Manufacturer SPARTON OF CANADA, LIMITED

Sparton Combination Television

Datec. 1949

DimensionsOverall: 26 x 19 x 31 cm

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Friends of the Museum, 1995

Object number1995.033.001

Label TextTelevision in Black and White This is a 1949 portable Sparton black and white television. Available to the wealthy from the early 1930s, televisions became affordable for middle-class consumers after the Second World War (1939-1945). And as more broadcasters came on the air, more families chose to invest in the new technology. Radio and stereo manufacturers worried that demand for their products would decline. The owner of the 1949 television had to wait until November 28, 1953, to watch the first broadcast of London’s new CFPL-TV. Walter J. Blackburn (1914-1983), who already ran the London Free Press and CFPL radio, established the station. Because he decided to build it from the ground up, Blackburn’s CFPL-TV came second after Sudbury’s CKSO, which began broadcasting in October of 1953. Sparton arrived in London in 1930 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of an American firm, the Sparks-Wirthington Company (hence Spar-ton). It took over the former Sherlock-Manning piano factory on Elm Street and began building radios and refrigerators. By the 1960s, the company was producing a full range of entertainment products, including televisions, and was also pressing records. Beginning in the 1960s, Sparton began to build sensing devices for the Navy. The Sonorbuoy became one of its biggest products. Dropped from an aircraft, it released a transmitter and a sensor used to detect the presence of submarines. Since the end of the Cold War, the company has again repositioned itself and now one of its chief products is the expendable bathythermograph (XBT), a device that measures water temperature and depth and sends back the data through a wire. It is used by fishing fleets.

NameTelevision, Portable