Monthly Archives: October 2022

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from OneTubeRadio.com!

If you were getting ready for Halloween a hundred years ago, the place to go was Loft, whose trademark was “penny a pound profit.” Both chocolates and hard candies (with the characteristic orange tint) went for about 54-59 cents per pound (which works out to $9.54 to $10.42 after in 2022 dollars, after inflation.)

The store was said to have an immense assortment and the lowest prices in the city, which formed a combination that defied all forms of competition. The “high grade” 59 cent chocolates came in an attractively decorated container in keeping with that great night of mysterious doings. For tholse on a budget, you could get six pumpkin head scarecrow lollipos or six marshmallow jelly funny faces for 19 cents.

For exact store locations, readers were directed to the telephone directory. The ad appeared in the New York Evening World, October 27, 1922.

1922: Radio Sweeps Nation

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A hundred years ago, radio was sweeping the nation, and the Sunday Amarillo (Texas) Daily News for October 29, 1922, had to devote an entire pictorial page to the phenomenon. Bread trucks were getting equipped with radio, voices were heard across the Atlantic, and everything seemed to revolve around radio.

1937 Tent Stove

For those wishing to extend the camping season into the cold months, the October 1937 issue of Popular Science showed how to make this lightweight wood stove for your tent. If you need a lightweight wood stove for use in emergencies, it would serve that purpose as well.

It’s designed to burn with low oxygen, so when you get it started with kindling, you put in logs, and they give off most of their heat after they’re turned into charcoal. The result is that you can build the fire at night, it will keep you warm all night, and then you can cook your pancakes in the morning. The stove also features a small oven compartment.

It’s made out of sheet metal and riveted together, so it’s lightweight.

If you don’t feel up to building your own, the one shown here is available on Amazon at a reasonable price. And if you don’t want to cut a hole in your tent for the chimney, you can get a propane or kerosene heater that’s safe for indoor use. For more details, you can see our earlier post.

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1922 Zenith Ad

This Zenith ad ran a hundred years ago today in the October 26, 1922, issue of the Richmond (Ind.) Palladium and Sun-Telegram. It asks the reader what they’re going to do that night, and speculates that they might play an uninteresting game of cards, sit in an uninteresting conversation, or spend the night in some time-killing chore or lukewarm hobby.

But real, diversified entertainment was at hand, in the form of radio! To find out more, all you had to do was call the Weisbrod’s music store, the town’s Zenith dealer, and set up an appointment to come into the store and see what their sets could pull in.

(Click on the ad to see a full size version.)

1942 Home Master-Slave Clock System

Eighty years ago this month, the October 1942 issue of the British Practical Mechanics
noted that battery clocks were in great demand because of the war. In the event of a cut-off of the electric mains, householders would be without a means of keeping track of time, and the battery clock was a solution. As shown above, you could build a system of clocks for your house. The master clock could be anywhere in the house, and it could be wired to any number of “slave” clocks. Plans for the master clock had appeared in an earlier edition of the magazine, and complete blueprints were available for two shillings. Once the time was set on the master clock, all other clocks in the house would keep accurate time.

To build the slave clocks, “the first thing to obtain is an old clock.” Most of the innards were removed, leaving only the two cogs behind the face, controlling the minute and hour hands (or “fingers,” as the author called them). At that point comes the task of making a cog wheel with 60 teeth, which “requires some care, but it may be easily made” by cutting a sheet of steel or brass, and then filing out 60 teeth.

Once a minute, the mater clock would send a pulse, which would advance the long hand–er, finger–by one minute. The author reported that he powered his system by a battery tucked away, floating on a trickle charger, and that his had been in operation for a few years with no problems.

The 1942 clock is quite elegant. But of course, today it would be of little practical value, since the cost of an extremely accurate battery operated clock is close to zero, as shown below. But for the person who constructed the 1942 version, I’m sure there was a sense of pride that the modern version can’t deliver.

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1922 Skywriting

This artist’s conception of skywriting appeared a hundred years ago this month, in the October 1922 issue of Science and Invention.

While this advertisement never appeared in the skies of New York, the magazine did report that London residents, startled by the sound of an airplane, found the words “Daily Mail” written in the sky.

The magazine reported that the plane’s exhaust was routed through a tank containing oils and chemicals to produce the writing, described as dense black smoke.

The term “skywriting” had apparently not yet been coined, and the magazine’s title for the article was simply “Airplane Writes Words in Smoke.”

1952 Transatlantic Television Ideas

Seventy years ago this month, the October 1952 issue of the British Wireless World carried this illustration showing possible methods of linking American and European television. The diagram had actually first appeared two months earlier in the August 1952 issue of Tele-Tech as part of an open letter to the President of the United States (which would have been Harry S Truman) imploring action on TV networking with Europe and South America. According to the magazine, American homes would be able to view the great events of Europe, live, but “the underprivileged of Europe can be shown the wonderful richness of life in America.”

The diagram showed the potential methods, the first of which being an “airplane-relay between a dozen or more express planes continuously flying a regular route across the ocean,” presumably carrying 16-mm film.

The next idea was Stratovision, the use of a string of aircraft aloft, each relaying the signal to the next plane. As we previously showed, this system was tested, and even used to a certain extent, in the United States. But doing it over the Atlantic would require a set of aircraft carriers on which the planes could land, which would likely make the idea much less feasible.

The next idea was a string of VHF relay stations through Labrador, Baffin Island, Greenland, Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, and the Shetland Islands. The longest link would be 290 miles, meaning that the idea might be feasible. If this idea sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to one we talked about earlier, one proposed by David Sarnoff in 1951, although his plan envisioned the link going the other way, over the Bering Strait. Other ideas included a submarine coaxial cable, or scatter transmission, essentially the use of brute force to propagate VHF signals over the horizon. It also mentioned “miscellaneous marginal proposals,” such as use of moon reflections, which of course depended on the moon being visible over both continents, which would happen for about five hours per day.

One of the first transatlantic broadcasts was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the following year. It was first seen on American television courtesy of 16-mm film flown by the RAF to Gander, Newfoundland, to the CBC, which was then picked up by American networks. The first live transatlantic broadcast didn’t take place until 1962, and it relied upon a method not anticipated by the 1952 article, namely, the use of the Telstar 1 satellite. While Telstar was the first transatlantic use of satellite, it should be pointed out that it wasn’t the first television transmission by satellite. Those honors go to Echo 1, which successfully relayed signals via a passive reflector between the east and west coasts of the U.S.

1937 Precision Sundial

If Junior decides to make a sundial for the Science Fair project, he or she could just order a kit from Amazon, slap it together, and hope for the best, undoubtedly a participation ribbon.

But if they have some basic mechanical aptitude, they can’t go wrong by putting together the advanced model shown here, from the October 1937 issue of Popular Science. This sundial will be able to read the correct time to within about a minute. It’s a bit more complicated to operate, but it’s quite easy once you get the hang of it.

The dial is fixed in place, with the axis pointed at the North Star. This means that the dial is mounted at an angle the same as your latitude, pointing due north. To read the time, you move the upper part of the dial so that the pointer P is casting a shadow on the figure-8 (known as the analemma.)

Once that shadow is positioned, then the time is read directly from the pointer T, which is pointing at the time. The article explains how to calibrate the dial, which has markings every five minutes. With these, you should be able to interpolate the time to within one minute. As an added bonus, the shadow on the analemma shows the approximate date.

Parts are all readily available. The dial itself is a cake pan.

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BBC 100th Anniversary

Portion of 2LO’s original transmitter. Wikipedia photo.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation. It was incorporated as a private enterprise, as the British Broadcasting Company, on October 18, 1922, and first hit the airwaves on 350 meters (857 kHz) on November 14, 1922, as station 2LO. 2LO had actually come on the air earlier, for an hour a day starting on May 11, 1922.

You can read more of the BBC’s history at their website. Most of our readers on the American side of the Pond will undoubtedly be most familiar with the signature tunes and interval signals of the World Service in the video below. (And the familiar tune does indeed have a name, namely, Lilliburlero.)

British 1952 One-Tube Broadcast Set

Seventy years ago this month, the October 1952 issue of the British journal Practical Wireless showed how to put together this handsome little one-tube receiver for mediumwave and longwave. With even a short indoor antenna, it would pull in a large number of stations, both from Britain and the continent.

The magazine pointed out that the set was obviously much more sensitive than a crystal set, but as the beginner gained more experience, it would serve as the basis for a loudspeaker set, with the addition of an amplifier.

The tube (or “valve” as it’s known on the other side of the Pond), could be a 1N5, 1N5GT, Mullard DF33, or Marconi/Osram Z14.