Showrooms

Where sets were sold and watched in public. Shop windows with crowds outside, department store television departments, rental showrooms, appliance dealers, Soviet electronics counters, walls of identical screens in a warehouse store, and trade fairs. Sets were bought, rented and watched collectively long before most households owned one.

Part of Television

93 moments in this segment.

  1. - Earle Rogers Co., Wheeling's quality furniture store, 12th and Main Sts., Wheeling, W. Va. The Earle Rogers Company furniture store at 12th and Main Streets in Wheeling, West Virginia. Television was sold through furniture dealers before it was sold through electronics shops, because the set was bought as a piece of furniture.
  2. - "Television" by RKO (1939). Television, an RKO short from 1939 made as RCA staged television as a consumer proposition at the New York World Fair. The fair significance is retail rather than invention: Jenkins had been broadcasting publicly from 1928 and experimental electronic broadcasting predates it.
  3. - Television Comes to America: Television (1939) | Restored & Upscaled. Television Comes to America, a restored 1939 film. The 1939 launch produced roughly three years of trickle sales and then a total stop, because the War Production Board halted civilian manufacture from 22 April 1942 to 20 August 1945.
  4. - New York World's Fair 1939. Long amateur footage of the 1939 New York World Fair, where the American public met television as a product at scale. The crowd at the shop window is the founding image of television retail and it predates mass ownership entirely.
  5. - Home Movies: Medicus Collection: New York World's Fair, 1939-40, reel 4 (silent). Silent home movies from the 1939 to 1940 New York World Fair, from a 16mm archive. Home movie footage of the fair is a different register from the corporate films and shows the crowds rather than the pitch.
  6. - 18.11.1950 Television exhibition at Stockmann department store in Helsinki. A television exhibition at the Stockmann department store in Helsinki in 1950. Finland had no regular broadcasts at this date, so the display was showing people a technology they could not yet receive at home.
  7. - The first television broadcast in Finland. The first television program in Finland on November 18, 1950. Made possible by General Electric with Yle Finland and the Helsinki 1952 Olympics organizing committee. The studio was in Stockmann department store, Helsinki.
  8. - January Sales (1950). British Pathé on the January sales in 1950, the retail rhythm the television trade was fitted into. The wall of identical sets showing the same demo loop is the single most reproducible retail image across the whole century.
  9. - Coronation Of H.M. Queen Elizabeth 11 Naval Participation In The Procession (1954). British Pathé on the 1953 coronation. The coronation is the event that put British sets into homes and put crowds in front of shop windows, and it is the best documented case of communal viewing anywhere.
  10. - 1953: Hunting for BARGAINS in the NEW YEAR SALES | Newsreel | Voice of the People | BBC Archive. Shoppers hunting for bargains in the 1953 new year sales, from the BBC archive. This is the retail context immediately before the coronation set boom.
  11. - 1950s Vocational Training Film: Selling as a Career (1953) - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage. A 1950s vocational training film on selling as a career, which is the trade the television showroom belonged to. Britain rented where America bought, because sets were expensive and broke down often enough that an all-in maintenance contract was genuinely valuable.
  12. - Fotothek df roe-neg 024 Sowjetische Fernseh- und Radiogeräte auf der Leipziger Herbstmesse 1954. Soviet television and radio sets shown at the Leipzig Autumn Fair in 1954. The Leipzig fair was where Eastern bloc manufacturers displayed to each other, and Soviet sets set the pattern the other socialist states followed.
  13. - Fotothek df roe-neg 030 Fernsehgerät auf der Leipziger Herbstmesse 1954. A television receiver at the Leipzig Autumn Fair in 1954. Trade fairs did the work that showrooms could not yet do, because most towns had no dealer stocking sets.
  14. - Deutsches Rundfunk-Museum Ausstellung auf der IFA 2012 PD 13 Ferhnsehgerät Braun FS 1, 1955. A Braun FS 1 receiver of 1955 shown by the Deutsches Rundfunk-Museum at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin in 2012. Braun's sets were designed under the influence of the Ulm School and treated the receiver as a plain box rather than as furniture. It is a museum object on display at a trade fair.
  15. - 1950s USA, Women Shopping, Shop Window Mannequins. Women shopping past shop window mannequins in 1950s America. The shop window is the founding image of television retail and it predates mass ownership.
  16. - 1950s Selfridges, UK Department Store, 16mm Film Rushes. Selfridges filmed on 16mm in the 1950s, the department store context in which television departments sat. Rental bundles the set, the aerial, the repair and the replacement into a weekly payment, which is why the trade was enormous and why it died when sets became reliable.
  17. - Customer service in a 1950's shoe shop. Archive film 96970. Customer service in a 1950s shoe shop, filmed as an archive record of counter service. The same selling culture applied to the television dealer.
  18. - Going Shopping with Elizabeth Allan - Harrods (1955) | BFI National Archive. Going shopping at Harrods in 1955, from the BFI National Archive. The department store television department is one of the standard retail settings of the era.
  19. - The Story of Television - 1956 (Vintage Technology Documentary). The 1956 Story of Television as a vintage technology documentary, which doubled as sales material for the whole category. The UK household rental percentage at peak is not established in the sources and is deliberately not estimated here.
  20. - THE STORY OF TELEVISION | 1956 | VINTAGE EDUCATIONAL FILM. The 1956 Story of Television as a vintage educational film, another surviving print of the most widely circulated corporate account of the subject. The crowd at the shop window is the founding image of television retail and it predates mass ownership entirely.
  21. - The Story of Television (1956) | How RCA Invented Modern TV. The 1956 Story of Television presented as RCA account of how it invented modern television. Present the claimants and adjudicate none: this is one claimant own telling.
  22. - The Rock 'n' Roll Years 1960 (Also On Internet Archive Complete). A 1960 chronicle of the year including its consumer goods, useful for the retail texture around the set. The wall of identical sets showing the same demo loop is the single most reproducible retail image across the whole century.
  23. - 1960s Consumer Reports: Consumers Want to Know (1960) - CharlieDeanArchives / Archival Footage. A 1960 consumer affairs programme on what buyers want to know. Television buying advice from the period is a direct record of what shoppers were being told.
  24. - In Colour! - THE NATIONAL RADIO AND TELEVISION SHOW, EARLS COURT 1960. The National Radio and Television Show at Earls Court in 1960, in colour. The annual radio show is the British equivalent of the Berlin radio exhibition and the place sets were launched.
  25. - CAN178 INTERNATIONAL STANDS AND EXHIBITS AT CENTRAL AFRICAN FAIR. International stands and exhibits at a Central African fair, from the AP archive. Trade fairs are how new consumer technology reached markets without a retail network.
  26. - Radio&TV store 1961. Källmans Radio & Tv i Örnsköldsvik. Från vänster ägaren Uno Källman och försäljaren Olle Wiberg.
  27. - The National Radio Show Earls Court 1961 Colour Tv demonstration. A colour television demonstration at the National Radio Show, Earls Court, in 1961. Britain would not begin colour broadcasting until 1967, so this is a trade demonstration of a product the public could not yet buy.
  28. - Dumont's TV 1962. The start of construction of Interstate 26 in 1962 was a defining moment in the history of the North Area. Not only did it take traffic off the State roads, like Rivers Avenue, it changed the commercial community. In addition, the new thoroughfare forever divided traditional neighborhoods.
  29. - Italy 1960s: The trade fair archive footage. Italian trade fair footage from the 1960s, showing consumer goods presented to the public. Britain rented where America bought, because sets were expensive and broke down often enough that an all-in maintenance contract was genuinely valuable.
  30. - SYND 9 9 67 MANY NATIONS SHOW EXHIBITS AT SYRIAN TRADE FAIR. Exhibits from many nations at the Syrian trade fair in September 1967, from the AP archive. Rental bundles the set, the aerial, the repair and the replacement into a weekly payment, which is why the trade was enormous and why it died when sets became reliable.
  31. - 1970: The Serious Business of Shopping | Tuesday Documentary: The Retail Game | BBC Archive. The Retail Game, a 1970 BBC documentary on the serious business of shopping. It is the trade context in which television was one more thing on the floor.
  32. - 71-2606 Novosibirsk, USSR 1971. A Novosibirsk shop interior in 1971, in what other photographs from the series identify as the TsUM department store. Soviet sets were sold from a counter with the stock behind it rather than from open shelves.
  33. - 71-2621 Novosibirsk USSR 1971. A second view inside a Novosibirsk store in 1971, showing the electrical goods counter. Buying a television in the USSR often meant a waiting list rather than a purchase off the floor.
  34. - Teledyne Packard Bell - The New World of Cartridge Television (Promotional Sales Tape, 1972). A 1972 Teledyne Packard Bell promotional sales tape for cartridge television, held by a broadcasting museum. Dealer sales material is the primary evidence of how sets were actually pitched on the shop floor.
  35. - Shoppers on Oxford Street, 1970s London, HD from 35mm. Shoppers on Oxford Street in the 1970s, filmed on 35mm. The high street context in which the electrical multiple sat.
  36. - 1970s London | Living in London | Life before television | Report | 1975. A 1975 Thames report on life in London before television, which is a useful counterweight to the assumption that the set was always there. The UK household rental percentage at peak is not established in the sources and is deliberately not estimated here.
  37. - Október huszonharmadika (Schönherz Zoltán) utca, Skála Budapest Szövetkezeti Nagyáruház, a felvétel a. The Skála Budapest cooperative department store photographed on its opening day in 1976. Skála was a Hungarian attempt at a Western style department store, and consumer electronics were among the goods that made the point.
  38. - СССР. 1978 год. Новинки бытовой техники. New Soviet household appliances in 1978, including televisions, presented to the public. The Soviet retail model is a state department store counter rather than a competitive showroom.
  39. - 1982 Consumer Electronics Show Chicago. The Consumer Electronics Show at McCormick Place in Chicago in 1982. CES is where manufacturers showed the sets that would reach shops the following year, so the show floor runs a year ahead of the living room.
  40. - 1982: The PERILS of COUNTERFEIT Video Tapes | Inside Information | Retro Tech | BBC Archive. A 1982 item on counterfeit video tapes, from the BBC archive. The video shop is the retail successor to the television showroom and it arrived on the back of the same hardware.
  41. - 昭和時代の秋葉原電気街（1980年代）. The Akihabara electric town in Tokyo in the 1980s. Akihabara is the densest concentration of consumer electronics retail anywhere and the Japanese counterpart to the Western high street.
  42. - 1980s Electrical store | 1980s Dixons | British Retail | British Shops | TV Eye | 1986. A 1980s Dixons electrical store filmed by Thames in 1986. The high-street electrical multiple is where most British sets were sold once rental began to decline.
  43. - 1989: Will People BUY Movies on VHS? | Film 89 | Retro Tech | BBC Archive. A 1989 item asking whether people will buy films on video tape, from the BBC archive. The question is about what the set in the corner was going to be used for.
  44. - 1990: Radio Rentals [Shark]. A 1990 Radio Rentals television advertisement. Britain rented because sets were expensive to buy and broke down often enough that an all-in maintenance contract was genuinely valuable; the colour transition from 15 November 1969 pushed rental further because colour carried a large premium.
  45. - Wasungen 1991 Former HO Industriewaren Laden. Already the old state businesses are being replaced by the new private ones despite re-unification only being 9 months behind..This television shop occupied an old state Handelsorganisation hardware store in Thüringen. The owner is still loyal to Wartburg though. Next door, the Gasthof zum Bären whose sign is still hanging but very rusty today.
  46. - Indoor Technology Market Stalls 1990s, Japan, Mobile Phones, TVs, Gadgets. Indoor technology market stalls in Japan in the 1990s, selling televisions, phones and gadgets. The stall is the other end of the retail spectrum from the department store floor.
  47. - Snow television and Furrier's shop. A furrier's shop on Friedrichstraße in Düsseldorf, with a television visible in the window display. Non-electrical shops used a running set to hold attention at the glass, which is the oldest trick in television retail.
  48. - オタクの街に変容した秋葉原 2004年 / 谷脇えみる メイド喫茶. Akihabara in about 2004, filmed as the electronics district was turning into something else. The crowd at the shop window is the founding image of television retail and it predates mass ownership entirely.
  49. - Kwuntong-APM-100 0756. The atrium of the apm mall in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong, looking up from the lower ground floor late at night in May 2005. Large screens fitted into shopping centre voids turn the whole atrium into a viewing space.
  50. - Pyongyang store4. A special store for foreigners in Pyongyang, North Korea, stocking televisions among other goods. Hard currency shops carried imported electronics that were not otherwise available.
  51. - Flat screens for sale. Flat screen sets for sale at an Elkjøp store in Norway in 2006. The wall of identical screens all showing the same picture is how flat panel retail settled, and it is a different selling method from the single set in a cabinet.
  52. - 2007TaipeiAudioVideoFair HistoryPavilion Motorola6InchesTV. An antique Motorola six inch television shown in the history pavilion of the 28th Taipei Audio Video Fair. Trade fairs began exhibiting their own past once the industry was old enough to have one.
  53. - HD Ready. High definition televisions in the January sales at an Argos store in the United Kingdom. The HD Ready label was a transitional marketing term for panels that could accept a high definition signal without necessarily having the resolution to show all of it.
  54. - Wangfujing Dajie McDonald's TV billboard. A giant advertising screen above a McDonald's on Wangfujing Dajie in Beijing. Screens at this scale turn a shopping street into a viewing space, which is the shop window crowd of the 1950s rebuilt at civic size.
  55. - A Television Store at downtown Taichung. A second hand television and electrical goods shop in central Taichung, Taiwan. The second hand trade is where sets went when they were no longer new but not yet waste.
  56. - CES 2009 Energy Efficiency. A Panasonic energy efficiency display at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009. Power consumption became a selling point once plasma panels were criticised for drawing considerably more than liquid crystal.
  57. - Television sets at an electric appliance shop on Jingwu Road, Taichung. Television sets inside a second hand electrical goods shop on Jingwu Road in Taichung, Taiwan. Sets are stacked rather than displayed, which is what distinguishes a used goods dealer from a showroom.
  58. - TV repair shop in Thailand. A television repair shop in Na Khun Yai, Thailand. Repair remained a normal trade in much of the world long after it had largely disappeared in Europe and North America.
  59. - TV-utbud 2009. Television receivers on display in a Swedish electronics chain store. The wall of identical panels showing one synchronised picture is the retail format flat screens produced.
  60. - IFA 2010 Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin 135. A Panasonic 152 inch plasma display at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin in 2010, then the world's largest, running at 4096 by 2160 pixels. Plasma held the size record because the technology scaled up more easily than liquid crystal, and Panasonic stopped making plasma sets from March 2014.
  61. - Interior of a grocery store at downtown Taitung City. A Panasonic colour television displayed above a glass counter in a grocery shop in Taitung City, Taiwan. General stores carried televisions alongside food where no dedicated electronics dealer existed.
  62. - Digital TV shop, Newark Road, North Hykeham, Lincolnshire, England - DSCF1470. A digital television shop on Newark Road at North Hykeham in Lincolnshire, England. Shops like this appeared around the analogue switchover, selling and fitting the equipment that kept existing sets working.
  63. - Fantastic Zenith TV Sign Miami Beach. I decided to break free from South Beach today and take photos in the Northern part of Miami Beach around 71st Street. Olympus IS-1 camera and Kodak 400 Max film.
  64. - Front and rear panel of Yamaha RX-A2020 AV receiver. A Yamaha RX-A2020 AV receiver at the International Consumer Electronics Fair 2012 in Berlin. The device has numerous digital HDMI inputs and outputs (top row), which at that time had already become standard due to their great technical advantages. In the picture File:Rear panel of Yamaha RX-A2020 AV receiver - at IFA fair 2012.jpg, all connectors are described in detail when the mouse is moved over them.
  65. - 가수 김장훈씨, LG전자 CES 전시장 방문. A visitor examining an LG 3D television with a one millimetre bezel at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Shrinking the frame around the panel became a competitive claim once the screens themselves were hard to tell apart.
  66. - Ramen Shop. A television in a ramen shop. The set mounted above the counter is a fixture of small Japanese restaurants, running through service for whoever is eating.
  67. - Rear panel of Yamaha RX-A2020 AV receiver - at IFA fair 2012. A Yamaha RX-A2020 AV receiver at the International Consumer Electronics Fair 2012 in Berlin. The device has numerous digital HDMI inputs and outputs (top row), which at that time had already become standard due to their great technical advantages. In the picture, all connectors are described in detail when the mouse is moved over them.
  68. - HK 北角 North Point 新光戲院 Sunbeam Theatre interior TV set Hung Sin Lui Kuang Jianlian Sin-Neoi Dec-2013. A television set in the interior of the Sunbeam Theatre on King's Road, North Point, Hong Kong. The Sunbeam is a Cantonese opera house, and the monitor carries the stage feed to the foyer.
  69. - HK Tai Po Mega Mall 大埔超級城 shop Fortress LED TV set Jan-2013. An LED backlit television on display at a Fortress electronics shop in the Tai Po Mega Mall, Hong Kong, in January 2013. Fortress is a Hong Kong electronics chain and its wall of sets is the standard flat panel retail format.
  70. - Roscheider Hof BW 2013-09-01 13-55-15. An electrical goods shop reconstructed inside the main building of the Roscheider Hof open air museum in Germany. Open air museums collect shop interiors because the fittings and stock disappear faster than the buildings do.
  71. - What Television Was Like in 1939. 1939 receiver model numbers, prices and unit sales are not established in the sources and are not asserted here; what is established is that the sets were extremely expensive relative to income and sold very poorly.
  72. - 夜の電器店 2016 マツコ. An electronics shop at night with an advertising display. Japanese electrical retailers light their frontage heavily, so the shop window remains a viewing surface after closing.
  73. - Jumbotron Rentals. Big Screens On the Go is a jumbotron rental screen provider for events throughout the United States. Based in Dallas, TX, with sales offices in Chicago.
  74. - Philips and Tandberg cassette decks in a shop window. The radio and television shop Pouls Radio from Holstebro in the museum town Den gamle By in Aarhus in Denmark.Three Philips cassette decks from the 1970s, and a Tandberg 300 deck. While Philips never ventured into high fidelity and produced very low-fi decks, the Tandberg was, for a while, second only to Nakamichi. The very first model 300 shown here was mediocre, but the soon-to-follow 310 and everything after was top notch.
  75. - Some crowd people watching a television at Tuen Mun. A crowd watching a television inside a department store at Tuen Mun in Hong Kong. Public watching in a shop is one of the oldest patterns in television, predating widespread household ownership by decades and still recurring whenever something worth gathering for is broadcast.
  76. - Conforama de Coignières le 18 avril 2017 - 052. The television department of a Conforama furniture shop at Coignières in France. Furniture retailers sold sets at the beginning of television history and, in the flat panel era, they still do.
  77. - 'Anti-museum' displays computer technology from the Soviet era. An anti-museum of Soviet-era computer technology, filmed by Associated Press. Post-Soviet institutions collecting this hardware are now the main way it is displayed.
  78. - 2017-10-18 18 23 02 An old Toshiba CRT television inside a house along Tranquility Court in the Franklin. An old Toshiba tube television still in use inside a house in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 2017. Tube sets stayed in American homes long after they stopped being sold, because a working television is rarely replaced until it fails.
  79. - Panasonic, IFA 2018, Berlin (P1070142). The Panasonic stand at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin in 2018. IFA has been the European launch venue for broadcast receiving equipment since the 1920s, so the same hall has shown mechanical sets and flat panels.
  80. - Samsung SyncMaster 400tft at the Kringloopwinkel Snuffelshop, Heiligerlee. A Samsung flat panel display for sale in a second hand shop in the Groningen village of Heiligerlee, Netherlands. Charity and reuse shops are the last commercial stage before a screen becomes waste.
  81. - Sharp, IFA 2018, Berlin ( ). The Sharp stand at the Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin in 2018. IFA has been the European launch venue for broadcast hardware since the 1920s, and Sharp was the company that shipped the first commercial liquid crystal television.
  82. - Почти ВСЕ телевизоры СССР (1931-2000). A survey of almost every Soviet television made between 1931 and 2000, model by model. Individual Soviet set specifications and dates are not independently established here, but the sequence of objects is the point.
  83. - Fernseh Liebermann Thalkirchen. The Liebermann television shop on Emil-Geiß-Straße in Munich. An independent television dealer trading under the owner's name is what the retail trade looked like before the electronics chains took it over.
  84. - HK CWB 銅鑼灣 Causeway Bay 記利佐治街 Great George Street July 2020 SS2 02. Great George Street in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, with screens facing the pavement. Hong Kong street level advertising screens are the direct descendant of the shop window that drew crowds in the 1950s.
  85. - HK CWB 銅鑼灣 Causeway Bay 記利佐治街 Great George Street TV monitor July 2020 SS2 01. A television monitor mounted at street level on Great George Street in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong. Screens like this are the modern descendant of the shop window crowd.
  86. - HK CWB 銅鑼灣 Causeway Bay Paterson Street near 記利佐治街 Great George Street TV monitor news live Mrs Lam's. A street level monitor showing live news at Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. The screen faces the pavement rather than a room, which makes the street the viewing space.
  87. - Sampo display and TRA Bento lunch box shop in TRA Changhua Station. A Sampo liquid crystal display beside the railway lunch box counter in the concourse of Changhua station, Taiwan. Sampo is a Taiwanese manufacturer and the panel here is doing the work a printed board used to do.
  88. - Yuk Belanja ke Pakuwon Mall Jogja-12. The Pakuwon Mall in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, a shopping destination selling electronics alongside clothing and food. Televisions in Southeast Asia are largely sold through general shopping centres rather than through specialist dealers.
  89. - IKEA Sheffield Russian Stock Clearance 02. Stock intended for Russian IKEA being sold at Sheffield IKEA's Circular Hub, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. This stock was withdrawn from sale and exported to the United Kingdom as a result of IKEA's withdrawal from Russia and Belarus due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  90. - Den Gamle By - Pouls Radio 01. The interior of a radio and television shop from Holstebro, reconstructed in the museum town of Den Gamle By in Aarhus, Denmark. The shop has been moved and rebuilt as a museum exhibit, preserving a trade interior that would otherwise have been demolished.
  91. - 【オタクの聖地】世界最大級の電気街「秋葉原」の住みやすさ【千代田区】. A study of Akihabara as a district, covering how the electronics quarter changed. The wall of identical sets showing the same demo loop is the single most reproducible retail image across the whole century.
  92. - Lysekils Radio och TV at Kungsgatan 30, Lysekil. Lysekils Radio och TV on Kungsgatan in Lysekil, Sweden, a shop that both sells and repairs televisions, sound systems and disc players. Combining sales with repair in one small premises is the older model of the trade, and it has largely disappeared from larger towns.
  93. - Movie-camera-package tobias-deml Camera-Rentals-NYC small. A movie camera package with all needed accessories customary for modern high end motion picture production. This is a high-end camera rental package built around an Alexa 35, inclusive of wireless video systems, monitoring systems, lenses and camera support, each labeled in an English language schematic.
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