I am writing some stories about my youth. I came upon Chuck Azzalina and the video clip about the color projector by accident. I had just been fired, get this, from a summer job at a post card rack factory because I did not play handball with the other workers. I went home and looked in the classified and saw an advertisement seeking an electronic tech (I was in college). I applied and was accepted. The company had a severe back log, which I reduced in short order. Some of the other techs told me, "Slow down."

I worked with the B&W chassis originally and helped stabilize some of the circuits. In any event at the time (1964), the only person who could fix the big machine was the chief engineer. I was being trained to service the machine and started by winding custom modified transformers for correction of distortions. I spent time learning to align the optics and the electronic circuits. It was an interesting experience but I left to return to college that fall.

In regard to the CRTs ... always wore the lead shield apron when working on the sets, even the B&W sets. I have to wonder whether my bout with cancer could be related. Tell Chuck that the first page of the manual must tell about shocks; one is supposed to discharge the tubes before handling using a resistor and wire probe.

I can tell you from my experience, that while the convergence operations were involved, everything worked to make a decent picture. The difficulty was that several controls interacted and required several passed to get right.

The set was reliable in operation as far as I know. It did not break down every few minutes as they joked about in the video. It might be that with age the set became unreliable, especially if parts such as carbon composition resistors were stored in an area of high humidity. Most of the projectors were used in casinos and other location where there was ample air conditioning.