Seventy years ago, transistors were new, and the March 1956 issue of Popular Electronics carried a number of projects to get the beginner up to speed with the new technology.  The magazine had five different projects (with more to follow the next month), all of which could be assembled with the parts shown at left.  The heart of all of them was a 2N35 transistor.  They were powered by a 9 volt battery, although the familiar version was apparently not yet on the market, six penlight cells could be used.  They could go in a holder, or simply connected together with soldered wires and tape.

The first circuit, where very little can go wrong, is the code oscillator shown below, to learn the “sound and touch of a ham’s second language.”

The next three projects are receivers.  The first is a crystal set with the transistor serving as audio amplifier.  The second is a solar-powered set using the transistor as detector.  And the third one goes back to nine volts to work as a regenerative receiver.

The final project is a transmitter, a slight variation on the regenerative receiver.  It is put into oscillation to generate the RF, and the frequency of the modulation is set by the time constant of an RC circuit.

Seventy years ago, the March 1956 issue of Radio Electronics showed this circuit for a sound-powered transmitter, which could be built into a telephone handset. Power was provided by rectifying the output of the microphone.

For some actual contacts made with a similar transmitter, see the writeup about the New England Code Talker QRP transmitter.

If you were in the market for a radio in East St. Louis a hundred years ago, then you would want to get yourself down to Barney’s, 10th and Washington,  (on Saturday, where they were open until 9) and get a Crosley model 50 one-tube set, for only $3.98, about the same price as an extra pair of pants for your $9.90 suit.

The ad appeared in the East St. Louis (IL) Daily Journal, March 5, 1926.

If that wasn’t in the budget, you could take home a crystal set for less than the cost of a pair of shoes.  In either case, headphones, unless you already had a pair, would be an additional $1.98

Sixty years ago this month, the cover of the March 1966 issue of Electronics Illustrated featured the “Mini-Mitter,” a compact and lightweight (28.5 oz.) 15 watt transmitter for 40 meters. The construction article, is written by Russ Alexander, W6IEL, whose work we have seen previously.  He notes that the radio weighs less than the missing power transformer. No transformer was necessary for two reasons. First, the 50-volt tubes were wired in series (along with a 130 ohm 5 watt resistor) directly to the AC power. And the B+ was courtesy of two solid-state diodes wired as a voltage doubler to produce about 310 volts.

The first day on the air, the author, in California, worked both the East Coast of the U.S., but also a 579 report from Sakhalin Island, Russia.

As shown here, the transmitter was constructed with two chasses. The front contained the controls, meter, and tuning indicator. The rear panel was for mounting the tubes and crystal, and for the key and antenna connections.

The other piece of news heralded by the magazine cover was the appearance of a new column in the magazine, questions and answers by “Uncle” Tom Kneitel, then K2AES, whom we have previously featured.

Contest automation in Amateur Radio is nothing new, as shown by this illustration 70 years ago in the March 1956 issue of QST. “Jeeves” was, of course, a common character in the Gil cartoons that filled the pages of QST for many years. If you’re looking for more, you can find them in this collection, available at Amazon.

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Shown here 85 years ago this month in the February 1941 issue of Practical Wireless is the receiving station of Ronald Rose of Birmingham, England. At the left is a five-tube superhet, and at the right is a four-tube set. It also includes a wavemeter and speaker.

With a 75 foot inverted L, Rose routinely tuned in stations in America, Australia, and Panama.