I was a little unclear on the concept when I first saw this illustration in the August 1945 issue of Popular Mechanics, and I suspect that whoever wrote the caption might have been similarly confused.

The caption is “emergency antenna for individual hospital patients,” and is then followed by some details for each of the illustrations. I believe that what they really mean to say was that these were four different ideas for emergency antennas.

I guess I was confused because of the picture on the left. It appears that these wires are to be attached to the antenna terminal of the radio. I was confused because a similar idea, wrapping the radio with wire, can be used to connect an antenna to an external antenna, even though the set doesn’t have an antenna connection. The loop of wire couples inductively to the internal antenna coil. But in this case, the coil of wire apparently is the antenna.

Figure 2 is simply a loop of wire wound around a piece of cardboard and, again, hooked to the radio’s antenna connection. Figure 1 is the same antenna, but cleverly concealed behind a photograph. Figure 4 looks like a lot of work, since it consists of a spider web coil hidden inside the speaker.

It seems to me that a more suitable solution would be to toss a length of wire out the window when the nurse wasn’t looking, although she seems to be very watchful.