Friday, October 04, 2019
An idea whose time never quite came
In a 1937 radio periodical:
An outlet with separate shielded jacks for a dipole antenna on top and regular AC on bottom.
GE thought this would be a good idea, but it was too late for shortwave radio and too early for television. SW disappeared from home use after the war when Deepstate rejuvenated. Deepstate decided that we couldn't be trusted with Russki information.
For some reason TV antennas, though universal in the '50s and '60s, never got a standardized wall outlet. Most houses had internal wiring for the antenna, but the outlet was typically a pair of screw terminals for raw 75-ohm flat, or just the flat cable directly coming through a hole. Apartments more often had a proper plug. Later on, cable TV did acquire standardized coax outlets.
¶ 3:16 PM 
An outlet with separate shielded jacks for a dipole antenna on top and regular AC on bottom.
GE thought this would be a good idea, but it was too late for shortwave radio and too early for television. SW disappeared from home use after the war when Deepstate rejuvenated. Deepstate decided that we couldn't be trusted with Russki information.
For some reason TV antennas, though universal in the '50s and '60s, never got a standardized wall outlet. Most houses had internal wiring for the antenna, but the outlet was typically a pair of screw terminals for raw 75-ohm flat, or just the flat cable directly coming through a hole. Apartments more often had a proper plug. Later on, cable TV did acquire standardized coax outlets.
¶ 3:16 PM
