UK's oldest working TV is found in London

200x190.jpgA 73-year-old television has been found in a London home, and it is still in full working order.

The Marconiphone 702 set was made in 1936 - the same time as the BBC started broadcasting from Alexandra Palace - and is one of only a small number of pre-war tellies to still exist.

It has a huge vertically mounted cathode ray tube with a 12in screen and would have cost its first owners around 60 Guineas, the equivalent of about £11,000 today.

But this is not a relic of history, owner Jeffrey Borinsky still uses it and even has it plugged into a set top box to receive new digital TV channels.

I'm sure the engineers who put so much effort into creating these early TV would be proud to know that 73 years later they were still being used to watch Cash in the Attic, well maybe not.
200x190.jpgOwner Jeffrey Borinsky, from North London, who has owned the set for ten years said: "I still enjoy watching my Marconiphone occasionally, especially cartoons from the 1930s, which the original owner might also have seen on the set.

"Converting the set to digital means I can continue to watch it for many years to come."

The set was located as part of a competition to find the country's oldest working TV launched by Digital UK in conjunction with Iain Logie Baird, Curator of Television at the National Media Museum in Bradford and grandson of TV inventor, John Logie Baird.

Jon Steel, of Digital UK, said: "This unique example from the very earliest days of television is proof that even the oldest sets can continue to work long after analogue signals have been switched off."

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