If you ever need to make a rope ladder, the March 1959 issue of Boys’ Life magazine shows you exactly how to do it. This design has two great advantages. First of all, no steps are required, since the rope itself is used. And once you’re done with the ladder, you can easily undo it and have your rope back in its full length.
An even number of steps ensures that you have an even number of ends of the rope when you’re finished.
Shown here are members of the radio club of William Henry Harrison High School, Evansville, Indiana. The picture appeared in the March 1969 issue of Popular Electronics, which noted that the school claimed to have the only high-school amateur TV station. The club members built the station from modified military and commercial equipment and transmitted with 100 watts on 445 MHz from an 80 foot tower.
The magazine noted that 26 members had general class licenses.
The March 1939 issue of Radio and Television magazine carried this review of the new Hallicrafters Skyrider 5-10 receiver for the “ultra highs,” which at that time meant 25-66 MHz, in two bands, 25-44 and 38-66 MHz.
This, of course, covered the prewar FM band, but the biggest market for the receiver was hams, since the set covered the 10 and 5 meter bands. The set contained nine tubes, including one RF stage and two IF stages. The IF was 1600 kHz, and the second IF tube also served as BFO.
The RF stage was a new UHF tube, the 1852. The reviewer, J. Gordon Taylor, W2JCR, noted that the new tube “really provides respectable gain.” Each stage was separately shielded. To put the new receiver through its paces, the reviewer used it at his home station and at the stations of a number of other New York hams with good 5 and 10 meter equipment. It outperformed all of the existing receivers, with one exception. That exception was the station of W2AMJ, which consisted of a Hallicrafters SX17 with a homebrew 5 meter converter. The review noted that between the receiver and converter, the W2AMJ setup had a total of 15 tubes, as compared to nine with the 5-10. The 5-10 was able to pick up all of the same stations, but the homebrew converter and receiver had greater volume.
Contrary to your first guess, no, this is not a picture of the Hindenburg. Instead, the picture appeared on the cover of Popular Science one hundred years ago this month, March 1919, a full 18 years before the Hindenburg’s crash on May 6, 1937. The picture is actually of an explosion during inflation of an observation balloon at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
The article explained that this scene was a thing of the past thanks to the discovery of the element helium, and its great availability as a byproduct of the decay of radium in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. But the article hints at the later disaster by asking how the first world war might have been different if the Germans had helium for their zeppelins.
As we previously wrote, despite the Roosevelt Administration’s eagerness to sell the strategic gas to Germany, Interior Secretary Harold Ickes nixed the idea, keeping helium out of the hands of the Germans.
Sixty years ago this month, the March 1959 issue of Boys’ Life showed scouts how to put together this two-transistor code practice oscillator. Powered by six penlight cells, one 2N107 transistor served as oscillator, with the other as an audio amplifier. So chances are, the output was both clean and loud. The set featured both tone and volume controls, and had provision for headphones or a built-in speaker.
We have to admit that today’s vintage TV program isn’t quite as good as the one we shared yesterday, in which a shortwave receiver was built from scratch before live TV cameras. But radio parts were hard to find during the war, so WRGB in Schenectady, NY, had to work with what was available, and that was blood.
The February-March 1944 issue of National Radio News detailed another “first” in American television, namely the first broadcast of an actual blood donation. As part of a three-part broadcast showcasing the American Red Cross, the blood donation was done live on the air. Another part of the broadcast showed it being processed into plasma.
The program concluded with the scene shown above, the staging of a battlefield scene where the plasma was administered.
Seventy years ago was the Goolden Age of Television, as conclusively proven by this article in the March 1949 issue of Popular Science. It details a most interesting program, namely, a live play-by-play of the construction of a shortwave receiver.
Starting from scratch, sound man Rudy Winston (shown at left in the photo) got the set working in 19 minutes while the live cameras of WCBS-TV looked on. The program was 30 minutes, but Winston had only 25 minutes, since the script called for a demonstration. But he was pulling in overseas stations with six minutes to spare.
The feat took place on the station’s “United Nations’ Casebook” program. The purpose was to “dramatize one of the world’s greatest needs–inexpensive, sturdy shortwave receivers.”
Today, inexpensive sturdy shortwave receivers, such as the ones shown below, are readily available. The models shown here can operate from power sources including solar or hand crank, meaning that they can bring shortwave reception to any point on earth. What we need more of are television shows demonstrating how they can be put together.
And, of course, if you get booked to go on TV to build a shortwave receiver, one of these kits will probably allow you to complete it in the course of a half-hour program:
Seventy-five years ago this month, the March 1944 issue of Radio Mirror carried these helpful pointers on filing your income tax return, which was due on March 15.
The magazine noted that some fifty million Americans would need to file, ten million of which would be first-time filers. Single persons were required to file if their income was over $500 per year. For married couples, a return was required if either spouse had income of $624, or if their combined income exceeded $1200.
Even though it was new to many people, the government was there to help. Government men would be sent to many offices and plants to help workers fill out the forms. Also, volunteer lawyers and accountants would be strategically located at banks, post offices, and schools. The magazine encouraged seeking out these forms of help, and warned of the perils of talking to other self-styled experts.
According to the magazine, 95% of the income tax went to winning the war. It also noted that the income tax was an important way to fight inflation, “that enemy within our home-front ranks.”
Eighty years ago this month, the March 1939 issue of Radio Craft carried the story of Edward J. Winterding, Jr., of Cleveland. The 21 year old man had been hospitalized for 18 months for some unstated reason. But during that time, he sold nine radios and appliances to hospital staff and other patients.
Seventy-five years ago this month, the March 1944 issue of Radio News reminded readers that they could use a broadcast radio to make sure their 100 kHz crystal calibrator was in tune.
Before the days of digital readouts, you needed to know what frequency you were tuned to. The easiest way to do this was with a crystal calibrator, an oscillator putting out a signal on (usually) 100 kHz. To calibrate your receiver, you would switch on the crystal calibrator, and you would hear the harmonic every 100 kHz up the dial.
To make sure the calibrator was in tune, you could use the method described in this article. You would hook the calibrator up to your broadcast receiver, and then zero-beat it with a broadcast station on a frequency divisible by 100. The article included a list of the 108 stations in the U.S. that met that description. (The article noted that 83 of those stations were on 1400 kHz.
The article noted that FCC rules required broadcast stations to be within 20 cycles of their assigned frequency, although most were closer. It also suggested that a phone call to the station might get a more exact answer as to how close they were at that moment.
