Why is this guy smiling? Wouldn’t you smile if you’d just found your first CT-100? But what if you learned that the CT-100 you squirreled away in 1978 is actually a super rare and historically significant RCA Model 5 developmental color receiver? That’s what’s behind the super wide grin John Garrison’s been sporting recently. His “CT-100” is actually Model 5 serial number B570. And it’s been in his possession for the last 25 years. The most obvious characteristic of a Model 5 cabinet is a diamond-shaped wood design in front of the speaker grill cloth; on a CT-100, that wood filigree is vertical and horizontal.

April 2004 update: Four Model 5 sets survive. The first is in the care of Ed Reitan and may be an engineering unit that predates the Model 5’s modest run of a couple hundred. The second Model 5 (B583) was acquired in late 2003 by the Early Television Foundation near Columbus, Ohio and is restored to full operation. The Third Model 5, serial number B668 and discovered in New Jersey in 2000, is now in Connecticut. At the Early Television Convention in April 2004, John sold B570 to Florida collector, Wayne Abare.

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November 30, 2004 update: Wayne writes, "I have just finished making cabinet repairs. John Folsom helped me put the CRT back into the set yesterday. John noticed the number 14 stamped into the upper right back side of the cabinet frame. Here is more information on this set.

The label on the Prototype 15GP22:
"FORM F16B7A
DEVELOPMENTAL TYPE C-73599
SERIAL NO. 5390
This tube is supplied for laboratory and experimental purposes only, with no obligations as to its future manufacture, unless otherwise arranged.
RADIO CORPORATION of AMERICA
RCA VICTOR DIVISION
LANCASTER, PA"

Four of the 6AN8 tubes had a label stating:
"This tube is for experimental purposes only, without obligations as to its future manufacture, unless prearranged. 9438
RADIO CORPORATION of AMERICA
Tube Department Harrison, NJ"

According to a vintage ad by the Harrison tube department, the 6AN8 was developed specifically for color television. When the CT-100 run was started a few months later, production 6AN8s were used. --Pete

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These four represent two-percent of all the Model 5's believed built for the January 1, 1954 coast-to-coast color network broadcast of the Rose Bowl Parade. Curiously, it is about the same percentage as the number of surviving CT-100’s now documented.

Of course, there may be others under wraps somewhere, waiting to be discovered just as this one was in the summer of 2003, but it is one of only four KNOWN surviving sets. The Model 5 contains a slightly different tube complement: the I and Q demodulators are different (5915), for example. And the first three video IF stages are 6CB6 rather than the 6DC6 used by the production CT-100. In John's set, the 5915's were long ago replaced with the same demodulators used in a CT-100, the pin-for-pin replacement 6BY6.

Model fives were never sold to the public.