ONE of the first portable televisions is still in good working order and tuned in at a Hampshire workshop.

The Sixties TV was known as the T-Vette and its maker Philips was proud of it because it could be taken in the car or caravan and be worked off a 12-volt battery and was easily carried because it was small.

The 12in screen gives a clear picture and could be a second-television for anyone, if they were content with black and white.

Television engineer Keith Pemberton is looking after the elderly telly at his workshop in Park Gate.

He works for Hobson and Kelsey television and video repair workshop. The vintage device was displayed as a novelty to the public in the shop front before it was closed.

Mr Pemberton said: "It's a piece of history. It's possibly the first mass-market truly portable televisions. Televisions were called portable merely because people could lift them and take them places after they scaled them down from the large monsters.

"But the advance of this was that it could be run off a 12-volt battery and be run off a car battery when camping or from the battery of a caravan when on holiday.

"This was a big advantage for families in keeping their children amused and enabled Philips to market it as the first portable. Now, of course, all small tellies are called portable.''

Andrew Emerson, former editor of a television collectors' magazine, said the T-Vette was the first, along with the manufacturer's Perdio, to replace valves with silicon electronics. The T-Vette was more popular and cost about £60, which was very expensive.

He said: "People in the Sixties did not have much disposable income to lavish on portable tellies, so they were luxuries and bought for bedrooms and kitchens in the well-off homes. They are mostly in the hands of collectors now and lasted longer than other earlier models because they could receive pictures on two transmission systems, so didn't have to be thrown away.''

A family watching television in 1963 would have seen the following programmes: Pinky and Perky, Day By Day, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mr Magoo, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Alan Faulkner's Cricket.