Göran's radio & TV workshop

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Ever since radio's early days in the 1920s there has been a need to fix faulty appliances. In the beginning it was often the village bicycle shop that provided service and sale of new appliances. When TV came in the 1950s, the technicians were given further training to cope with them.

Technicians often went home to customers since TVs were often large and people did not want to miss tonight's TV program. The firm Forman Landerö had an aeroplane with a spinning propeller on the roof of the service cars, and from this we have the nickname "flying service". The TV technician in those days had a bag with a universal meter, tubes, capacitors, resistors and other components, together with tools and a soldering iron.

They managed to repair 95% of the appliances in the home, and if they could not fix it the TV was brought into the workshop. The customer could often borrow a 17" TV, so he did not have to miss that night's program. It could often be a housewife in a dressing gown who opened the door and offered a cup of coffee. There could be a lot of coffee during the day, but you could always say "no, thank you".

The worst problem was interested dogs that took the technician's tools and chewed them up! A TV technician was used to seeing a cross-section of Swedish homes. Sometimes it would be a stylish villa with indoor swimming pool, but it could also be a drug addict's room whose only furniture was a sofa and a TV.

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