And also a tax reduction strategy!
At a friends outdoor party we marveled at the concept that he had to use duct tape to hold down a modern flat panel TV so the wind wouldn’t blow it over. We all remember the days when a portable TV could weigh 50 lbs. and had no chance of getting knocked over by the wind.
That’s what was suggested to me. I don’t know if there was another reason. Fortran certainly accepted numbers not divisible by 10. In fact I’m sure the program ignored those columns completely.
I’m too young to have learned Fortran and don’t know the syntax and if program line numbers work the same, but in Basic you used line numbers in increments of ten to leave space for potential later additions.
Yeah, I was about to say exactly this.
Or safeing CRTs before disposing them. I, too, worked in a TV shop and we would use a pair of pliers to twist off the plastic connector which would expose the glass tit that was melted shut when vacuum was achieved then crush that. The 1/4 inch tube would then let the air back in but slow enough the tube didn’t explode.
Like BASIC and other languages the number were labels for IF and GO TO commands. There was usually code available to renumber programs as code changes filled up the unused line numbers and the line numbers which were target labels used in code were adjusted to match.
I’ll repost here what I post a few hundred posts above:
They were durable too. I once dropped a 20 inch CRT TV down a flight of stairs and it worked fine after I plugged it in.
My brother in law had a 32 inch console TV fall out of the back of his pickup when moving and it worked fine too. (A piece of the wood frame broke off but the screen and electronics still worked fine.)
In contrast I once dropped a 32 inch LCD tv 3 feet to the floor and it was damaged beyond repair. (Well at least it would have been cheaper to replace it than repair it.)
That’s a good point about the old TVs being sturdy, but you could also just avoid dropping TVs so often 
I remember the guy coming to the house and repairing the TV on site (this was a 1960s style piece of furniture TV).
How about going to the record store and being able to play the records, in order to decide what you wanted to buy?
I just remembered that one.
Yup, they had portable mirrors to set up so they could see the screen while fiddling around in the guts of it.
This was SOP in the '50s.
A home phone with a crank handle rather than a rotary dial. Pick up the black Bakelite hand piece, crank the handle, the operator would answer and ask what number you wanted. For a local number, if you didn’t know the number, you’d just say “Kelly’s Pub please”
3 channels on the TV, 2 different antennas on the arial pole and a switch on the back of the TV to flick between them. To change channels, you got up, walked over to the TV, turned the dial on the front to the desired channel and flicked the switch on the back if required to engage appropriate antenna.
There were a few sitcom scenes over here of someone (usually the tallest family member) having to perform various contortions with an indoor aerial to get acceptable reception.
My Dad installed a TV antenna in the attic. Worked great and we got all 3 channels. Plus, we didn’t have to worry about high winds or lightning damaging the antenna.
“All 3 channels” is a phrase from my childhood (and yours) that a younger person would not understand.
Following along this path, 10 pm:
- National anthem, accompanied by pictures or videos of military hardware;
- Test pattern;
- Snow.
Seeing static instead of a blue screen on any TV.
Or when the set goes off a shrinking white dot.
Not from childhood but not long after: “Instant on” TVs. Now I have to wait for the &#^@!* TV to boot up.