Television I.Q. Quiz
October 1948 Radio & Television News Article

October 1948 Radio & TV News

[Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio & Television News, published 1919-1959. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

Technology advancement has always been about research and development in all fields related to the concept, be it any combination of mechanical, electrical, programming, implementation, usage, or training. Television went fundamentally unchanged from the time of its commercial implementation in the early part of the last century until the advent of plasma screens (i.e., no more raster-scanned CRTs) in the latter part of the last century. Color tubes added complexity to the signal, but it was still an analog signal. Then came digital broadcasting in the early part of this century. The same sort of evolution occurred with telephones and to some extent with radio. This Television I.Q. Quiz from a 1948 edition of Radio & Television News magazine will give you some insight into how TVs (and your computer monitor) used to work.

Television I.Q. Quiz

By Ed. Bukstein

Northwestern Vocational Institute

1. The frequency of horizontal scanning in the standard 525 line television picture is (a) 60 (b) 525 (c) 15,750 (d) 31,500 c.p.s.

2. The control which varies the bias on the cathode-ray tube is (a) contrast (b) brightness (c) focus (d) vertical hold.

3. The purpose of interlacing is to (a) reduce flicker (b) reduce ghost images (c) make blanking unnecessary (d) make scanning unnecessary.

4; The linearity control is located in the (a) deflection circuit (b) sound i.f. amplifier (c) sync clipper stage (d) picture i.f. amplifier.

5. Under present-day standards, the bandwidth occupied by a television signal is (a) 75 kc. (b) 10 mc. (c) 525 mc. (d) 6 mc.

6. The width control varies the amplitude of the (a) sync pulses (b) horizontal saw-tooth (c) vertical saw-tooth (d) blanking pulses.

7. Ghost images are caused by (a) power supply ripple (b) audio signals reaching the grid of the picture tube (c) reflected signals (d) line voltage variations.

8. The purpose of the blanking pulses is to (a) synchronize the vertical oscillator (b) eliminate retrace on picture tube (c) reduce ghost images (d) prevent arcing in high voltage power supply.

9. The picture carrier is separated from the sound carrier by (a) 72 mc. (b) 21.5 mc. (c) 75 kc. (d) 4.5 mc.

10. The vertical oscillator frequency is (a) 60 (b)30 (c) 525 (d) 15,750 c.p.s.

11. The circuit shown in Fig. 1 is a (a) sync separator (b) ratio discriminator (c) blocking oscillator (d) FM limiter.

12. The field frequency of standard television broadcasts is (a) 110 (b) 60 (c) 21.5 (d) 30.

13. The frequency of the horizontal oscillator is (a) 30 (b) 60 (c) 525 (d) 15,750 c.p.s.

14. Which of the voltage waveforms shown in Fig. 2 is required to pass a saw-tooth current through a deflection coil?

15. The circuit shown in Fig. 3 is an (a) integration circuit (b) differentiation circuit.

16. The frame frequency used in standard television broadcasts is (a) 30 (b) 60 (c) 525 (d) 31,500 c.p.s.

17. Aspect ratio is a measure of (a) image width to image height (b) transmitting antenna height to receiving antenna height (c) deviation of an FM signal (d) skip distance.

18. The mosaic is part of the (a) iconoscope (b) kinescope (c) damping tube (d) sync clipper.

19. The hold control is located in the (a) r.f. amplifier (b) sound i.f. amplifier (c) deflection circuit (d) PM detector.

20. The diode connected to the horizontal deflection coils is known as the (a) sync clipper (b) damping tube (c) video amplifier (d) video detector.

Quizzes from vintage electronics magazines such as Popular Electronics, Electronics-World, QST, and Radio News were published over the years - some really simple and others not so simple. Robert P. Balin created most of the quizzes for Popular Electronics. This is a listing of all I have posted thus far.

Answers to "TV Quiz"

Scoring Table

19-20 correct ..... excellent

16-18 correct ..... very good

13-15 correct ..... good

10-12 correct ..... fair

9 or less ..... poor

Posted October 3, 2016