It has survived 65 years of use and now television's brave new world after the digital switchover - yet it is still a picture of health.
And thanks to a simple digibox one of the world's oldest televisions is soldiering on with all the latest channels.
Retired TV engineer Steve Farley's vintage goggle box was one of the first post-war sets to be built and was bought by his father.
A radio and television engineer like his father before him, 59-year-old Steve says the 1946 Pye B16T telly has only needed minor modifications to keep it working over the years and even still has its original tube.
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| Soldiering on: Steve Farley with his vintage 1946 Pye B16T television which still picks up all the latest channels |
'The fact that it still works so well should allay fears anyone has about not being able to watch digital television on their "old" telly after the digital switchover,' he said.
'Pye were the Sony of their day, this was the very first model they produced after manufacturing shut down during the war - it is one of the oldest working TVs in the world.
'A lot of people, certainly older people, have been targeted by advertising and think they need to splash out on brand new equipment, but I doubt people are going to have a TV as old as this.'
His father, Fred, was the first person in the Midlands to receive TV pictures from London's Alexandra Palace transmitter in the summer of 1946 - despite the Government telling him it couldn't be done.
By working out how to pick up the signal from 132 miles away, he had people queuing outside of his repair business to watch the pictures through the shop window.
Steve was just 13 when his father died at the age of 62, but he had already had two years' experience helping to repair customers' radio sets.
'My dad managed to get his hands on one of the first TVs to be built after the war,' said Steve.
'They said that when the TV arrived at his shop it was worth more than the van it was delivered in.
'People used to press their noses against the glass to watch the TV.
'You have to understand that back then there was no Midlands TV signal, and there hadn't been any TV anywhere during the war.
'Back then there was only the one channel, it was the BBC, there was nothing else on. Nowadays there's so much choice.
'In all these years it's never needed a major repair, you were expected to need to replace the tube about three times a year in any TV, but it's never even needed that replacing.
'When it was built the manufacturers all advised that TV be watched in a dimly-lit room, but this one works fine in any conditions and the picture stands up next to any modern TV, although it is black and white.
'I don't know precisely how much it was worth back then, but it was £50 or £60, which was a lot back then, if you consider a house was worth about ten times that.
'Nowadays to a collector it would be worth around £1,000 I'd imagine, but I'm keeping it for myself.'
His dad's shop in the Aston area of Birmingham became known as Midland Television and Radio Repair Service.
Steve later took over 'rival' business Jollys round the corner at 416 Aston Lane with the help of his mother, Dorothy, who died aged 80 in 2000.
Their first shop was demolished in 1989 to make way for a road widening scheme which never happened.
© Daily Mail, London |
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