Amateur radio operators tend to be nostalgic about old gear, and this is apparently not a new phenomenon. Eighty years ago this month, the January 1936 issue of Popular Science
featured the station of Winton R. Jones, W3CAQ, of Baltimore. Jones was an employee of a Baltimore ship salvaging company, and used his position to fully equip his 40 meter CW station. As soon as a ship arrived at the Baltimore salvage yard, Jones made a beeline for the radio room, where he acquired the gear at scrap metal prices.

Most of the equipment told a story. One of his power supplies came from the Morro Castle, a liner which burned off the New Jersey coast in 1934.  The ship was en route from Havana to New York when it burned, resulting in the loss of 137 lives. The key came from the S.S. Jacob Luckenbach, a liner that went aground on the Mexican coast. Even the desk was salvaged from the captain’s quarters of a ship.

His oldest piece of equipment was an early Marconi galvanometer dating to use in the First World War aboard a Red Cross ship.

The station did get out.  The image below is a QSL from W3CAQ for a contact with W5BNQ, Wilmer, Texas, in 1933.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Bob Green, W8JYZ of OldQSLCards.com for providing the QSL card shown here.

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Ninety years ago this month, the January 1926 issue of Science and Invention carried these diagrams for a simple one-tube regenerative receiver.  The circuit was shown in response to a question from a reader, one James Moore of Chicago, who asked for a circuit which could be built with a fixed coupler, variable condenser, variometer, and tube, all presumably parts he had on hand. The editors came up with this circuit, which uses the variometer to control regeneration. The circuit was said to be quite selective.

The same column also carried the following question and answer from one Felix Grandich of New York, who wanted to know whether you needed a ground wire to communicate with other planets, and if so, why. It turns out you did.

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Shown here is Beulah Clark, who appeared on WMBB radio in Chicago. This picture is from the cover of Radio Digest 90 years ago today, January 9, 1926. The station first signed on in 1925, sharing the 1190 frequency with WOK. The stations eventually combined their operations, but left the air in 1928. The station broadcast from the Trianon Ballroom, which the station billed as the World’s Most Beautiful Ballroom, hence the call letters.

According to the magazine, Miss Clark shared beauty secrets with the listeners. Reportedly, “she arouses interest when she is heard and carries conviction when she is seen.”

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Eighty years ago, sound man P.J. Stonor of Liverpool, England, discovered that a high quality American made audio amplifier was his ticket to meet pretty girls. In the January 1936 issue of Radio News, he reports that his sound company had been in business for only nine months, but had covered over fifty “public-address events, from whist drives to garden fetes.” In this photo, he is shown announcing the British Legion fete, with one of the beauty queens beside him.

Mr. Stonor reports that he is using a Lafayette 15-watt 6-volt portable amplifier which had been in constant use without a bit of trouble, not even requiring a tube replacement. He reports that in gain, quality, and price, it had its British counterparts beat.

The American amplifier used British microphones, speakers, and gramophone pickup. The 6 volt amplifier was selected because so many different kinds of current were in use in England, and running off batteries eliminated any problems.
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The plans for this four-tube novelty set appeared in the 1940-41 Radio Television Reference Manual, a special edition put out by Radio Craft magazine. It’s a combination lamp-radio with a nautical theme. It’s a simple TRF set, with a 6K7GT serving as RF amp, 6J7GT as detector and first AF stage, and a 25L6GT final audio amp. A 25Z6GT rectifier rounded out the tube lineup.

The set actually contained two lamps. A 40 watt bulb in series with the tube filaments burned at diminished brightness whenever the set was turned on. If you really needed some light, there was a second independent socket for a larger bulb. The ship’s wheel served as the tuning dial. An external antenna was required, although the author noted that line cords with an extra wire that could be used as the antenna were available.

The article came with a couple of cautions. First of all, it warned against replacing the 40 watt bulb with any larger, since this would burn out the filaments. Also, since the radio’s chassis was hot, the article warned against touching any grounded object (“including yourself”) to the chassis.

The set’s on-off switch was simply the pull chain for the smaller bulb.

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The magazine Popular Science as we know it today turns 100 years old this month. A journal by that name was founded in May 1872, but was a scholarly journal with about ten articles per month. The last issue of that magazine came out in September 1915 and was replaced by one named Scientific Monthly. The rights to the name were sold to the Modern Publishing Company, which used it for a popular magazine resembling today’s version. The first issue of the new magazine hit the newsstands in January 1916.

The first issue ran about 160 pages, and included a fairly extensive radio section. As you’ve probably noticed, many ideas on this blog come from those pages. That first issue contained a fairly scholarly look at impedance. An article on recent radio inventions contained a look at a three-electrode vacuum tube detector and a heterodyne receiver.

It also included an article on radio stations in Alaska, a summary of recent books on the subject of radio, and answers to questions from readers.

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