The Grayscale Glory Days of 1960s Television

Television is ubiquitous in our lives these days. TV sets are not only found in the family room, but also in bonus rooms, media rooms, studies, and bedrooms. I’ve even seen them in kitchens, for goodness' sake.

We now take for granted high-resolution images in glorious color. Even small, cheap-and-cheerful entry-level TVs these days are 1920 x 1080 pixels, commonly referred to as 1080p, while most of today's mid-range and higher TVs are 3840 x 2160 pixels, commonly known as ultra-high-definition (UHD).

As an aside, many televisions are branded as “4K,” but this is marketing chicanery. The 4K term technically refers to a resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels. In reality, most “4K televisions” are actually UHD resolution (you simply can’t trust anyone these days).

Keep all this in mind when I tell you what I’m about to tell you. Are you ready? Good. Make yourself comfy, and I’ll begin.

As I've mentioned in previous columns, I was born and bred in the city of Sheffield, in the county of Yorkshire, England. One Saturday afternoon in 1960, a few weeks after my third birthday, my mum, dad, your humble narrator (I pride myself on my humility), and my teddy bear, Big Ted, were all in the family room, relaxing furiously. Dad was smoking his pipe and reading his newspaper, Mum was knitting, and Big Ted and I were doing something very important behind the sofa.

We were all enjoying the peace and quiet when, suddenly, we heard a loud knocking at the front door. Big Ted and I looked at each other in surprise. Neither of us was expecting visitors. We wondered who it could be. Dad got up from his chair and went to see who it was. Big Ted and I went with him in case he needed help. We bravely hid behind him in case there were any monsters.

When Dad opened the door, I saw two big, mysterious men wearing coveralls. Behind them, in the road, was a big mysterious delivery van. And between them, in our driveway, there was a big mysterious box. “Hmm,” I thought to myself, “that’s very mysterious.”

With a lot of struggling, straining, grunting, and groaning, the men carried the box into our house and placed it in the corner of the family room. When they removed the outer covering, they revealed a strange wooden cabinet hiding inside. There was a small glass window on the side facing into the room, but I couldn’t see anything through it (I’m afraid Big Ted and I left our nose prints on it).

The men plugged the box into the wall and turned it on. This was the first time I’d ever seen a television. There were moving pictures accompanied by sound. It was GREAT!

The image above is just an illustration I found on Pixabay.com, but it gives you an idea of what I’m talking about. This was a free-standing piece of furniture about three feet (90cm) tall. In those days, there were no flat screens, so the cabinet was approximately 2 feet (60cm) deep to accommodate the cathode ray tube (CRT) display. There was also a honking big loudspeaker mounted at the bottom of the cabinet, below the screen, behind a material that allowed sound to pass through while blocking visibility of the contents.

In addition to being presented in black and white (well, grayscale), the images were a little blurry, but this was much better than not having a television at all.

I later found that UK televisions at that time boasted 405 horizontal scan lines. These vacuum tube-based wonders of technology were analog in nature (see also my Vunderful Vacuum Tubes column), so they didn’t have a fixed “x-y” resolution in the way digital formats do today, but we can translate things into an approximate digital equivalent.

In the case of vertical resolution, although there were 405 total scan lines, only about 377 were visible, with the remaining 28 lines used for synchronization and blanking. In the case of horizontal resolution, this was determined by the video bandwidth, approximately 3 MHz, which translates to roughly 540–550 pixels of detail per scan line in modern terms.

This means that our 405-line TV presented approximately 550 x 377 pixels of real image detail. This was far below what was to become known as standard definition (SD, 720 x 480 pixels) in the years to come, but it was more than impressive for the time.

When you turned the television on in those days, the picture would start in the middle and gradually expand until it filled the screen. When you turned it off, the picture shrank, getting smaller and smaller until there was just a bright spot in the middle of the screen. Then this dot gradually faded away until... it was gone.

There were only two television channels in England at that time (sad face). One was the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and the other was Independent Television (ITV). Also, these channels were on for only part of the day (even sadder face).

On weekdays, the television companies didn’t even begin broadcasting until the late afternoon (saddest of sad faces). On those days, programs for kids started at 4:00 p.m. After only two short hours, the interesting content for kids stopped, and the boring content for adults began.

Since both my parents worked, my grandma (my mum’s mother) came to our house to look after me during the day. I think I must have been a bit of a handful for her to look after, so starting around 3:45 p.m., she would turn the television on, at which point we would be presented with the test card and a faint high-pitched whistling sound.

This test card served multiple purposes. Engineers (both at the broadcaster and in TV shops or homes) used it to set brightness and contrast, focus, and geometry (i.e., ensuring the images weren’t stretched or skewed). The patterns helped engineers spot problems such as ghosting, interference, or poor transmitter alignment.

I would sit on the floor in front of the television, watching the test card and listening to the high-pitched whistle in great anticipation. A few minutes before the hour turned, the whistle would be replaced by music. And then, exactly on the hour, the kids' programs would start—hurray!

On Saturday afternoons, if it weren’t raining, Dad would potter around in the garden. Big Ted and I helped a lot. We helped so much that it wasn’t long before Dad said we’d helped him more than enough. After that, we would explore the jungle at the bottom of the garden.

When Dad had finished gardening and Big Ted and I had finished exploring, we would all get cleaned up, and then we’d watch television. First, we watched football (soccer). Next, we watched wrestling matches (the wrestlers had interesting names, such as Mick McManus, Giant Haystacks, and the Dynamite Kid).

Best of all, after the wrestling, we watched cartoons. I liked Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, and Popeye the Sailor. One of my dad’s favorite cartoons was the Road Runner with Wile E. Coyote.

We didn’t have a remote control for our television. If my mum wanted a different channel, she told my dad, and he got up and made the change. Hmm, maybe that was a form of remote control as far as my mum was concerned.

We also didn’t have any way to record programs and watch them later. If you missed an episode of your favorite show, I’m afraid you were out of luck.

How things have changed, not least that we now have access to hundreds of channels, and we can stream programs on demand, including many old favorites from yesteryear. Another change that just occurred to me is that whenever a knock at the door heralded a visitor, the first thing my parents did was turn off the television. At that time, it was considered extremely rude to leave a television playing in the background while entertaining guests.

How about you? If you are from my generation, do you have any memories you’d care to share? Alternatively, if you’ve only ever known high-resolution color television presented on humongous flatscreen devices, is there anything you’d like to ask? As always, I welcome your captivating comments, querulous questions, and sagacious suggestions, all of which you can share on Hackster's "Throwback Thursdays" Discord channel. I look forward to seeing you there.

P.S. Don't forget that you can peruse and ponder all of my Throwback Thursdays columns here.