Category Archives: World War 1

Surgical Mask for Smokers: 1919

Masks during a pandemic are nothing new, as shown by this illustration during the Spanish flu epidemic.

Shown here is Edward T. Duncan, modeling his invention, an influenza mask suitable for smokers. To the standard issue mask, he affixed two corn plasters, one on the inside, and one on the outside. A hole is poked, and the cigar or cigarette can be inserted.

“When you draw on your cigarette, all the little germs hovering around take advantage of the chance and try to get in. But when they have gone through the fire of your cigarette they become purified, and are quite harmless by the time they get to your lungs.”

When not smoking, the hole was plugged with a cork.

This invention appeared in the May 1919 issue of Popular Science.

Treaty of Versailles Rejected: 1920

New York Tribune, Mar. 20, 1920.

On this day one hundred years ago, March 19, 1920, the Treaty of Versailles was rejected by the U.S. Senate for the second and last time. There had been a prior straight vote on the treaty, which was rejected. A second vote included fourteen reservations proposed by Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge. The final vote fell seven votes short of the two-thirds majority needed to ratify.

The war formally ended for America in 1921 when Congress passed the Knox–Porter Resolution.

From The People Who Brought You the Flame Thrower…

This young woman, even if she weren’t armed with a giant magnifying glass, could easily change records without soiling her finger nails, thanks to the Vacuum Record Lifter, from Vacuum Record Lifter Ltd., 701 Seventh Avenue, New York.

The device appears to be a suction cup which is placed on the record. It had a vent hole at the top, which was covered by one finger. When the record is safely lifted, the vent can be opened, and the record falls gently into the other hand.

The device was invented by Joseph Menchen, whom the article calls the inventor of “the first liquid fire appliances used by the Allied armies.” Sure enough, Wikipedia lists Menchen as the inventor of a flame thrower, as well as “self-made businessman, film producer, screenwriter, and literary agent.”

The ad appeared a hundred years ago this month in the February 1920 issue of Talking Machine World.

Freddy Fender Museum, San Benito, TX

We recently had the opportunity to visit the Freddy Fender Museum in San Benito, Texas. We are shown above in front of Freddy’s motorcycle and one of the suits in which he performed. The museum is part of the Museums of San Benito, along with the San Benito History Museum and the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

We were shown around by a friendly volunteer, and the visit was well worth the small detour we took to get there. Unfortunately, the exact future of the museum is in question, and it might not be there when you read this. On the very day we visited in December 2019, some of the Freddy Fender exhibits were being removed. The museum will be moving to a new location, but the exact new location is not known at this time. Some of the exhibits were apparently on their way back to Freddy’s widow in Corpus Christi. The volunteer seemed optimistic, however, that the museum would continue in either San Benito or Corpus Christi. But the exact future location has not been determined. Before making a special trip, I would contact the museum to check on the status. The museum is currently open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

Fortunately, some of the exhibits remained, and are shown here. Notably, Freddy’s two gold records are still on display, for Before the Next Teardrop Falls, and Wasted Days and Wasted Nights:

Of particular interest to our readers is this chair, marked “Zenith Arm Chair Radio,” in which Freddy Fender probably sat. I’ve heard of Zenith chairside radios, but this is the first I ever heard of an actual Zenith chair. The tag on the exhibit indicated that the chair was from “the 1970s”. Perhaps it was in use then, but my guess would be closer to the 1930s or 1940s. The tag indicated that the chair was last used at the Rio Grande Music Company recording studio, 1165 Sam Houston, San Benito, TX.

The museum also contained another room displaying some of the equipment from the studio, shown below:

The “Rek-Kut” record cutting machine is shown below. You can click on the images for a larger version:

There were also two Ampex recorders, one identified as a Model 354:

As mentioned above, there were two other museums in the same building, and this radio was part of the display in the general history museum:

I couldn’t make out any brand name, but it appears to be from the late 1930s or 1940s, and covers the broadcast band and 5.8-15 MHz shortwave.

Finally, this shell casing was in the museum. It was from a captured German gun from World War 1, and was engraved with the names of the American soldiers against whom it was directed. The engraved text was very hard to read, and I unfortunately didn’t have time to try to transcribe much of it. It would be a great service if some reader in the area could take the time to transcribe the text and post it online somewhere. I’m sure that the relatives of the soldiers listed would be very appreciative.

The North Russia Intervention and Christmas 1919

US troops guard Bolshevik prisoners. Wikipedia photo.

I had never known until recently that the soldiers of the U.S. Army had battled communists, on Russian soil, but they did, just over a hundred years ago. In fact, 83 U.S. soldiers were killed in action, and another 84 died of disease or accidents. An additional 29 were missing in action, and 12 were captured.

The U.S. entered the First World War after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. The Russian Provisional Government pledged to keep fighting, but the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) signed a peace treaty with Germany and the Central Powers a few months later.

The British and French felt the need to intervene and support the White Russians, who would continue the war on the eastern front, and keep supplies in Arkhangelsk from falling into German hands.

In July 1918, they persuaded President Wilson, against the advice of the War Department, to send U.S. troops as the American North Russia Expeditionary Force. The campaign was known as the North Russia Intervention, or informally as the Polar Bear Expedition. Allied troops sailed in to Arkhangelsk in August 1918. The Americans ultimately withdrew in April 1919, leaving the White Russians in a most precarious position.

A hundred years ago, a small band of those White Russians set off on skis to Finland, hundreds of miles away. Among their number was Anatol von Spakovsky. In a Wall Street Journal article, his son recounted the Christmas Eve spent during that retreat. It’s reprinted a number of places, including the Heritage Foundation, and it’s well worth reading.

FDR Re-Elected 1944

Seventy-five years ago today, November 7, 1944, Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term as President. Shown here is “the piano playing candidate,” the Vice-President-Elect, Missouri Senator Harry S Truman, celebrating with some buddies from his service in World War I. The picture appeared in the Milwaukee Journal, November 8, 1944.

Just five months later, Truman would become President upon the Roosevelt’s death on April 12, 1945.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from OneTubeRadio.com!

The picture above was taken a hundred years ago today on Halloween 1919. This young woman in Texas or Oklahoma is dressed up as a Gypsy as her Halloween costume.

The photo is courtesy of Jennifer of Jennifer Chronicles blog, jenx67.com, and used with her permission. It came from a photo album she found in an Oklahoma City flea market. The gypsy in the photo was probably the owner of the album, since she appeared in many of the pictures. A common theme of the album is soldiers at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, along with their girlfriends. Other pictures show this woman dressed as a Red Cross nurse. You can see more photos from the album at this link and at this link.

Canned Bacon: 1919 and 2019

With World War 1 soldiers on their way home or already there, the U.S. Army had some surplus commodities to get rid of a hundred years ago, and that included bacon. This ad appeared in the Milwaukee Journal a hundred years ago today, September 25, 1919, for the Boston Store in Milwaukee.

The store offered mostly dry goods, ranging from from toilet paper (6 rolls for 19 cents) up to a player piano ($395). They also had a limited selection of food items, apparent “loss leaders” to get traffic into the store, shown at left. And, of course, what stands out is the twelve pound can of army bacon for $3.66. That, of course, is before a century of inflation, but a good way to put old prices in context is to remember that the money was made out of silver, so that the $3.66 really meant about 3.66 ounces of silver. Today, that would be about $60.

That’s still a reasonable price, however. The current WalMart price for 12 pounds of bacon is about $53. That bacon, of course, isn’t really suitable for long-term storage, whereas the 1919 product was canned. Interestingly enough, though, canned bacon is still readily available, and can be purchased at Amazon. As you can see below, it’s rather expensive, especially considering that this price is for a nine ounce can:

On the other hand, for your emergency food storage needs, it might fill a niche. According to the reviews, the product is excellent, and the 9 ounce can contains about 50 slices of bacon. So having a can or two in the pantry might not be out of the question.

Since the modern product has 50 slices in the 9 ounce can, this means that the 12 pound can from 1919 contained several hundred slices. So it probably was worth racing down to the store to get a couple cans.

If you’re looking for more ideas for protein for your home food storage, the most economical is probably dry beans or perhaps peanut butter. If you crave real meat, one of the cheapest is probably tuna. Other good options are potted meat, canned chicken, or, of course, the venerable Spam. But if you want to get a can or two of canned bacon, I can’t blame you.

For more information about emergency food storage, see my food storage page.

1944 Canadian Scouting Reminiscences

Shown here is Canadian Boy Scout Frank Lay, of the 67th Winnipeg (St. Aidan’s) Troop. He is featured on the cover of the August 1944 issue of Manitoba Calling, the monthly program guide of CKY Winnipeg, and sister station CKX in Brandon, Manitoba.

The entire issue of the magazine paid tribute to the value of Scout training for Citizenship. It noted that while scouting was designed as peace training, the organization had a fine record in its services to the war effort. At least 100,000 members of the Armed Forces had been Scouts. Indeed, of the 63 Victoria Crosses awarded to date, eight were won by former Scouts.

The magazine includes the reminiscences of W.F. “Bill” Seller, the manager of station CKX. The magazine calls him probably the veteran of all old Scouts in Canada, as he was a member of one of the earliest troops, in fact the first official troop formed in London. It noted that when Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited Winnipeg in 1935, they met with Seller and exchanged reminiscenses of the early days of Scouting in England.

Here is the full text of Seller’s article:

Early Days in the Boy Scouts
By W. F. SELLER (Manager CKX)

Robert Baden-Powell at the first Scout encampment on Brownsea Island held in August 1907. Wikipedia image.

In August, 1907, two men, an orderly and 20 boys pitched tents and hoisted a Union Jack on Brownsea Island, near my home at Poole, Dorset, England. The leader of the party, General Baden-Powell with a friend (Major MacLaren), was making his first experiment in teaching English lads the scouting games he had learned himself as a boy and had used to such good advantage in South Africa, to test his idea of an organization for boys.

The twenty boys were gathered from several sources, from Eton and Harrow and from elementary schools; from the homes of the aristocracy and from the fisherman’s cottage. The troop was divided into four Patrols–each with a leader, Curlews – Ravens -Wolves -and Bulls. From morning till night they were busy learning to live in the open, to cook their own meals, to develop their powers of observation and above all to cultivate comradeship.

Canadian Scouts training for the Fireman’s badge, 1944.

Baden-Powell taught them how to follow trails, how to find a few grains of Indian corn in an acre of heather and how to hide and find messages in trees. Then, too, there were organized games and bathing and all the time these twenty boys were unconsciously acquiring habits of self control, fair play and manliness; in other words, the underlying principles of the Boy Scout Movement. The evenings were topped off with the group gathering round the campfire listening to thrilling stories, bird calls, lessons on stalking and singing, all led by “The Chief “.

By the end of two weeks Baden-Powell had proved that his scheme was sound to the core and he settled down to launch it upon the world. Its value was soon realized, the movement grew and Baden-Powell not only became a hero to but beloved by boys throughout the world.

It was not my good fortune to be in on the experimental camp but a cousin of mine was and his glowing accounts of Baden-Powell and his ideas fired a small group of us with enthusiasm, so in 1908 after purchasing one of the first issues of “Scouting for Boys“, we decided to become Boy Scouts. There was no local organization, we just got together, ten of us, using a shack at the bottom of the garden for our “club house “. We met Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. There were no uniforms at first and then we were able to buy Scout supplies and started to become real Scouts. This, too, was tough, it was all so new.

1909 uniform, scouts.org.uk image.

For the first few weeks after getting our shorts, shirts, hats and shoes, etc., we used to carry the stuff up to the woods, change under the rhododendron bushes, practise our scouting and then in native’s dressing rooms change back again and amble off home.

After a while we decided that this would not do: if we were going to be Scouts we should be proud of the fact, and so we went one step farther and we changed into uniform in the shack and all marched in patrol formation to our scouting practises. For a time we had to take the public taunts of other boys whose ideas of sport were not always satisfied with wordy insults, but were backed up with sticks, stones and sometimes eggs!

Paying Their Way

1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally. Wikipedia photo.

Soon, however, we had two patrols of ten each and we looked for a scoutmaster and rented accommodation in one of the schools. To pay the rent, we each donated a few coppers each week to the club funds. If one could afford six -pence o.k., if only a penny, again o.k. But often when rent day came around funds were inadequate, so instead of “scouting” on the Saturday afternoon, we would all go out and hunt up odd jobs, running errands, digging gardens, cutting lawns, etc. Everyone brought in whatever he had earned to the common funds and it worked. Came the day when we had three patrols and could officially qualify as a “troop “. We applied for a Charter and Troop Flag, which was presented to us at a special ceremony at Canford Manor by Lady Wimborne and so we became the first troop of Boy Scouts in the world, registered as the 1st Parkstone Troop, afterward Lady Baden Powell’s own. We attended the first scout rally which was held at the Crystal Palace, London. 15,000 I believe were present, and we were impressed by the size of the old Crystal Palace, when due to rain the march past was held entirely under glass. The following year we attended the rally at Windsor Castle and later one at Birmingham. This last, numbering close to 200,000, was made most interesting for us by the presence in our troop of a prince of the royal house of Ethiopia, dressed in his native costume, one of the sons of Haille Selassi. The lad, about 13, had stowed away on a liner leaving his country for Great Britain and had to remain in England until dignataries from Ethiopia could arrive and return with him in befitting splendour. He was sent to our home town and in despair the gentleman responsible for his care asked our troop to share the responsibility and many were the interesting episodes provided by this young man.

I believe the troop justified its membership in the great brotherhood of scoutdom. Our ambulance patrol was on duty at most public functions and a sports gathering including the first flying meet ever held. This was at Bournemouth, and during this meet the pioneer A. V. Rowe was killed in a vol-planing competition. [Louis] Bleriot, the first man to fly the English Channel, was there and we also saw [Hubert] Latham flying one of the first monoplanes, a crazy looking contraption with the appearance of an over -developed kite. We had the first King’s Scouts and the first Silver Wolf; won many district and national trophies, and had a good time doing it, with clean keen competition and the joy of contest rather than conquest being strongly stressed.

I could ramble on like all pioneers, to tell you of the time when camping, the troop saved a group of cottages from destruction by forest fire, the time a boat -load of us were nearly drowned but for the timely rescue of the Coast Guards, the course of home nursing undertaken by some of the boys, the concerts we ran, the bazaars we organized to rase our own funds.

“B.P.’s” Marriage

I could tell how we got news of Baden-Powell’s wedding at St. Peter’s Church, Parkstone, and were able to turn out in time to salute him and his bride.

We were very fortunate that Baden – Powell had selected our district for his experiment and that he chose a lady from our home town for his bride, for as a result, we enjoyed many informal visits and interesting evenings at our club rooms with the Chief himself. Many members of that first troop of Scouts are living in Canada and most of that same troop served in the first World War. We all carry pleasant memories of the wonderful experiences we had as Scouts and one of my prized possessions is the old Scout shirt resplendent with badges, all-round cords and service stars, together with the scarf and many pictures that are now historical but unfortunately not good enough for reproduction.

Trees as Antennas: 1919

A hundred years ago this month, the July 1919 issue of Popular Science reported on the seemingly promising work done to date on using trees as radio antennas. The Signal Corps had been working on the problem during the War, and there was hope that explorers, farmers, lost Army units, or downed aviators could be in contact with the outside world as long as they were in the neighborhood of a good sized tree. The article reported that European stations had been pulled in with trees, and various methods of making the hookup were discussed.