Monthly Archives: October 2019

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from OneTubeRadio.com!

The picture above was taken a hundred years ago today on Halloween 1919. This young woman in Texas or Oklahoma is dressed up as a Gypsy as her Halloween costume.

The photo is courtesy of Jennifer of Jennifer Chronicles blog, jenx67.com, and used with her permission. It came from a photo album she found in an Oklahoma City flea market. The gypsy in the photo was probably the owner of the album, since she appeared in many of the pictures. A common theme of the album is soldiers at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, along with their girlfriends. Other pictures show this woman dressed as a Red Cross nurse. You can see more photos from the album at this link and at this link.

1959 Novice Receiver

The young man shown here is doing some code practice in anticipation of getting his novice license, using this receiver described sixty years ago this month in the October, 1959, issue of Popular Electronics . The magazine showed how to construct this simple two-tube receiver designed especially for the novice. It tuned the 80, 40, and 15 meter bands using plug-in coils, and those coils were carefully designed to give maximum bandspread over the CW bands, allowing the new novice to tune in the crowded novice bands.

The set was regenerative, but according to the article, it would give most superhets a run for their money.

Car Winter Survival Kit

With winter soon upon us, I decided it was time to make sure the cars were equipped with survival kits. Other items are important (such as blankets or sleeping bags, extra winter clothing, tools, a shovel, sand, and probably others), but here are the items that I put in to make sure that the passengers have something to eat if the car gets stuck. This kit contains food and a method of cooking the food. I made identical kits for each car.

My experience with getting stuck in a blizzard actually involves getting to a hotel in the nick of time, only to find that the hotel didn’t have any food. All of the food here could be heated up in a hotel microwave. Everything here came from either the dollar store or Walmart (with the exception of the pan, which came from Goodwill). Here is a list of the contents, with links to Amazon.

For all of these foods, water is necessary, and I always have some in the car. But if stranded in winter, it’s probably because the car is stuck in frozen water, meaning that it’s readily available.

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1939 Radio Sound Control Studio Set

Eighty years ago this month, the October 1939 issue of Boys’ Life carried this ad for two extremely interesting products from RCA, more specifically, the RCA “Electronics and By-Products Division.” The first is the RCA Sound Control Studio, which enabled aspiring young radio producers to make their own radio programs at home, with a complete selection of devices to make sound effects.

With the set, they could make train whistles, slamming doors, horses’ hoofs, howling wind, driving rain, and many others. And if they also added the “RCA microphone and radio coupling unit,” the program could be heard on the radio in an adjoining room. The set included a book with drama dialogues with certain sound effects specified. The set sold for a mere $5.95.

The other set, which apparently included the microphone and transmitter, was the RCA Electronics Labs kit. The projects contained therein allowed youngsters to build a real radio receiver, transmitter to talk from another room, realistic telegraph set. The electronics labs started at $7.50.

How To Remove A Fence Post

A hundred years ago this month, the October 1919 issue of Popular Science showed how to remove a stubborn fence post. The problem was that there was a huge vacuum at the bottom as you removed it. This was solved by driving a pipe to allow air into the void.

1919 Homemade Radio Parts

Yesterday, we presented a homemade headphone from a hundred years ago, from the October 1919 issue of Radio Amateur News. That issue also contained a number of other homemade parts, such as the variable grid leak resistor shown above, submitted by the aptly named Arno Kluge. The part is made on bakelite or rubber, and the resistance is formed by a line of India ink traced with a compass.

The magazine also contained two capacitors, one fixed and one variable. The fixed condenser is made using sheets of mica as the insulator. For those wishing to make a reproduction today, the best source of mica would probably be the waveguide cover from an old microwave.

The variable condenser is made from two tubes. In this case, the author used parts from an old bicycle pump. The inner tube is shellacked, then covered with wax paper, and then shellacked again.

1949 Milwaukee Television

For Milwaukee residents lucky enough to own a television, here were the programs they could watch 70 years ago this week, as shown in the Milwaukee Journal, October 23, 1949. (From most browsers, click twice on the image for an enlarged version.) The only station on the air yet was WTMJ-TV (owned by the newspaper), and here were some of the program highlights:

The “Televison Playhouse” program for the week, 8:00 PM Sunday was an adaptation of the novel “Because of The Lockwoods” by Dorothy Whipple. Before that, the station signed on at 2:45 PM with a special discussion of the United Nations. Panelists were Robert Hansen, Mrs. Martha Klein, and Bruno Bitker, with Dr. J. Martin Klotsche serving as moderator.

At 9:00 PM was the 25th chapter of “Crusade in Europe.” This week’s discussion was Eisenhower’s postwar visit to Russia and his meeting with Stalin. The special guest for the program was former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen, then president of the University of Pennsylvania.

On Wednesday, the “Salute to Industry” program was a tribute to the Milwaukee police department.

Sports was a part of the programming. On Saturday, October 29, the Marquette-Colorado State football game was aired (Marquette won 68-13), and that evening the station carried the Milwaukee vs. Toledo hockey game.

If you didn’t have a TV yet, you had many options. You could get an RCA Victor console starting at $269. Or if you were really in a hurry, you could call Samson’s, and they would dispatch a special service car to your house within an hour, where they would install a new Hallicrafters set on approval, with no obligation. Hallicrafters prices started at $189.95, with no money down.

1949 Portables

Seventy years ago this month, the October 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics showed off some of the new pocket portable receivers that were hitting the market. The illustrations at left show the young man fishing while listening to the “Privat-Ear” portable, which weighed in at under six ounces. The young woman is listening to the 5-1/4 ounce “Micro Pocket Radio.” Both sets took advantage of micro tubes developed during the war, and were said to retail for under $20.

Those with a smaller budge but some skill with a soldering iron could put together the slightly larger two tube set described in the same issue. It had a built-in loop antenna and used two 3S4 tubes. One tube served as regenerative detector, with the second serving as audio amplifier.

The set was tested initially in Denver, where it easily pulled in all of the local stations with its built-in loop antenna. Out of town stations hit the dial at night, and with an outdoor antenna at night, stations from hundreds of miles away filled the dial.

Andreas Olaf Bertnes, LA6R

Andreas Bertnes. From the book Vestfold i Krig by Egil Christophersen, courtesy of http://www.slektsdata.no.

Today marks the 100th birthday of Andreas Olaf Bertnes, LA6R, of Sandefjord, Norway. We previously reported the 75th anniversary of his death in 1941. He was arrested in Norway by the occupying Germans for illegally using a radio transmitter.

The QST item we originally reported noted that he was 25 years old at the time of his death and a medical student. Based upon that information, we assumed that he was born in about 1916. It appears, however, that he was younger than reported at the time of his execution. According to the Norwegian government’s publication “Våre falne 1939-1945” (Our Fallen 1939-1945), he was born a hundred years ago today, 21 October 1919. He was the son of Dr. Olaf Bernes, born 1873, and Dorothea Saxlund, born 1885.

Andreas gave his life for his country on 4 December 1941. He was one of four amateur radio operators executed during the war for their resistance activities. He had been active on the air before the war. He was listed in the “calls heard” listings by an English SWL on 20 meters in November 1937 and and April 1938.

Reference

Andreas Olai Bertnes at slektsdata.no

Phonographs Replace Preachers: 1919

At its 1918 General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church USA created the New Era Expansion program, an attempt to hammer out a five year plan to foster cooperation and unity among Presbyterian bodies.

A New Era conference was held at Lake Geneva Wisconsin on September 9, 1919, and one of the actions taken is detailed in this article, from Music Trades magazine, September 13, 1919:

PHONOGRAPHIC SERMONS FOR PASTORLESS CHURCHES

Presbyterian Conference Recommends Use of Phonograph Records of Approved Sermons in Vacant Pulpits

LAKE GENEVA, WIS., Sept. 9.—”Phonographic sermons” are a possibility in pastorless Presbyterian churches as a result of action taken to-day at the Presbyterian New Era conference, after it was disclosed that 3,000 of the 10,000 Presbyterian pulpits are vacant.

The delegates outlined plans for filling those pulpits temporarily until ordained ministers could be obtained. Dr. W. S. Marquis of Chicago, associate secretary, urged each presbytery to develop immediately strong laymen as leaders and indorsed the recommendations that phonograph records of approved sermons by ordained ministers be provided for use in vacant pulpits.

According to the October 1919 issue of Talking Machine World, the proposal had some doubters. But not surprisingly, the magazine eagerly supported the proposal. It noted that of the 10,000 Presbyterian pulpits in the country, a full 3000 were vacant. While those congregations took steps to fill the gaps, “there is nothing so monotonous and lacking in appeal as a poor preacher. On the other hand, congregations could acquire records of sermons by great preachers, and “half a dozen five-minute records would make a sermon that would be worth listening to.”

In particular, “the best sermons of a $20,000 preacher could be had in any church for the cost of a machine and a few records. Can anyone imagine that a congregation would not prefer to listen to the voice of a great minister, representing the highest intellect and the finest expression of religious thought to be found in the church, rather than the hackneyed phrases of a man who struggles along in martyrdom trying to eke out his $70 salary with preaching ability of the same worth.”

Particularly in rural areas served by circuit-riding preachers, the phonographic preacher would be a Godsend. Some churches saw a real preacher only once every two or three weeks. But with a library of records and method to distribute them, new sermons could be supplied each week, and even during the week.