Sixty years ago, if you needed a job, you could always sell magazines. You could sell them to your friends; you could sell them over the phone; you could go door to door. You would be your own boss, and there was really no investment involved. If you could sell, the sky was the limit.

This ad appeared in the May 1965 issue of Electronics Illustrated, and it invited you to sell that magazine, along with other leading publications. All you had to do was send them a postcard, and they would send you everything you needed to get started. You would just start selling new and renewal subscriptions, and you would get a commission for each sale.

In college, I had one friend who was involved with something similar. He was given a stack of business reply postcards, and the idea was to get people to send them in to subscribe. He would get a commission. He did this by placing hundreds or thousands of postcards into school lockers. Apparently, one or two people subscribed, and he once got a check for a couple of dollars.

I don’t think it’s really viable to sell magazines door to door these days. For one thing, paper magazines are rapidly becoming a dying breed. And I’m not aware of any magazines that will send you postcards to stuff in people’s lockers.

But there is a thing called affiliate marketing, and this site engages in it. Occasionally, we make a few pennies. We haven’t made our first million yet, but it does keep this site self-sustaining. If you click on any of the Amazon links on this site, and then make a purchase (even if it’s not for the item you clicked on), then this site earns a commission. And Amazon sells everything, including magazine subscriptions (both print and online).

If you are interested in making money online, I do have some ideas of how you can do so, at this link. You won’t make huge amounts of money fast, but you can make some money online. Some of those ideas are somewhat out of date, but there are things you can do to make money.

Unless you happened to see the headphones, you would think this gentleman 85 years ago was fiddling with his camera. But he’s actually listening to the radio hidden in an old camera case, as described in the May 1940 issue of Radio News.

The two-tube regenerative set could be used with a loudspeaker (mounted where the lens used to be) for strong local stations, or with headphones as shown here. Both the A and B batteries were concealed within the camera.

Seventy years ago this month, this gentleman was aligning the radio direction finding (RDF) receiver he had constructed according to plans in the the May 1955 issue of Radio-Electronics. The magazine noted that ferrite loop antennas had simplified the design considerably. It even recommended going ahead and building one even if you didn’t have a boat: “You can build one and use it yourself or give it to a cruising friend, thus insuring yourself of a boating trip anytime you want. This model has been designed with the simplest of construction and can be made of surplus and junkbox parts. But it will give bearings as good as the fanciest job afloat.”

By turning up the gain, the set could also copy CW signals, which shared the same frequency range as beacons. It also pointed out that A-N Beacons for aviation could be found in that band.

Seventy years ago this month, the April 1955 issue of QST contained the plans for this miniature station. Dubbed the “Tiny Tim,” the station weighed in at a mere 18 pounds, including batteries. It could be used for CW on 80 and 40 meters, and the self-contained station made you ready for any emergency, or for plenty of fun from home, on a boat, at the beach, climbing a mountain, or wherever.

The receiver was a two-tube regenerative. The author, Stuart D. Cowan, III, W1RST (later W2LX) advised that a single coil could be used for both bands, but it was better to use separate coils for enough bandspread.

The transmitter was almost identical to the 1947 “Last Ditcher” that we previously featured. It ran about two watts, using a 1JG6 twin triode operating as a push-pull crystal oscillator.

An antenna was mounted on the side of the set, and was a base loaded four section automobile antenna from Montgomery Wards.

The author noted that his 11-year-old son, WN1BRS, assisted with its construction and manned the home station during tests. According to the 1954 call book, the son was Stuart A. Cowan, who is also listed with his novice call sign in 1955. However, he is no longer listed in the 1956 call book, meaning that he didn’t upgrade to General in the one year of his novice license.

Seventy-five years ago this month, the April 1950 issue of Popular Science showed how you could, for about $2, convert your radio to pull in signals from Europe, Africa, China, and other locations. Specifically, it showed how to convert an “All-American Five” receiver to pull in shortwave signals.

The first step was to add a 4PDT (actually, a 3PDT would work, but weren’t generally available).  This was actually the trickiest part, since space might be tight.  The article cautioned that you might need to shop around to find one small enough.  With that done, you added the new wiring as shown below (in pictorial and schematic diagrams).  You added new antenna and oscillator coils to be switched in, and also added a terminal for an external antenna in series with a capacitor.

The last step was to add a dial scale to the front of the radio, which could be on a piece of cardboard.  The set would now tune 17 to 40 meters, and back to the standard broadcast band at the flip of a switch.

This small ad appeared a hundred years ago today, in the April 26, 1925, issue of the Washington Evening Star. It illustrated just how popular radio had become. Not only were radios being advertised in the newspaper, but for those who already owned a radio, there were advertisements for radio knobs.

The knobs in question were E-Z-Toon knobs from the E-Z-Toon Radio Company, 3234 W. Washington St., Indianapolis, Indiana.  As the name suggested, the knobs would make the radio easier to tune, especially in the problematic summer season, with a vernier drive.  If you’re looking for an example of an E-Z-Toon knob, you can find it at this e-bay listing.