I hope the woman shown in this picture lived a long and happy life, but she apparently did enjoy taking chances, as shown by the positioning of this 1939 hot chassis 4-tube radio receiver. The set is described in the August 1939 issue of Popular Science.

Behind the plywood cabinet was a metal chassis that was hooked directly to one side of the AC cord. This means that there was a 50/50 chance that if you came into contact with the chassis and the water pipes, you would get zapped by 120 volts. Therefore, placing it right next to the water pipes probably wasn’t the greatest idea.

But assuming everything worked out, the set would pull in the local stations with a 6K6GT RF amplifier, 6J7GT detector, and 25L6GT audio amplifier to drive the speaker. The tube complement was rounded out by a 25Z6 GT rectifier. If you add up the filament voltages, you get 62, meaning that a 150 ohm “curtain burner” line cord resistor was also needed in the filament string.