A former television repair centre, found on a backstreet here in Ottawa. The sign hangs over a roll-up steel door. This was personalized and convenient service, allowing you to drive your car or truck right into the service bay so your oversized television console could be brought in for repair with relatively little fuss.

The font choice is remarkably clean and modern for a business so obviously rooted in the 1960s and 1970s.

Let’s remember: when we used to talk about “portable TVs,” we meant bulky and heavy 13″ units, often with a built-in VCR. And rabbit ears.

Those units, as the sign notes, you could drag around to the side door yourself.

Over the past seven or eight years, it has become ridiculously easy to buy and set up a 42″ television - by yourself. I still remember a time when, as you were moving into a new house, you had to decide where the television was going to be placed - because it took two burly movers to put it in place, and it would never be moved again.