The young man shown here (quite possibly the son of article author T.A. Blanchard) is probably getting ready to collect his first Social Security check. But sixty years ago, he was shown in the 1959 issue of Radio-TV Experimenter operating this simple crystal set.

The antenna and ground leads are soldered to “frictioned” paper clips, which could be connected to a convenient antenna such as the dial stop on a telephone. Tuning was accomplished with the adjustable ferrite antenna coil. The set would not tune the entire broadcast band, but the article included values for the fixed capacitor to cover various portions.