A hundred years ago this month, the December 1916 issue of Boys’ Life showed scouts how to put together this radio receiver and antenna. The author, A. Frederick Collins, explained that building the sending set might logically take precedence, but that with this set, you could listen in right away to what all of the other stations have to say. He pointed out that if you lived within a few hundred miles of any of the big government stations, you could get the correct time of day every noon, free of charge. He also pointed out that no license was required for a receiving station.

The cost of the complete receiving station was said to be about $5.