I had an interesting TV experience when I was 4. We had this ancient Admiral B&W console TV (this was 1970, the TV was old when we got it). We had a problem where it kept losing vertical hold and focus (beyond what the front dials would correct) and after months of begging, my parents had a repair guy come in and fix it. I stood over the repair guy's shoulder and held a light for him and watched everything he did, and he happily gave me a running commentary of what he was doing...
A few weeks later the problems showed up again, and I asked if I could fix the TV. My mom thought I meant adjust the knobs on the front...
When my mom came into the room she found that I had most of the tubes and other removable parts carefully laid out on the floor. She heard me muttering, "almost done, gotta hurry." For some reason she didn't freak out at me, but instead just told me to put it back together -- which I did!!! My father arrived just as I was finishing and my mom told him what happened. He came in to see how bad it was and IMMEDIATELY turned off the power and unplugged it!!! Obviously I didn't pull any of the high voltage tubes and components. I proudly showed my father my handiwork (picture the best part of a roll of electrical tape applied to a tube era TV and you'll get the idea). My father considered the worse case had already been met (the TV was powered on while I applied my tape and re-installed the parts), so he let me turn it back on when I finished. My "fix" worked for another 4 years. We don't know exactly what I fixed, just that one of my many pieces of electrical tape (or just reseating the components) worked:-)
BTW, when asked why I was muttering that I had to hurry, I felt that the answer was obvious: Star Trek (TOS) was coming on soon and my 2nd oldest sister and I couldn't miss it!
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I had an interesting TV experience when I was 4. We had this ancient Admiral B&W console TV (this was 1970, the TV was old when we got it). We had a problem where it kept losing vertical hold and focus (beyond what the front dials would correct) and after months of begging, my parents had a repair guy come in and fix it. I stood over the repair guy's shoulder and held a light for him and watched everything he did, and he happily gave me a running commentary of what he was doing ...
...
:-)
A few weeks later the problems showed up again, and I asked if I could fix the TV. My mom thought I meant adjust the knobs on the front
When my mom came into the room she found that I had most of the tubes and other removable parts carefully laid out on the floor. She heard me muttering, "almost done, gotta hurry." For some reason she didn't freak out at me, but instead just told me to put it back together -- which I did!!! My father arrived just as I was finishing and my mom told him what happened. He came in to see how bad it was and IMMEDIATELY turned off the power and unplugged it!!! Obviously I didn't pull any of the high voltage tubes and components. I proudly showed my father my handiwork (picture the best part of a roll of electrical tape applied to a tube era TV and you'll get the idea). My father considered the worse case had already been met (the TV was powered on while I applied my tape and re-installed the parts), so he let me turn it back on when I finished. My "fix" worked for another 4 years. We don't know exactly what I fixed, just that one of my many pieces of electrical tape (or just reseating the components) worked
BTW, when asked why I was muttering that I had to hurry, I felt that the answer was obvious: Star Trek (TOS) was coming on soon and my 2nd oldest sister and I couldn't miss it!