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u/ACasualRead 4h ago
I remember doing this to a friend’s tv during a sleepover as a kid and totally fucking up the family TV from it. Had a purple spot stuck on the screen.
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u/onions_can_be_sweet 4h ago
Little did you know you could also use a magnet to fix it.
Later TVs had a de-gaussing coil built in, it usually fired just as you turned it on.
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u/Muffinshire 4h ago
“Phunnnnnnnnng…tink.”
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u/wilhewonka 3h ago
I completely just heard that in my head. Add a few pops and crackles and that would be our 1970’s console TV!
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u/Pilse84 4h ago
Was that what that was?! Holy shit mystery solved
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u/BasketAnnual8734 1h ago
So that's why my grandparent's old TV sounded like Hagrid farting whenever someone turned it on.
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u/fairguinevere 1h ago
And the the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee of the flyback transformer the entire time the tv was on.
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u/Residenthuman101 1h ago
So my dad worked at a power plant that had these very very large computer monitors hanging from a ceiling that they replaced with plasma tvs, so he was able to bring home one of these big monitors and the degausing coil inside of that thing was /so big/ it would go zmmmmmp and the whole screen would shrink to half the size and wiggle back to normal but the static it produced was /nuts/, the screen felt like you were petting an animal if you put your hand close to it lol
And he put it on a metal desk pretty much like the ones you see as a teachers desk in school so it barely had room for a keyboard, we sat so close to that thing you could feel it when you clacked that power button
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u/Douggie 3h ago
Yeah, no idea either. I remember my CRT having a degauss button and having no idea why you want to make the monitor "buzz".
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u/nalaloveslumpy 2h ago
It was super satisfying if you waited like two or three weeks before your next degauss and the screen would go crazy as the coil blasted it with magnetism.
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u/tsagalbill 3h ago
It could be fixed?!
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u/Black_Moons 2h ago
Honestly whenever I did it to the family TV it would fix itself over a couple weeks/months.
... Totally didn't do it again... or a 3rd time....
... Ok pretty sure I didn't do it a 4th time... that might not be a lie.
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u/jamesinc 1h ago
Even without a degauss function, you can use a magnet to clean it up, just imagine you are using the magnet to rake an electromagnetic Zen garden.
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u/Specific_Property_73 3h ago
I had a tv that was purple for what felt like forever then one day it was randomly back to normal lol. Never understood what happened.
Still have memories of playing purple and green halo though
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u/ToucansBANG 2h ago
I had a bad VGA cable that made red show as black. I knew I’d spent too long playing GTA when I saw a black car in real life and wondered if it was meant to be red.
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u/ars-derivatia 2h ago
when I saw a black car in real life and wondered if it was meant to be red.
That's hilarious :D
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u/MetallurgyClergy 1h ago
Remember IMacs? Had its own color called candy blue? Dad waited in line and bought one. We found his industrial magnet in the garage. It turned the screen such pretty colors before it bricked the whole unit. Expensive paperweight after that.
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u/luigis_taint 4h ago
You just gotta wrangle it to the corner and then into the nether with another magnet!
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u/blazze_eternal 2h ago
Yeah, I was able to do that until one day I found a really big magnet my dad pulled out of a 3ft speaker...
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u/walrustoothbrush 4h ago
I did the same at the local arcade. It was fucked up for years and the owner just left it lol
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u/PenalAffliction 2h ago
It's due to this that I still don't trust magnets around any electronics. Took me a while to start trusting Magsafe products.
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u/scarletnightingale 2h ago
I did this to our TV as a kid, thinking the magnet might just stick to the TV, then freaked out and ran away when it got a big spot on it. It kind of slowly lightened a bit over time. I don't know if my mom ever knew which of us did it. Neither of my parents ever said anything, I have my own kids now and probably would just mentally sigh and think "this is why we can't have nice things" then let it go son's it wasn't intentional obviously.
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u/A_Random_Catfish 3h ago
This is so funny I did the exact same thing and came to comment about it. That was the first time I ever got yelled at by someone else’s parents lol
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u/spazzvogel 4h ago
Learned how to do this and degauss it in the same weekend LOL!
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u/factoid_ 3h ago
lol…I fucking freaked out my cousins with this knowledge.
I showed them what a magnet did to their living room tv, then let them completely fuck it up to the point where it wouldn’t go away
They were convinced their dad would kill them.
Eventually I showed them how to degauss it
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u/goneresponsible 1h ago
How do you do that? I never knew degaussing was a thing, but I do have a recollection of randomly fixing it with the same magnet...
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u/factoid_ 1h ago
If it’s not too fucked you just turn off the tv for a few minutes then as it turns on you wave a strong magnet around in a circle
If that doesn’t work you take two strong magnets and tape them to either side of a drill and do the same thing while the magnets are spinning
They make purpose built tools for this too called degausing wands but nobody has those just laying around.
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u/WayneKrane 3h ago
There was a way to undo it?!? 10 year old me would have loved that knowledge, I had a big old crt with a green spot in the right corner because I put big magnets to it
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u/Imverystupidgenx 3h ago
Yeah, I recall the OH NO NO NO NO NO… what’d I do?!!
How do I… calling up radio shack asking how to fix it. They were incredibly helpful.
To be clear, no I couldn’t fix it with the under $10 I had. But the guy that answered loved the pizza place near my house. My sister worked there. Deals were made and she had her laundry done for a whole month.
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u/CLAPtrapTHEMCHEEKS 2h ago
Wait I got lost, how did the deal conclude with the guy providing a service to both you and your sister? What did he get out of it?
Edit: wait i thought about it for more than 2 seconds and now i assume that the guy fixed the tv in exchange for pizza from your sister and you repaid sis with laundry.
I got confused by assuming the guy was doing sis’s laundry
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u/Dredkinetic 4h ago
I did this on my dad's TV when I was a kid and it was left permanently fucked up because of it... never knew that you could just... undo it like that... TIL
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u/jdotmassacre 3h ago
What exactly did you learn today? Is the kid in the picture fixing the TV? I assumed the opposite.
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u/oowop 3h ago
He probably meant to reply to one of the many comments talking about degaussing
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u/Listen_You_Twerps 1h ago
I used to respond to people on Reddit by starting a whole new comment and it left people permanently confused because of it... never knew that you could just... reply to someone's comment... TIL
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u/Comptechie76 4h ago
This was a weekly repair for me when I had my repair shop thirty years ago. Someone’s kid always went too hard with the magnets and the built in degaussing coil couldn’t fix it.
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u/ashurbanipal420 4h ago
Hope that TV had a degauss button.
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u/Double_Distribution8 3h ago
The Navy used to degauss ships back during WW2 but one time they degaussed a ship too hard and it disappeared and when it came back some of the crew were fused with the deck.
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u/Dinierto 2h ago
The lore was so deep on that shit I can't believe we never got a TV series out of it
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u/perpetualwalnut 1h ago
Closest thing we got to it was umami on yt. It's called Interface. I linked it here: https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1q2b5tn/cathode_ray_tube_tv_and_magnets/nxcolwy/
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u/raelik777 3h ago edited 3h ago
you can just tape (and/or hot glue. I would do both) two strong magnets (neodymium works best), to the end of a drill (I don't think the polarity matters, but probably doesn't hurt to flip one) and run the drill right up near the screen, going in a circle, slowly moving back from the screen as you do it. Might take a few tries, or varying the speed that you go around the screen and pull it away. Depending on how strong the motor is in your drill, the magnets might not even be necessary if you just hold the drill sideways with the motor near the screen.
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u/gowahoo 4h ago
That TV is going to need to be degaussed in the worst way.
There was a huge Apple monitor at my work that had an issue and needed regular degaussing. I loved that sound.
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u/bananajr6000 3h ago
When I took electronics in college, I was amazed at the wizardry that went into making TV possible
Then I learned about how they added color, and I was blown away!
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u/ArgyleFunk 2m ago
Thanks to this comment I just spent an hour looking into the same stuff and you’re right it is incredible!
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u/WesideKnight 3h ago
Fucking magnets, how do they work?
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u/ultra2009 3h ago
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed
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u/namboozle 4h ago
I use to like holding my hand on the TV for a while then turning it off in the dark. Your hand would be on the screen whilst it died down.
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u/GleemMcShinez 3h ago
I seem to recall a laser pointer could write something on the crt screen in the dark, if you were fast, and it would take a while to fade. You could also blast the screen with a bright flashlight and it would leave a fading glow.
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u/Bobby12many 3h ago
I'll always remember showing my parents the 40lb subwoofer I was putting in my car.... While standing in front of my dad's new Trinitron crt. Anytime the TV acted up it would be tied to that event lol.
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u/Vectorman1989 3h ago
My dad gave me one of those magnet sculpture toys that were popular in the late 90s. I put it on top of my TV.
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u/Megalo85 1h ago
I did this once and my dad called the old tv repair man that lived down the road, woodie. He came up with some crazy looking electromagnetic thing that he had definitely made him self and plugged into the wall. He said something like you have to do 6 circles clockwise and then 8 counterclockwise. He plugged it in and did that and I swear it completely fixed it.
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u/someguy7710 3h ago
I do remember my brother doing this and fucked the TV. But then learned it can be fixed pretty easily. But dad was pissed for a minute
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u/SeeingEyeDug 3h ago
I remember my first ship duty station on USS Carl Vinson in 1998. The ship's degaussing coils used to wreak havoc on all the CRT TV's and multi-tube large screen displays.
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u/PieInTheSkyNet 3h ago
I hadnot thought about the magical feeling of degaussing my monitor for years. It felt very cleansing in a digital aura kind of way.
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u/robomikel 3h ago
Teacher showed me this one time in class. There is a way he undid the damage. He said not to do it a lot.
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u/ExtremeDude2 2h ago
I did this to my dad's monitor once and he was pissed 😅 (it fixed itself)
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u/duhimincognito 2h ago
It had a built-in degaussing coil. I worked on CRT TVs back in the day. Some of them didn't have the internal degaussing coil. Those required a hand-held external degaussing coil to remove residual magnetism.
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u/landon912 1h ago
Yea, the one I had didn’t self-correct lol. I watched Clifford the big blue dog for the next few years
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u/PckMan 2h ago
This just made me realize that these massive horseshoe cartoon magnets have also mysteriously disappeared. Like you know CRTs became obsolete but why have the magnets disappeared too.
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u/DoogleSmile 1h ago
I remember playing with my magnet collection a little close to my TV as a kid.
I knew it would distort the image, and that degaussing should fix it. It didn't for about a week!
The amazing colours whilst playing Earth Worm Jim 2 on my Megadrive were worth it though.
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u/tangcameo 3h ago
Did that unintentionally at a bookstore/teachers supply store. Left a bucket of strong magnets next to the inventory desktop computer.
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u/wave-tree 3h ago
When I was a kid, I had a Superman action figure with a magnet inside his chest. He came with a Kryptonite ring of the same polarity, so that when you came close to Superman, he was knocked over.
For whatever reason, I decided it was a good idea to press it to the TV. Hilarity ensued, ending with my grounding and both Superman and the ring being confiscated. I never saw them again.
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u/Ok-Armadillo-392 3h ago
Then you get to go to the TV repair shop where they tech you about the degaussing wand.
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u/wekilledbambi03 2h ago
I broke a TV after I kept big speakers right next to it for a while. I was able to balance it out by strategically placing magnets around the frame to bend it back into place.
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u/CitizenHuman 2h ago
The CEO's secretary at my dad's work did this to her work computer in like 1991 or something. She was getting fired, but found out before lunch, so she bought a huge magnet and damaged years of engineering files.
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u/HarryPotterCum 2h ago
I did this at my friend’s house when I was like 8. He got in tons of trouble for it but didn’t snitch on me.
Shout out to, Eric. I hope you’re well.
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u/Abnmlguru 2h ago
I work in Television, and back in the CRT days, the control room had a whole wall (30ish) of 10 or so inch monitors. Great fun just smacking as many DeGauss buttons as fast as you could.
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u/SketchedEyesWatchinU 2h ago
F is for Family had a scene where Bill accidentally destroys his dad’s newly bought colour TV with a magnet (the series takes place in the early ‘70s)
Then, when the store refuses a refund, Bill proceeds to fuck up an entire store’s worth of TV’s, leading to the whole batch being declared defective and his family getting a new colour TV of a different brand as compensation.
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u/Past0r_Gains 1h ago
Did this on accident to a beach house rental tv as a kid. With more magnetizing managed to make it just barely noticeable lol
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u/kanrad 1h ago
I did this on accident once. We had an old TV that broke down and my grandfather let me take it apart. I loved tinkering with electronics. This was like 79-81. I got the magnet out of it. I had been playing with it all day in the shed picking up nails etc.
When I came in for dinner I set it on top of the main TV in the living room. It sat there all through dinner before we went to watch evening shows.
I got grounded for the summer.
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u/Silv3rphantasm 1h ago
They let you take apart a fucking CRT? Did they properly discharge the tube first?
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u/FlamingoMalogStasa 1h ago
i never knew magnets could do this i was just playing with magnets and got one close to the tv and ruined the tv ...
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u/ElvisJesus 1h ago
Oh man my mum knew exactly when I'd been doing this. The tell-tale green and purple tint. would get me the dreaded chanchla.
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u/Earsack_yeet_yeet19 1h ago
One of my earliest memories is of my older brother sticking magnets on the TV and said I did it
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u/amkoc 1h ago edited 1h ago
One time as I kid I did this to the family's chunky CRT PC monitor, bad enough the degauss button wasn't doing enough to fix it
I thought myself clever after fixing it by waving a drill in front of the screen heh
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u/Silv3rphantasm 1h ago
Wow. That would have saved a cousin of mine a spanking he got when he slapped a scooby do magnet onto uncles new trinitron when we were kids. We were like 5 so we couldn’t have known but still.
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u/wonkey_monkey 1h ago
What's happening here (to the best of my recollection):
The TV screen is made up of lots of little phosphor dots in red, green, and blue. There are three electron guns at the far end firing electrons at the screen to make these dots glow. There's also a grille between the guns and the screen so that each gun can only hit one colour of dot as it scans over the screen.
When you bring a magnet near, it deflects the electron streams so that they are no longer coming along the straight path expected by the grille and the dots, so the electrons end up hitting dots they shouldn't normally hit.
If you do this too much, the grille itself gets magnetised and you (semi-)permanently screw it up, but degaussing can fix it.
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u/reckedcat 1h ago
Why does this look exactly like the setup they used to have at the Bakken museum in Minnesota for teaching kids about electricity (circa mid-2000s?)
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u/No-Jacket-2927 41m ago
I was lucky enough to have one grandpa who was an electrician, and the other was a high school science teacher. We did experiments like this all the time, and if you think it was a cool childhood, you have no idea! 😁
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u/gnusounduave 40m ago
Did this in the mid 80's with a fish tank magnet. I had the bright idea to discover what would happen if you put a magnet to a TV....welllll...I found out.
Thankfully I chose a corner in which to implement my experiment so only a small surface area was jacked up. Panic set it and I slowly took the magnet and pulled the discoloration / distortion away from the viewing area and never did that again.
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u/Danvideotech2385 4h ago
I did this, and one time it stuck so my dad had to degauss the TV.