80 Line Western Visionette

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Mechanical Television

A West Coast Western Visionette?

Uncovering the History of a Uniquely Modified Mechanical TV

By Matthew D’Asaro

As a long time collector of vintage televisions and related equipment, for many years I have sought a mechanical TV to represent this crucial early stage of television history in my collection. However, these sets almost never surface in the wild and are so coveted by collectors that they rarely come up for public sale. Finally, after many years of looking, in the 2023 auction at the Early Television Museum in Hilliard, Ohio, I was lucky enough to be the high bidder for a Western Visionette from the estate of another esteemed collector. The Western Visionette, introduced in 1929 by Ulises Sanabria’s Western Television Company of Chicago Illinois, was the most successful American mechanical TV receiver with some 150-300 sets sold. As purchased, the set was complete, and in good condition, minus a broken power switch, faded finish, and frayed wiring. It appeared that it may have been modified at some point to add an extra quarter-inch phone jack on the side, and the spinner on the phase knob (ship’s wheel on the front) had been replaced with a screw, but it otherwise appeared to be original.

In order to get the set working again without damaging such a rare artifact, I adopted a minimalistic “restoration” philosophy. I made no attempt to refinish the wood, but rather my very good friend Ron Roscoe and I gently cleaned the cabinet and applied Howards to it. Similarly, I opted not to replace the original frayed wiring but rather very carefully removed the entire wiring harness undamaged and carefully preserved it while using modern wiring to get the set operational again. This way, if desired, a future collector or museum could reinstall the original harness to display the set in unmodified condition but I could still attempt to get it running again. The only other restoration needed was to carefully clean the optics, lamp, and disc, lubricate the motor, and reassemble the TV.

With the set basically in working condition, the motor would spin and when a current-limited supply was applied to the lamp, I could make out the scan lines. However, to display an image, a standards converter was needed. Darryl Hock, a fellow electrical engineer and television collector, has already done a spectacular job of designing a mechanical TV standards converter so I opted to buy one from him. Darryl was very kind and although he did not have one of the converters in stock, he sold me an empty case and unpopulated PCB that I could populate myself to complete the device. To supply a signal to the converter, a source of NTSC video was needed. For this I used a Sprite MedeaWiz. This useful little device allows still images or videos stored on an SD card or USB stick to be displayed on an NTSC or HDMI TV. For my test image, I chose a picture of Felix the Cat, as that was what RCA used for their experimental TV tests, and thus his image is one of the most famous from the mechanical TV era.

The final setup thus consists of the MedeaWiz sending out an NTSC image of Felix, Darryl’s SCM-01 converter connected to the AC line through a 6V transformer (for sync) and to the MedeaWiz (for video), Darryl’s neon lamp driver connected to the output of the SCM-01, and the output of the lamp driver connected to the neon lamp socket. See Figure 1.

With this setup in place and a group of friends watching for the initial turn-on, I set the SCM-01 for the 45-line triple-interlaced format used by the Western Visionette, applied power, spun up the synchronous motor in the Visionette to get it started, and expected to see an image. To my great surprise, I did not see an image at all but just a scramble of light and dark lines. I double-checked that I had the right standard selected on the converter, which I did, and that the video signal was good, which it was, and then unclear what could be going on, I shut it down to a disappointed audience.

After a bit of head scratching I thought to try each standard on the converter in turn – perhaps when I assembled the converter I made a mistake with the switch such that the positions were mixed up. Luckily, the SCM-01 supports switching standards while it is on, so I could simply switch through each position and look how the image changed. As I did this the scramble of lines moved around but no recognizable image appeared except at one setting. At position D I could get a recognizable Felix but with a fast vertical roll, just as if the vertical hold on an early electronic TV was misadjusted. I also noticed that the image displayed was very small and very dim comparted to that seen on the Western Visionette displayed at the Early Television Museum. Then a lightbulb went off. Looking more closely at the scanning disc, I began to suspect that this set had been modified for a different television standard. This would explain the smaller image, the fact that it didn’t seem to work with the Western Television standard, and the slightly “shop-made” look of the disk – it was machined out of a flat plate of aluminum rather than the standard Visionette disk which has stiffener ribs in it.

Early Television

My modified Western Visionette

A stock Western Visionette from Radiola Guy’s collection

With it now pretty well established that the set was modified, the questions became “modified to what standard?” and “why don’t any of the standards that the SCM-01 work?” To answer this, I had to figure out two things, first the number of lines, and second the frame rate. As each hole in the scanning disc produces one line, figuring out the number of lines simply involved counting the number of holes in the disk. I made a mark with removable ink and started counting - 80-holes so 80 lines. Next, for the frame rate. The frame rate is the rotation rate of the disc which, since the motor is synchronous to the AC line, is just the speed of the motor. The nameplate on the motor states 900 RPM, and 900 rotations per minute divided by 60 seconds per minute is 15 rotations per second, so 15 frames per second. This made sense as that is the same frame rate as the Western television standard and the motor looks original and unmodified. With these two pieces of information, the horizontal frequency, that is the number of lines per second, can be computed easily as the number of frames per second (15) times the number of lines per frame (80), so 1200 lines per second. This answered one of the most important questions – why position “D” on the SCM-01 worked in the horizontal sense – it formed an image – but that image was unstable vertically. Looking at the manual for the SCM-01, position D corresponds to 60-lines at 20 frames per second which also works out to the same 1200Hz horizontal frequency, but the vertical frequency is 5Hz off – 20Hz instead of 15Hz resulting in an image that rolls vertically 5 times per second, which is what I saw.

With the basic parameters of the standard known, and the behavior of the set explained, the next question became “who used an 80/15p mechanical TV standard?” The answer, which came from the Early TV Foundation website , is that only one station ever used that standard, and that station was Don Lee Broadcasting, W6XAO out of LA. There is a fascinating article on this history of Don Lee and his engineer Harry R. Lubcke on the Early TV Foundation website at so the entire history will not be repeated here, but in short, Lee’s W6XS (later W6XAO) was the very first television station on the west coast and broadcast mechanical TV images from 1931 to 1936 in the 80-line standard devised by Lubcke. Because of the many competing mechanical TV standards in use in the USA, and the relative obscurity of W6SX, there appear to have been no commercial manufacturers of receivers for this standard. Instead, Lee recommended that viewers build their own receiver and provided plans to do so, based either on a disk either made by the viewer or one obtained from Remington Radio and Television Company 1815 Venice Blvd., LA.. Given the professionally made, but clearly not mass-produced (machined not stamped) appearance of the disk in my set, I will surmise that it is one of those purchased from Remington.

While one can never be sure exactly how many of any historical artifact still exist, after considerable research I have not turned up reference to any other known surviving examples of mechanical TV receivers for the 80-line standard. Thus, I appear to have stumbled upon the only known surviving example of a mechanical TV for this standard. I happen to be a west coast resident myself, having been born and raised in Seattle, WA, (and, in fact, having had my great grandparents homestead in the region around 1890) so I am especially honored to be the care-taker of an extremely rare west-coast mechanical TV. I plan to work with Darryl to add this standard to the converter and thus allow my modified Western Visionette to again display a television picture on the west coast.

Bio: Matthew D’Asaro, PhD, is a collector and amateur historian of technology based out of Seattle, WA, USA. Aside from television, he also has a large collection of early calculators and computers, electronic test equipment and scientific apparatus. He is a board member of the Early Television Foundation, active member and former vice president of the Puget Sound Antique Radio Association, and a ham radio operator (AI7RM). Matthew holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT and is employed at Sea-Bird Scientific where he designs sensors for oceanographic research.

Early Television

At home with other prewar sets

Early Television

On display at the 2024 ETF Convention

A note about the history of this set. It was donated to the Museum in 2022 by the estate of John Hora. They donated a number of other sets, including a prewar RCA TRK-120. John lived in Grenada Hill, CA, which is just north of Hollywood, where Don Lee's TV station was located. Most of the Los Angeles area was on 50 Hz power in the 30s, and this scanner would not have worked in those areas, since the motor is synchronized to the power line. However, Hollywood and the surrounding area was 60 Hz, and this set would have worked there.