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The Old-Time Mobile TV
Today, nobody is surprised by watching TV on the Internet while going by public transit. But if taking half a century ago, some TV sets were so compact that they were taken for the journey. Here is a little historical excursion into the world of the past: in the world of mobile television. Year 1963A TV set for personal watching.The well-known world competent party in miniaturization of consumer electronics - entrepreneur Clive Sinclair (Sir Clive Marles Sinclair) - had been working on a series of pocket TV sets since the beginning of the 1960s. Year 1966A Sinclair's TV set with a 2" screen. It was on sale in London as a wonder for 49.9 pound sterlings.Another Year 1966There also was a more compact device from the Italian company of Motorolla. Judging by the old newspapers' illustrations, that gadget gave quite a good image. Unfortunately, we don't know for certain whether the device had been run in repetition work.Year 1976There was another Sinclair's production. Basically, it was a television set for travelling by car. It had a 2" screen as the previous models had had likewise. It could work with 4 AA battery elements or using a 220 Volt on-board electric mains of a car. It weighed 737 grams. It received very well in almost all countries wherever it was. It was very popular in the United States of America and it cost $400 there.Year 1984This TV set was compact and it had a flat screen; the cathode ray tube was situated along the body, and the image was formed onto the screen through a prism. The TV set had a capacious rechargeable battery which used to provide with watching TV over a long period of time (up to 15 hours!).It was on sale in the U.K. for 80 pound sterlings and weighed 269 grams. We ought to notice the fact that there had been a mini TV set in Japan for a year before which had been complicated in similar design. But it was a little bigger than Sinclair's device. The Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsThere had been works on this direction in the USSR too. In particular, a little series of an "Amphitone TM 01" was produced by The Minsk Computer Techniques Factory in 1982. Its screen had an area of 63x45 mm. It had very good technical properties (excepting its weight) if comparing with its foreign analogs. |