This thread is occasioned by a saturday yard sale, where i saw an old “MUNTZ” brand TV for sale. I know this guy (earl Muntz) was an entrepreneur, who started several businesses (used cars, 8-Track stereo, widescreen TVs). did he ever make any money? or was he a complete failure?
Anybody know?
He made a crap load of money according to the Wikipedia article I just read. What an interesting and innovative guy.
Considering his pioneering in early television, between the television sets and the early commercials, it’s probably safe to say there would be no Billy Mays without him.
And to think, if Mr. Muntz hadn’t left his first wife and son Nelson to get some cigarettes and bread none of this would have happened.
Madman sought to compete on price in the expanding TV market. He had his sets carefully engineered to be just good enough to pull in a decent picture in areas closest to the transmitter. Additional tubes in the chassis or other non-essential parts were left out.
Part of his initial research happened in about 1947, the year before TV broke as a national phenomenon. Muntz took a suite in a hotel in midtown Manhattan and ordered one of each available make of TV set (very few then). He then tuned in each of the 3 New York stations then on the air and began to unscrew vacuum tubes one at a time, noting reception quality in between. Legend has it he left all the sets and a mess of discarded parts behind after checking out.
Earl madman muntz built 3 concept pickup trucks from 3 1947 Kaiser Frazer sedans by a company in long beach California called Betts Curtis Motors. They were way ahead of their time but they didn’t take off and the idea didn’t get off the ground. Two of the three trucks are thought to be still around.
That seems odd.
He had more success with convertibles.
And fairly unlikely to produce useful results. It’s not like the tubes work in some sort of series-battery manner and just reducing their number will reduce signal sensitivity.
There are and were certainly ways to cheap-out the circuitry, mostly by making all settings manual - no AGC, AFC, vertical/horizontal stabilization, etc. They’d work, but you’d have to twiddle all the dials like an old-time ham or radar operator.
We did quite a bit of that in the 1960s. 
Here’s an articleabout how Muntz figured out how to cheap out his TV sets. Essentially, he really *did *cut things out until the set stopped working, then tell his engineer to put that last thingy back in.
That is third hand. :dubious: It does seem to mention that he was removing stages to make the receiver less sensitive and save money, though. He knew what he was doing, which circuit was effected, not just yanking tubes out at random.
That is still done. Biasing a transistor with four resistors is beta independent, it has a fixed gain as long as it has the minimum designed for gain. Using two resistors makes it’s gain dependent on qualities of the transistor that vary from device to device.
Right purty car, but no match for Wacky Arnolt’s Arnolt Bristol. What is it about the US and insane car builders?
Well, here’s another article that says the same thing.
And here’s a look at theinside of one of his sets.
Speaking of Muntz Jets, here’s a picture of one I saw in Three Rivers, California: Muntz Jet in O’Connell’s Garage The guy showing it off is Pat O’Connell, owner of the local garage. He bought it when he lived in LA but then he moved to the mountains to be the town’s tow truck driver. He told me he wanted to restore it, but I doubt he ever got around to it.