The Sony TV-311R: three televisions, one walnut-grain cabinet, 1972.
Now showing on all three
The curator’s own set, in the Manor’s TV Room. It matches Sony’s TV-311R. The screens in the photo were darkened; the snow, the test card and the rolling picture are ours. Each dial changes one screen, the way each set on the real console tunes on its own.
For the man who watches everything
Sony’s advertising line for the TV-311R, as recorded by Radiomuseum.org from an original brochure or advert.[1]
In 1960 Sony brought out the TV8-301, which the V&A calls the first non-projection transistor television and the first Japanese TV sold in the United States.[3] Twelve years later the TV-311R put three of Sony’s small solid-state sets into one long wooden cabinet, each with its own tuner, under a single speaker grille.[1]
Watching three channels at once was already famous. President Johnson kept a triple television monitor system in the White House. His successor did not want it: H. R. Haldeman wrote that when Nixon moved in in 1969 he had the three-screen setup taken out, along with Johnson’s ticker-tape machine.[4]
Elvis Presley liked the idea. Graceland says he bought three TVs as soon as he learned that Johnson had them.[6] The TV Room he remodeled in 1974 has three television sets built into one wall.[5] A Sony triple-screen set from Graceland, advertised as “For the man who watches everything,” was offered at Graceland Auctions in January 2020. It was described as having been used in Elvis’s bedroom or his basement den.[7]
The repair manual’s cover shows the same console, with a pair of rabbit-ear antennas standing up from the cabinet’s top. Someone has written Service Dept Files across the top in red pen.
Unverified · Read with the lights off