Admiral TV's - Caesar, your television is ready.

In the 1940s, they invented machines, and everyone was excited. machines were decorated with swoopy lines and curves by the men who designed them, because the engineers were desperately horny virgins. In the fifties, people became used to machines, and they were allowed to be machines. Clean lines and simple shapes were the order of the day, as people celebrated the idea of modernism and their excitement for the wonders of the future.

Then, the slate sixties happened and everyone became an idiot. The era of "techno-shame" saw companies burying the mechanical partners of everyday life in wood cabinets with wiggly trim, as if the king of Spain commissioned the work.
Cabinet TVs were pretty bad, but this one has doors, so when you weren't watching one of the five channels, you could hide the hideous electronics behind barn doors styled after the liquor cabinet on the Santa Maria. This is bad, because in the picture, Caesar's wife was clearly hoping for a hot toddy before facing her thrice weekly "audience with Claudius". But all she found behind the doors was this strange glass bubble. Looks like she'll be facing the oafish advances of the Caesar stone sober.


Admiral wasn't always ashamed of their engineering. Other times, they merely wrapped their TV's in wooden curlicue-riddled boxes like The Jefferson, with the front scandalously visible for looking-at. Shameful! Of course, if the electronic ugliness ever became too much for the owner's sensibilities, Admiral dealers also sold the "TV Burqua", so you could hide the mechanized horror under a slitted veil.

In a well-intentioned "fuck you, minimalism" gesture to the fifties, Admiral also offered The Nording as a loving mockery of Danish Modern design, with vaguely modern legs under a cabinet more at home on the Ingalls' porch. At least the TV was made from nice thick wood "so's you could take cover behind it if'n the injuns come a-shootin." The ad copy claims it's "double-sided", but what that means is anybody's guess. Maybe you could use it to stick posters to the wall? It probably meant that it had a second picture tube on the back, so when the thing broke, you could flip it around and get another three months' TV enjoyment from it. After that, you could kick out the tube and use it to store your moonshine, just like Caesar did on the Santa Maria.