Turret Booster Plug-In Amplifier
July 1951 Radio & Television News

July 1951 Radio & Television News
July 1951 Radio & Television News Cover - RF Cafe[Table of Contents]

Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio & Television News, published 1919-1959. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Here is a bit of "outside-the-box" thinking from the vacuum tube era that is essentially a form of integrated circuit, where the active and passive components are discrete rather than semiconductor. The concept was to provide an assembly that could be plugged directly into a signal gain path tube socket and provide an additional amount of amplification without needing to do any special wiring or mounting of components to the chassis. The cost of $9.95 in 1951 is the equivalent of $99.99 in 2020 money, so it wasn't a cheap upgrade - and that did not include the cost of an additional tube (about another $10 in today's money). Given typical electronics service shop rates of just a couple bucks per hour in the early 1950s, it might have been cheaper to pay the local guy to do a customization of the circuit, and then tweak the operation of the entire television or radio set. Having high voltage connections exposed outside the metal chassis posed a serious electrocution potential (pun intended), and might have even made the set more susceptible to interference. These "Turret Booster" type gizmos were not found all throughout the electronics magazines, so my guess is they were not all they were cracked up to be.

Turret Booster Plug-In Amplifier

Turret Booster, July 1951 Radio & Television News - RF CafeThe Hottest item since the picture tube!

Only $9.95 List *

The Turret Booster

Patent Applied For

• Operates on Intermediate Frequency-one setting for all channels.

• Removed or installed, without disrupting wiring of set.

• Fully concealed within set - no exterior units.

• Improves reception - increases video output 15% upwards.

• Improves receivers having poor sound (Emphasis placed on sound by IF coil adjustment.)

• Comes on when receiver is on - no extra switches to complicate the tuning of the receivers.

* Less additional tube.

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Posted November 5, 2020