I personally have a 5-set "working museum" of 30-year old sets "billeted" at various relatives’ houses, still in everyday use. And I’d have more if I had the room...

In the early 70s, we were piously informed that the maximum working life of a colour picture tube was "about seven years"!

My late father's pride and joy: his 34cm AWA colour portable - probably the reason I started writing this history in the first place! When I bought it for him in 1975 he didn't expect to be with us much longer and so he kept remarking that the little set would "see him out!" However he got over that illness but true to his word, when he finally passed on 28 years later in September 2003, aged 98, the set was still going, with the picture tube as good as the day we bought it!

In many ways the advent of Colour TV in Australia is a bit like the Second World War: for people like myself, born after 1945, WWII is an event that has always "been there" – but mainly in the sense of the lingering effect it has had on people who lived through that time.

Just as there are still plenty of people alive who can remember a dramatically different time before there had ever been a Second World War, there are plenty of older electronics technicians who remember what it was like when there were no colour TV sets!

As with WWII, a staggering number of things changed beyond recognition in just a few short years and there were many casualties left by the wayside.

I’ve watched the average 67cm colour TV that needed two people to lift it, had just a mechanical channel selector (usually VHF-only) and no remote controls, evolve into today’s comparatively feather-light equivalent with a window-flat, absolutely rectangular screen, full remote control and multiple video inputs.

The average 1974 product cost around ten weeks of the average worker’s net wages; you can typically pick up today’s version for 3 days net wages . . . or even less if you opt for an old-fashioned curved screen!

And people may baulk at the price of today’s Plasma sets but in real terms they work out considerably cheaper than the first colour sets.