The Coronation Television
The set the whole street crowded into one front room to watch.
More than two million television sets were bought or rented for the 1953 Coronation, and most of them had twenty people sitting in front of them.
If your family had a television in 1953 you were, for one afternoon, the most popular house on the road. Neighbours arrived with folding chairs and sandwiches, the curtains were drawn against the glare, and everybody squinted at a nine-inch screen in a cabinet the size of a sideboard.
The sets were rented more often than bought: a weekly payment to Radio Rentals or DER, with an engineer who came out when the picture rolled. The valve smell when it warmed up is the bit people remember most.
Cost back then
£80 to buy, or 10 shillings a week to rent
Goes for now
£150–£400 for a working period set
