Not long ago I have seen something very unusual in Berlin's museum, there was a quite large box exhibited - something I have never seen before - which turned out to be one of the very first TV sets from 1930s, it was huge box that opened on the top and it looked very much like some massive ancient gramophone player but instead of music playing it was actually TV screen lying flat and electronic picture reflected in a mirror above. I don't understand mechanics exactly, why real picture was flat (maybe because the whole machinery was massive and hidden in a box bellow?) and why people needed to watch it as reflection in a mirror above, in any case it was very very strange machine and I was absolutely fascinated.
So I had mentioned it to my friends and nobody has ever heard of such ancient TV set - we all remember our old TV sets from 1960s on four legs - and searched on Internet to check the pictures, was it just my imagination or have I really seen something like this. Sure enough, I found several photos of these ancient TV sets where pictures were viewed in a mirror above, I am still not sure how popular these machines were because they must have been very expensive and not available for mass audience, from what I know the main mass entertainment during first half of 20th century was radio and only after WW2 it was very slowly replaced by TV. However, apparently TV sets were already made during 1930s and here are some of them.
