Sentinal IU-816

Early Color Television

Sentinel IU-816

(click on picture for high resolution image)

The set was made in 1956, and has a 21AXP22 round picture tube. The chassis is similar to the RCA CTC-4.

Here is what Ed Reitan says about it:

The design is the "Licensee Labs Design" (as I call it) that was made by Gilfillan, Raytheon, and many others. There are major differences in the IF strip (4 stages instead of 3), Sound, Color Demodulation, and tube types (standard tube types were used instead of that odd CTC-4 6AZ8)

It is fully documented in LB-962, "A SIMPLIFIED HIGH-PERFORMANCE 21-INCH DEVELOPMENTAL COLOR TELEVISION RECEIVER" [24pp. + foldout schematic, C-73685D CRT], September 16, 1954

Our set was found at an estate sale in Michigan, and donated to the museum by Darryl Hock.

Here are Darryl's comments:

It was in a very upper end part of town with large mansions all around. The house was built in 1951, so the custom built in DuMont was original to the house. The Sentinel looks like it was purchased by them in 1956, placed in the game room, and never moved. It still has many original Sentinel tubes with 43rd week 1955 and 13th week 1956 date codes. The CRT is the original 21AXP22 with a date code of 17th week 1956. I was surprised when one of the workers for the sales company told me they plugged it in and the set worked with a good picture. Sure enough they had a set of rabbit ears from a modern portable set sitting on top.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to check the crt. With only 1 minute warmup, all three guns were at the top of the scale with the red actually being the strongest! This set could not have been used much.

Early Television

Courtesy of Jeff Skolarus