Ruth and Maurie Amon were the owners, and as they explained in a 1955 ad, “Five years ago, we decided that we wanted to become a part of this community. Neither one of us are natives of this area, yet we, by chance, lived here and came to know some wonderful people. We felt it was a good place to call “home.”
“It seemed our abilities and interests would lend themselves to the appliance business and on June 16, 1950, “Acco Appliance” came into being."
While you might think that the Acco ad has a Christmas theme (since it shows a woman dressed in a Santa suit and holding a fishing rod), it ran in the Lorain Journal on March 20, 1952 – 64 years ago this month.
The ad promotes Crosley televisions, which promised “full room vision” via the wide-angle theater screen. You can see the two models shown in the Acco ad in this full-page ad from the December 4, 1959 issue of Life magazine.
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| Courtesy Google Play |
Acco moved to 521 Broadway in the late 1950s. The company continued to appear in the city directories until the 1968 edition, when the 521 Broadway address was listed as vacant.
I’m going to have to scrounge up a photo of that thing that had such a big influence on my life.
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Like many other families in the late 1950s and early 60s, we had one of these types of televisions (although I don’t know what brand it was) – a huge wooden box that took a while to warm up. Plus, when you turned it off, you saw a little white light for a while.I’m going to have to scrounge up a photo of that thing that had such a big influence on my life.
You have a great blog. Thank you so much for sharing all these memories.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Linda! I see your blog (its address is below) is very popular! Hope things are fine in Montreal, Canada!
ReplyDeletehttp://wrensden.blogspot.com
I also remember when you had to wait for the TV to warm up after you turned it on. That was before transistors, when TVs had electron tubes, and as a consequence were far less reliable. Whenever there was a problem with our set my dad would take the back off, pull the electron tubes, and head down to the drugstore to test the tubes on their tube tester. Many stores had these large stand alone testers. You would select the proper socket for the tube from the approximately 40 to 50 on the tester, plug the tube in and press a button. The tester had a pass/fail meter which would tell you if the tube was working. If that failed to identify the problem, the TV was down for a day or two until a repairman could come out to the house. Years ago the TV was a piece of furniture and not very easy to move around. Now we have been through electron tubes and transistors to integrated circuits. they are hugely more reliable, and if something goes wrong you just buy a new one!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting that, Rick! That’s a nice explanation of how they worked.
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