Tech-Themed Comics
June 1957 Radio-Electronics

June 1957 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

You can tell by the fact that four out of five of these tech-themed comics from Radio-Electronics magazine concerned the repair of televisions that TVs were a big thing in 1957. The relatively recent end of World War II and more recently the Korean War, left a lot of highly trained and skilled troubleshooters and operators, so the field was fairly flooded with qualified people. Men's magazines (Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, Popular Science, Popular Electronics, etc.) were always chock full of full-page advertisements for learn-at-home television repair courses for becoming a serviceman. A successful electronics repairman could earn as much as $40 per week or more! As the comics imply, there was a fairly significant love-hate relationship between TV owners and TV repairmen - often justified on both sides. I took the liberty of colorizing them for you.

Tech-Themed Comics

"You've got a partial failure of the cathode-ray tube,
a fused activated coil and a bad correction central mechanism."
"What does that mean?" "Oh, about $50." , page 59

"The symptoms are familiar. Loss of vertical sync, followed by
the back accidentally falling off and three tubes changing sockets." , page 102

"Reception is so bad here that we have to have this control
to keep the snow from drifting.", page 104

"No, Mrs. Olsen, I still haven't found out
why your set overheats.", page 119

"Well, you need to get your work for one thing.", page 132