Mike, I wasn't suggesting that it was intended for sale in the UK - I was just interested in the mish-mash of English and German screen printing on the front panel. However, I find this set an intriguing puzzle!
The MW dial shows all West German stations plus the usual Brussels, Hilversum and, of course, Luxembourg. Falun was a new one on me but is in Sweden, it seems.
But the mains lead screams out that it was not sold or intended for sale in West Germany, given your estimated year of manufacture.
It became illegal to sell appliances in the UK which did not have a mains lead complying with the new European standard in 1969, IIRC - but no later than 1970. Note that this was not an EU ruling - the EU didn't even exist then and the 6 nation EEC had no such powers plus, of course, we had yet to join the EEC at that point!
IEC - the International Electrotechnical Commission - was responsible and its recommendations were published as IEC 60173: 1964.
You have to pay to read these IEC documents but I was fascinated by the footnote to this extract from the sample available on line:
"At its meeting in Bucharest, Technical Committee No. 20 accepted the draft Recommendation, which was submitted to the National Committees for approval under the Six Month's Rule in August 1962.
The following countries voted explicitly in favour of publication:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.
The French National Committee voted against the draft Recommendation, but only because this Committee does not agree with the word "exclusively" in Sub-clause 3.1, i.e. the French Committee does not agree that in France use of the green/yellow core as a phase conductor should be prohibited where there is no protective conductor in a flexible cable or cord."
Ah, well, trust the French to be awkward!
I assume that laws similar to those in the UK were passed in those other countries?
Germany in that list would, of course, have referred to West Germany, the countries of the Eastern bloc being notably missing from the list which begs the question: was that set sold in East Germany? I would have thought that such imports would have been banned during the cold war but I've come across a reference to those colours being used on a Polish product, so did the Eastern bloc have its own 'international' standards?
Another curiosity is the dial in that UK leaflet which is in Metres! Traditionally, all UK radio dials had been in metres until the first far eastern imports arrived in 1962. As they'd originally been designed for sale in the US, their dials were in hundreds of kilohertz which, no doubt, confused a lot of early buyers! One saving grace, though, was that one of the CONELRAD frequency markers was very close to the Light Programme so, at least, gave them a start in finding their way!
I'm sure that most, if not all, German sets I saw in the 60s and later were dual marked and there was certainly sufficient incentive to metricate the Yanks:
'AFN Frankfurt broadcasts on an assigned frequency of eight hundred, seventy-two kilocycles per second, three hundred, forty-four meters in the Medium waveband with a power of one hundred, fifty thousand watts!'
However, as the mass influx of far eastern sets grew and grew throughout the 60s, virtually all with dials marked in frequency, dials marked in meters became the minority so what proportion of receivers sold in the late 70s would still be marked in metres?
The MW dial shows all West German stations plus the usual Brussels, Hilversum and, of course, Luxembourg. Falun was a new one on me but is in Sweden, it seems.
But the mains lead screams out that it was not sold or intended for sale in West Germany, given your estimated year of manufacture.
It became illegal to sell appliances in the UK which did not have a mains lead complying with the new European standard in 1969, IIRC - but no later than 1970. Note that this was not an EU ruling - the EU didn't even exist then and the 6 nation EEC had no such powers plus, of course, we had yet to join the EEC at that point!
IEC - the International Electrotechnical Commission - was responsible and its recommendations were published as IEC 60173: 1964.
You have to pay to read these IEC documents but I was fascinated by the footnote to this extract from the sample available on line:
"At its meeting in Bucharest, Technical Committee No. 20 accepted the draft Recommendation, which was submitted to the National Committees for approval under the Six Month's Rule in August 1962.
The following countries voted explicitly in favour of publication:
Australia, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom.
The French National Committee voted against the draft Recommendation, but only because this Committee does not agree with the word "exclusively" in Sub-clause 3.1, i.e. the French Committee does not agree that in France use of the green/yellow core as a phase conductor should be prohibited where there is no protective conductor in a flexible cable or cord."
Ah, well, trust the French to be awkward!
I assume that laws similar to those in the UK were passed in those other countries?
Germany in that list would, of course, have referred to West Germany, the countries of the Eastern bloc being notably missing from the list which begs the question: was that set sold in East Germany? I would have thought that such imports would have been banned during the cold war but I've come across a reference to those colours being used on a Polish product, so did the Eastern bloc have its own 'international' standards?
Another curiosity is the dial in that UK leaflet which is in Metres! Traditionally, all UK radio dials had been in metres until the first far eastern imports arrived in 1962. As they'd originally been designed for sale in the US, their dials were in hundreds of kilohertz which, no doubt, confused a lot of early buyers! One saving grace, though, was that one of the CONELRAD frequency markers was very close to the Light Programme so, at least, gave them a start in finding their way!
I'm sure that most, if not all, German sets I saw in the 60s and later were dual marked and there was certainly sufficient incentive to metricate the Yanks:
'AFN Frankfurt broadcasts on an assigned frequency of eight hundred, seventy-two kilocycles per second, three hundred, forty-four meters in the Medium waveband with a power of one hundred, fifty thousand watts!'
However, as the mass influx of far eastern sets grew and grew throughout the 60s, virtually all with dials marked in frequency, dials marked in meters became the minority so what proportion of receivers sold in the late 70s would still be marked in metres?
