Are you old enough to remember any of these???
Answers below the fold…
Bed Warmer pans- Filled with hot rocks and placed in between the sheets
Kelvinator was the brand of one of the first mechanical refrigerators in the USA.
One of the first TV remotes
An Akai 8 track RECORDER!
A carpet beater
A bread toaster
“Did you hear about Maytag’s date?”
“No!”
“Kelvinator!”
I knew all of them except the Kelvinator. My father owned one of the Akai recorders. He made recordings of all his favorite big band music from the 30’s and 40’s. Then play them in the car everytime we went camping.
Also Norge appliances.
I did not recognize the 8 track recorder, but I knew all the others.
Knew all of them except Kelvinator, as it wasn’t a brand name up here in “Northern Not”.
Those initial television remote controls used sound. This meant that sympathetic harmonics from other sounds (like a truck rolling by outside) could change your channel, volume, or turn your television off. This could be really annoying if you were just at the good part of a show.
Correction: Kelvinator was a brand name in Canada. I just don’t remember ever seeing one in the home when I grew up.
Thanks Sir.
as if just getting past my 67th was highlighting my ever larger age, now you throw these things at me.
🥺
i remember them all. quite well. and studebakers, ramblers, dc 3s…
and am thankful of the period I have existed in as well as your reminders and blog.
keep up the good fight
I used to keep the .22 cases from the shooting range @ our local amusement park (!!!). I’d be watching TV & rattling the cases in my hand & the tv would change channels. Too a while for me to figger that out…
We didn’t have those fancy bed warmers. We used bricks warmed on the hearth.
I’ve heard of Kelvinator, but we had a Frigidaire
I never saw a remote like that.
I had an 8 track player/recorder.
And my grandparents had a rug beater and toaster almost exactly like those. They were using the toaster still when I was in high school. It was bulletproof.
Those early Zenith TV remotes — there were no infrared LEDs with microprocessors to encode them. They were ultrasonic tuning forks that were struck when you pushed the button, a different tone for each function, and a microphone in the TV picked up the sound and responded accordingly.
We had a single button clicker for the tv. The clicker would advance the channel. There was one position that was “off”. Dad’s old Peacemaker would do it too. I think it was the third click when cocking it. I found that pretty funny back then. C-O-L-T
Every single one of them. Makes me a dinosaur. As a kid, we got new appliances (Yay!) in our kitchen after the war (II that is, for you younguns) and I was delighted — we got a Hotpoint refrigerator — and a Coldspot stove. To my sluightly warped sense of humour, that was perfect!
I have a brass bed warmer hanging on my wall and we donated a toaster oven like that to an “Old Toaster Museum” on the West Coast.
I could use one of those rug beaters. Right now I’m improvising by checking which way is upwind, and smacking the rugs against the shade tree’s trunk.
All of them. The remotes were audible to us kids – parents and old folks (cough) couldn’t hear them. Dad had an appliance store and we sold the TVs (some were color!) with remotes, refrigerators (don’t call them Fridges since we didn’t carry Frigidaire), toasters (not quite this old, although we fixed them), and record players (some were stereo – some were 4-channel!). Big deal when microwaves arrived. And cassettes. Serviced everything at store or home shop – you could actually fix any of them that were worn out or broken. Got me interested in how stuff worked – result engineer, ham radio, etc.
The TV remote needed to be paired with the antenna rotator.I
If course, I knew all because I read history books and watch old classic movies.
😉
I must be old. I remember all of them and used a couple as a kid. The 8 track and the carpet beater, though I used the carpet beater on rugs from the living room.
In our house the remote was whatever kid was in the room when a parent wanted a change.
All- Thanks and a ‘reminder’ for us all that we are dinosaurs… sigh…
Yeah, audible tones from that old Zenith changer, and it would change sometimes without anyone doing anything!
I had a friend who had one of the Zenith TVs with the “clicker” remote. I used to screw with him by jingling my pocket change.
I’ve no personal experience with any, but I got 4 of the 6. I had seen the Kelvinator, TV remote, and toaster in museums and remembered them well enoguh, and figured out the 8-track machine easily enough. I saw the carpet beater and bed warmers and went “I know I’ve seen these in museums, but I can’t quite remember what they are.”
I remember time-before colour tv, remotes of any kind – other than one of us kids – and audio recorders.
The kerosene refrigerator had been relegated to the function of “beer fridge” in the shed, after the mains power was connected shortly before my arrival, so we had an electric fridge and toaster. …. although I can recall toast being made with a long fork and the open firebox on the wood slow-combustion stove.
Kelvinator, Akai, and toaster. I’ve used a carpet beater, not that particular design.
Feral- LOL
TOS- You’re just a kid! 😉
Peter- Oh, I had forgotten about them My Grandfather had one in the garage for ‘cold water’…
TXRed- There are quite a few, from what I understand. That happened to be one that was by itself.
Growing up in the NC hills, I remember the old folks referring to every refrigerator as a “Kelvinator.” Apparently, they had a crackerjack sales team around there.
I recognized all the rest save for not noticing the stereo had an 8-track recorder.
Yep, bald geezer here.
I have actually encountered a particular variant of one. For a few months (less than two years?) the refrigerators were Nash-Kelvinator.
Huh. Seems I have that wrong. I had been under the impression it was a short time in the 1950’s, but it seems they combined in the 1930’s.
I didn’t look closely at the 8 track recorder; haven’t run across any of them in real life. Our camping kitchen had a slightly more advanced toaster; it would do one side, you’d open the lid and the bread would slide down and present the other side for toasting.
A friend had the sound remote, but in the early 60s, a friend of the family had a color TV with a wired remote control. My folks would take us whenever The Wizard of Oz was going to be shown. Our family was B&W until 1972 when one of my brothers got in debt at sold the color TV to Mom. Just in time for the Munich Olympics. Urk.
Jim- Some places they did!
Orvan- Yep, 1930s
RC- My aunt had one of those!
The Akai is a hoot I just had that identical model restored. Found it in a pile of trash across the alley behind a friend’s house.