Albert's Attic Gallery

1952 advertisements

This is a page from the November 1952 edition of Practical Television.

In 1952 all TV signals were in Band I. The Aerialite ‘Model 55’ (and other very similar products) was the archetypal TV aerial of the era. Known as the ‘H’ aerial it had a half wave dipole and a reflector. In strong signal areas a ‘single dipole’ might prove sufficient, and in very weak signal areas it might be necessary to resort to a huge four element yagi, but the ‘H’ covered the middle ground. When a cartoonist of the era drew a TV aerial he invariably drew an ‘H’. It’s interesting to see that the mast here is aluminium. Many aerials of the time had a wooden mast.

The other item of interest is the pre-amp shown at bottom left. Nowadays we think of Band I signal losses in cable as being minimal, which suggests that the only purpose of a pre-amp would be to give an insensitive tuner a bit of help. However, the co-axial cables used in those days were quite ‘lossy’ by modern standards. But the pre-amp is mains powered and isn’t weatherproof, so masthead use seems unlikely.

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