I watched Star Trek in black-and-white for years. I think we got our first color TV in 1975. I loved my Star Trek View-Master discs because I got to see how colorful everything was. We did have transistor radios, but the old TV was full of huge orange tubes. It would take about a minute to warm up and it would throw this soft orange glow on the wall behind it.
We got our first color TV in 1965, right when the networks were converting over to color programming. I remember how the picture would sometimes "roll" and you'd have to carefully tune in the picture so that it would hold steady. I also remember when we'd sometimes have trouble with the TV and my Dad would take the back of the TV off and would unscrew the tube he thought was causing the problem. Then I'd ride with him to the drugstore where they had a machine where you could test the tube to see if it had gone bad. If it had, you just bought another of the same type and that usually cured whatever was ailing your TV.
Oh, yeah, I remember those tube testers. My father had boxes and boxes of tubes down in the cellar all of his life. I think they only got rid of them when they sold the house and moved into the retirement community.
Around here the licorice ice-cream is either water based on a stick -dyed black- or cream based in a box -and white! (both are actually quite good). I grew up watching Star Trek on a BeoVision 700 (which I then, as was the norm in those days, later had as my first set in my own room -till I turned twenty and bought myself a (somewhat more portable) colour-set from Philips. Strangely though, my memories of dad and valves are of him trying to get the radio, he had had in his room after his parents upgraded to transistorised equipment, to work.
The transistor was invented at Bell Labs in 1947, and the first transistor radios were sold in 1954 -- ten years before the Beatles became famous worldwide.
Ah, I stand corrected. Neither my family nor any of our acquaintancest had transistor radios until the end of the 60s (and no colour TVs until the mid-70s). At that time "American" was basically a synonym for "rich" (sic transit gloria mundi..), so it's not surprising that you had them earlier.
Yeah, he was a Marvel Comics character (along with Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and those guys). He was created around 1963 and Stan Lee described his armor as "transistor powered." It sounded futuristic at the time.
I live in the United States and I didn't get a transistor radio until the late 60s, either, for what it's worth. A lot of things were invented much earlier than one would think, but took years to filter down to common use by the general public. Take the fax machine, for example, which was invented in 1924.
It's been a while now, but how Jerry says Newman, is how I say Stark. Hardly anyone calls that ass "Iron Man" any more.
I'm just going to hazard a guess that you weren't talking about Cal Ripken Jr. (who was nicknamed the Iron Man when he played baseball).
The line methinks is Civil War. Inside Civil War, the line is outing Spider-Man to the world. Earlier? In Armour Wars I, Stark electrified Steve Rogers into unconsciousness, after The Captain got in the way of Stark vandalizing/destroying Government property (That had been stolen from Stark.). Earlier? Shortly before Rhodey took over in the 80s, Stark drunk out of his gourd drunk-flying into/through billboards. Earlier? Back in the transistor days, Wasp and Giantman were on the outs. Stark took her out on the town, emasculating his friend Hank Pym, by probably banging his wife Janet.
Maybe we on the Left Coast were luckier. I remember when it seemed everyone had one of these pocket-sized radios -- and that was the early '60s.