For a sampling of what could be heard on the shortwaves during World War II, here is the program schedule of the BBC’s shortwave signal 75 years ago today. This schedule is from the June 30, 1943, issue of the Ottawa Citizen.
For more information about the shortwave bands during the war:
Eighty years ago this month, the June 1938 issue of Radio Today carried this ad for the Crosley model 418 “Vanity,” a compact set featuring pushbutton tuning, retailing for $9.95.
The ad speaks of the brown plastic set in the most glowing of terms, but the electronics inside were very basic, although more than adequate for pulling in local stations. The set contained three tubes (plus a ballast) and was a TRF receiver with regenerative detector. More details can be found at this link. The schematic seems to show a connection for an external antenna, which would probably prove helpful for all but the strongest stations.
For $12.95, a deluxe version was available, the main difference being that the more expensive set contained “four working tubes,” meaning that it apparently had an extra RF stage.
Either set could be placed with the buttons either at the top or the bottom. In either configuration, the ad noted, the set could also be used as a bookend.
Ninety years ago this month, the June 1928 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine showed how to put together this all band two tube regenerative receiver, designed by Lieut. W.H. Wenstrom of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The receiver was dubbed the Cornet after a Navy transmitter of the same name which was said to be simple, reliable, accessible, efficient, and flexible.
With the use of plug-in coils, the receiver had a very broad tuning range, from 10 to approximately 2000 meters. One of the triodes was used as regenerative detector, with another serving as audio amplifier. Various tubes could be employed, although the 201-A seems to be the author’s choice.
The author acknowledged that pulling in the short waves probably wouldn’t replace standard broadcasting, since the signals were subject to severe fading. But there was a lot to listen to. KDKA and WGY both had shortwave signals carrying their standard program, and the set was able to pull in England, as well as the less powerful PCJJ in Eindhoven, Holland. Weather broadcasts could be heard from NAA in Washington, then transmitting on 24.9, 37.4, and 74.8 meters. The shortwave bands were also full of harmonics of standard broadcast stations, allowing distant signals to be heard.
Amateurs, especially those on expeditions to the Poles, were a good catch, as were transocean flights by both airplanes and dirigibles.
Eighty years ago, this unidentified service station, shown in the June 1938 issue of Radio Retailing, came up with this method of keeping customers entertained, while at the same time netting a few prospects to purchase a radio for their car. While the car was being serviced, “anything that takes appreciable time,” the attendant swung a Crosley auto radio over the door, turned it on, and invited the driver to push the tuning buttons.
The radio was mounted on two wire brackets covered with rubber. The battery and antenna were external.
The set appears to be a Crosley model A258 Fiver Roamio.
Shown here on the cover of the June 1938 issue of Radio News is the well equipped station of Bert Heuvelman, W9ZYB, of Norwood Park, IL, a suburb of Chicago. The attractive homebrew transmitter, mounted on a panel of blue linoleum, consisted of a 6F6 crystal oscillator, T20 and T55 buffers, with two T200’s in the final running a kilowatt. The crystal mike was fed to a pair of 2A3’s driving a pair of 822’s in the modulator. Band switching enabled fast band changes. A Hallicrafters receiver was used, and the output was constantly monitored with an oscillograph and modulation meter.
Assisting Mr. Heuvelman is Miss Naomi Anderson, a professional model borrowed from the magazine’s sister publication, Popular Photography.
The magazine notes that the photo was captured with the help of over 3000 watts of flood lights illuminating the scene, and was the work of Henry F. Kroeger, Jr., of Chicago, who used a Kodak Retina II.
For those who believe that soldering is just too difficult, we offer this counter-example from the June 1938 issue of Radio News. The pictures bears only the caption, “set repairing carefully done by experienced servicewoman.”
For those who believe the cost of tools is just too great an investment, we offer the following perfectly adequate soldering irons, even easier to use than the one this young woman mastered eighty years ago:
You can call me a skeptic, but if I had been a young man 75 years ago and encountered this ad in the June 1943 issue of Radio News, I think I would have had my doubts as to the bona fides of the New York Technical Institute.
First of all, despite the Big Apple moniker, the Institute was located at 786 Broad Street, Newark, New Jersey.
Of course, there’s something to be said for getting out of the rut, not griping, and making yourself valuable. And the ad pointed out that men with outstanding ability and specialized training were the ones who got ahead both in the armed forces and in civilian life. So the concept of mastering Japanese Morse code probably wasn’t a bad one.
But I have my doubts as to what the New York Technical Institute, Japanese Code Section, could actually deliver, especially given the rather princely sum for the course, a total of $57.50.
And you had to be committed to sign up. The ad didn’t ask you to send a stamp for more information about the course. You were expected to send $10 for the first lesson. If you were satisfied with the experience, then the remaining 19 lessons were an additional $2.50 each. Of course, the dollars in question were made out of silver at the time, and the value of a silver dollar then was about the same as it is today. So the price of that first lesson, sight unseen, was about $320 in today’s money. I think I would have stayed in my rut.
This might be a bargain if they sent you some records or even Instructograph tapes to master the Japanese code at home. But there’s no indication that any such thing was included. And I suspect that if these features had been offered, the ad would have said something about them. Instead, the 20 lessons apparently consisted of nothing but paper, with no indication of how the student was expected to gain any practical experience before getting out of his rut.
For those (then or now) interested in learning more about the Japanese telegraph code, much valuable information was contained in two articles published in QST in September 1942 and October 1943. There was, understandably, great interest in the subject. The 1943 article pointed out that many requests had been received for back issues containing the 1942 article, even though they had been long out of print.
I haven’t been able to find any other information about the Japanese Code Section of the New York Technical Institute. I doubt if very many readers sent them a $10 money order.
Seventy-five years ago this month, the June 1943 issue of Radio Craft carried a cover feature on the Wartime Emergency Radio Service (WERS). Within a day of Pearl Harbor, hams were off the air, but there was still a need for communications during civil emergencies, and WERS was devised to fill the need.
A New York mobile WERS installation.
Local governments were granted licenses for use of the 2-1/2 and 1-1/4 meter bands, and it was primarily hams who were called upon to serve as operators. In most cases, it was also the hams who built the equipment, such as this 1944 WERS transceiver.
Eighty years ago today, the June 20, 1938 issue of Life magazine carried these images of a broadcast by WNBT New York.
The June 7 broadcast of s scene from the play Susan and God starring Gertrude Lawrence originated at Radio City, and these images were captured by the editors of Electronics magazine. Life noted that the blurriness of the images was due to the fact that a still camera couldn’t capture a clear image of the moving picture, and the photography was further hampered by the small size of the TV screen.
Shown here is an ad for phonographs from the Nightingale Mfg. Co. of 422-26 Armour Street, Chicago. The ad, which appeared a hundred years ago this month in the June 1918 issue of Talking Machine World, describes the Nightingale as “the highest quality machine offered to the American public.”
But despite the laudatory description, Nightingale apparently never caught on. It is relegated to this listing of hundreds of “off brand” phonographs of the era.
There is a collection of a set of photos of a nicely preserved Nightingale phonograph at this link. The nameplate on this phonograph indicates that the Nightingale was manufactured by H.B. Wolper & Co. Assuming it’s the same H.B. Wolper, one of the principals caught the ire of the Federal Trade Commission a few years later regarding the way mail-order groceries were advertised.
