Seventy-five years ago, it was a big month for radio servicemen.  The new North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement called for most North American broadcast stations to shift frequencies on March 29, 1941.  The trade press was abuzz with how this could be of benefit to servicemen, who would be called upon to reset the pushbuttons of millions of radios.

The undoubtedly caused a bit of trouble for some shops, since resetting the button really required the station to be on the air on the new channel to make sure the job was done right.  RCA came out with the piece of equipment shown here, in an ad in the March 1941 issue of Radio Today.  For $17.50, the shop could buy the RCA Station Allocator.  It consisted of a signal source with several buttons.  It would then put out a test signal on the given frequency, making short work of the adjustment of the customer’s set.

More information on this piece of test equipment can be found at RadioMuseum.org.  The set was portable, and could run either on AC power or internal batteries, making the house call for this adjustment quite simple.

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon