What is a Reacto Tester unit and are there any projects in which I can use it?

Question

I was given an old piece of electronics. It is a Reacto Tester made by Antronic Corp from Chicago. After a quick glance at the manual it seems that its a tester for tube display units such as television (color and black).

I am wondering if there is any actual usage for stuff like that these days? Who would have been most likely to use this kind of electronics?

Anyone has any idea how old this thing is? What was its value back then? What its value these days?

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Answer 1

A TV repairs man would use a unit like this to find out if the electron guns in the cathode ray tube are still sufficiently emitting electrons. CRT's wear out over time and the picture vanishes over years of use. It is pretty much a pass/fail test: if the CRT is OK, you can repair the TV by adjusting the voltages on the circuit board. If the CRT is not OK, ... you scrap the unit.

EDIT: As @david explains the REJUV setting can be used to rejuvinate or 'clean' the filament in a CRT, after using that on a worn out tube, chances are that the picture gets a bit brighter again, but the solution is only temporary and the filament may burn out all together.

To answer your question about if these units are still in use today, look around you and count the number of CRT's you see. If you find any, chances are that replacing them with a modern TFT screen is cheaper than getting the old one repaired. Apart from that the later models of tubes are probably not supported anyway.

As for age? Don't know. Value? Don't know, maybe collecter's value. Should you toss it away? In my opinion this sort of stuff deserves a collector.