and chassis wasn't a hard direct connection, but was though capacitors and/or resistors. I've got several old radios from the mid 40's up until the mid '60's (when solid state technology took over) and collect them whenever I can. My favorite is the Crosley that my dad and his roomate bought together when they went to college in 1945. Can you imagine nowadays two guys having to go together just to pay for an AM table radio?

Man that sounds scary....wonder when they finally started polarizing?

My dad has his dad's old Zenith stereo from about 1960....tube type, record player and all....looks like a piece of antique furniture....reached down inside one day to turn up the volume and got zapped when my hand brushed up against the metal face.

In the owners manual it says if you hear a humming instead of music to reverse the polarity of the plug....