RCA TRK-12

RCA's flagship set at the 1939 New York World's Fair The TRK-12 is what electronic television looked like when Americans could first buy it: a handsome radio cabinet with a 12-inch tube standing on end, its picture watched in a mirror under the lid because a horizontal tube would have made the cabinet almost three feet deep. It cost $600, more than a modest car, and sold alongside three cheaper sets. RCA made only 1,779 before the war halted progress, but the mirror-lid design shows how much engineering had to bend around the cathode-ray tube, and why shorter, wider tubes became the industry's next long fight.