This #TechTuesday, we're tuning into the Admiral Corporation's model 29X16 television console. This model, featuring Admiral's largest screen, offered consumers a "Magic Mirror" picture tube, a built-in directional Roto-Scope antenna, Vibra-Seal rubber cushioning, a UHF-ready "built for the future" turret tuner, and "brilliantly styled" full-length double doors "hand-rubbed to gleaming perfection".
The Admiral Corporation was founded in 1934 in Chicago, Illinois by Ross Siragusa (1906 -1996) as the Continental Radio and Television Corporation. It was the second of Siragusa's attempts at founding an electronics corporation. His first, the Transformer Corporation of America, was founded in 1924, right after Siragusa's graduation from high school. The Transformer Corporation became the largest seller of radio transformers in the country before going out of business in 1929, along with the many other businesses that shuttered during the Great Depression.
Siragusa's second business began its life as a small radio manufacturer. However, once fed by government contracts for military electronics during the war, as well as the return of consumer spending, it soon became one of the country's leading makers of televisions, radios, refrigerators and other home appliances. The set seen here would have been one of more than one million television sets the company manufactured in 1950, and one of five million manufactured in the following year.
The company was acquired by Rockwell International Corporation for for $78 million in 1973 and, over the course of the ensuing decades, its various operations were scattered to a host of new corporate owners. In its current iteration, the brand's appliance operations are owned by Whirlpool, who sells Admiral products through an exclusive partnership with the Home Depot, while its television business is the property of AOC International, which manufactures f LCD and HDTV display devices
This ca. 1950 advertisement comes from a catalog of similar advertisements for radios, record players, and televisions, each with full color illustration on one side and textual description on the other, promoting various models of television sets from the Admiral Corporation. They can be found at Hagley Library under the call number f Trade Cat .A238 1950a in our collection of trade catalogs and pamphlets.