Eighty-five years ago this month, the March 1939 issue of Radio Retailing asked the question of whether radios of that era were good enough. The accompanying article has an interesting discussion of the state of the art of sets of that era. But the short answer to the question was yes, yes they were.

Seventy-five years ago this month, the March 1949 issue of Radio News included pointers for those interested in getting started in Amateur Radio. In just a few years, it became easier to get started, with the introduction of the Novice license, which required code at only 5 words per minute. But in 1949, to get on the air, you needed to pass the test at 13 WPM. But the magazine gave pointers on how to do it, and reminded readers that hundreds of thousands of hams had managed to do it.

A hundred years ago this month, the March 1924 issue of Radio News showed the holy grail of crystal sets: One that would provide the elusive loudspeaker volume without any tube amplification. It didn’t require any electrical power, but as the hand crank indicates, it did require mechanical power.

The device was dubbed the Frenophone, and was invented by S.G. Brown of the company S.G. Brown, Ltd., of England. It worked as follows, referencing the diagram at left:

An ordinary Brown telephone receiver, A, with adjustable magnets, is attached to a metal arm pivoted at B, and weighted at the end with counterbalance C. To the reed D and the receiver are attached the steel needle E to whose end is fastened a small disk F covered on the bottom with cork. This small disk is directly above a perfectly level glass plate G. The glass plate, in turn, is mounted on the shaft of a phonograph motor so that it may be slowly revolved. The disc F, as shown in Fig. 2, is suspended by threads H near the edge of the glass plate G. The two threads terminate at the center of the diaphragm L which is the diaphragm of the loud speaker.

According to the magazine, the instrument required very fine adjustment. But once it was set up, it worked satisfactorily, and frequent adjustment was not necessary.  If you want to see one in person, you can do so at this London museum.

The fashionable headgear shown here from a hundred years ago is being donned by an engineer at WDAP in Chicago. The station had these so that the quality of the station’s transmission could be checked at any time anywhere in the studio. The crystal set was mounted on a pair of headphones, which meant that there was no need to sit down at a standard receiver.

Later that year, the station was purchased by the Chicago Tribune, which changed the call letters to WGN, for World’s Greatest Newspaper.

These images appeared in the March 1924 issue of Popular Mechanics.