Eighty years ago, the September 1945 issue of Radio Craft magazine carried this circuit for a simple one-tube regenerative receiver, which had been sent in to the magazine by one Jim Gary of Kenedy, Texas. With a good antenna and ground, he reported that he had pulled in both New York and San Francisco with the set, which could be built in a cigar box.

B batteries were hard to come by during the war, and this circuit ran on four flashlight batteries. One powered the filament, and the other three provided the 4.5 volts of B+. With that low voltage, a large tickler coil was necessary for regeneration.

It appears that the author was 17 years old, having been born in 1928, and he passed away in 2001.