The story I heard (from a Bob Pease article) was that this was done by
"Madman Muntz" who had a small television manufacturing company in NYC area.
Probably there were others who did the same thing
>
>
>I can't remember who this was but it was a president of Zenith, RCA or some
>other US TV manufacturer in the early days. This president would come
>through the design on "cost cutting" trips and randomly cut components out
>the TV circuit. It if the set still worked, that part was "cut" from the
>design.
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>craig
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>
Mark Walter (MRWalter@WorldNet.ATT.Net)