One hundred years ago today, April 6, 1917, the United States entered the First World War when Congress declared war on Germany. President Wilson, in an address to a joint session of Congress on April 2, had asked for the declaration, citing unrestricted German submarine warfare and the Zimmermann telegram. The Senate passed the resolution on April 4, with the House following on the morning of April 6.
Contrary to your initial impression, this is not an illustration of Junior helping Grandmother with her knitting. Instead, Grandmother is kindly obliging Junior in winding a coil for his new one tube radio. The radio builder is now almost a centenarian, since the illustration comes from the April 1937 issue of Popular Mechanics, which carried the plans for a simple one tube regenerative shortwave receiver.
While the set was designed for the beginner, the circuit used a dual triode 6N7, and the inexpensive set demonstrated a “DX getting” ability equal to many sets with several tubes. It had a tight bandspread which made it an excellent performer in the crowded amateur bands as well as the 19 and 31 meter broadcast bands.
One half of the tube served as regenerative detector, with the other half serving as an audio amplifier to drive he headphones. In addition to the 6 volt filament supply, the set required a B+ of between 45 and 135 volts. While a battery eliminator could be used to run the set off household power, the article recommended use of batteries for best performance.
The chasis consisted of a wooden base, with an aluminum front panel. For tuning, one of the variable capacitors was set to the approximate frequency, with the smaller variable used to tune in the station’s exact frequency.
Coil winding instructions were included for four coils, covering the 160, 80, 40, and 20 meter bands. With all of those coils to wind, Grandmother’s help was almost certainly appreciated.
An antenna of 40 to 50 feet was recommended, and the illustration here shows Father helping to install it. So that he can grow to become a centenarian, Junior is safely on terra firma while dad takes care of the climbing.
The 1945 issue of Radio Missionary Log, the program guide for HCJB, Quito, Ecuador, carried this letter and photo which the station had received after the war. The writer, Kjell Gaarder of Norway, wrote that he had received HCJB on the receiver shown.
HCJB did not carry a Norwegian broadcast, but Mr. Gaarder listened to the station’s Swedish broadcast. He noted that there probably hadn’t been many reports from Norwegian listeners during the war, since the Nazis had seized all radio receivers in 1941, and prohibited listening on pain of death. But Mr. Gaarder reported that he “received, however, a small three-valve receiving set from England by parachute,” and had listened to HCJB with it.
According to the program guide, HCJB was broadcasting in Swedish ninety minutes per week, from 4:30-5:00 PM U.S. Eastern Standard Time (the same as local time in Quito) on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. The broadcasts were on 12.5 MHz, the station’s main frequency, with 10,000 Watts. The Swedish broadcast would have also gone out with 1000 watts on 9.9 and 6.2 MHz.
Curiously, the book The Portable Radio in American Life mentions an RCA engineer named Kjell Gaarder, who made some adjustments to a small radio in 1940 to make it smaller. It seems inconceivable that two small radios in different parts of the world just happened to have a connection to someone with the same unusual name. It seems almost certain that the RCA engineer in America in 1940 was one and the same as the person who just happened to receive a radio delivered by parachute a few years later.
I suspect that Mr. Gaarder returned to Norway during the Nazi occupation, and probably participated in the resistance, as evidenced by his British radio. There must be an interesting story here, and I hope some reader can give me some clues as to that story.
On hundred years ago today, April 2, 1917, President Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress and asked for a declaration of war against Germany.
In his address, Wilson first told the assembled Congress that there were “serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately.” He first cited the German government’s declaration on February 3 or unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, which he called “a warfare against mankind.”
It was clear that Wilson saw the role of the United States as a superpower who would win the war through overwhelming national power:
What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment of the Navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means of dealing with the enemy’s submarines. It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in case of war at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of subsequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation.
And while Wilson stated that the United States had no quarrel with the German people, it’s government, as evidenced by the Zimmermann telegram, was evidence of “criminal intrigues everywhere affot against our national unity: ” That it means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence.”
The country would be at war within four days. The Senate approved the declaration of war on April 4, with the House approving it on April 6.
Sixty years ago, spring had come to Switzerland. The last two weeks of March are traditionally the spaghetti harvest. The 1957 harvest was notable due to the eradication of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, which had devastating effects on prior crops.
Switzerland’s spaghetti production is, of course, on a much smaller scale than the large Italian plantations. The harvest of the uniformly sized spaghetti is more of a family affair in Switzerland.
You can see more in this video, which aired sixty years ago today on the BBC on April 1, 1957.
Group hearing aid receiver in use.
Today, almost every auditorium of any description is wired for sound, and we take for granted that someone will turn on the PA, and we’ll be able to hear what’s going on through the ubiquitous speakers.
But this hasn’t always been the case. We take the presence of the sound system for granted. But until the early 20th century, there was an absolute prerequisite for orators of any type: They needed to have a loud voice in order to be heard.
This was particularly true of churches. There was one qualification for ministers that was even more important then their theological bona fides: They had to be loud, since their sermon had to fill the sanctuary on its own power, without the aid of any electrical amplification.
This began to change in the 1920’s and 1930’s, as the “sound man” became an important player in the field of electronics. Wiring halls of any type for sound became a lucrative profession. And with the advent of the microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker, the sheer volume of the preacher’s voice became less and less of an issue.
A related issue was addressed by an article appearing 85 years ago this month in the March 1932 issue of Radio News. Electronic amplification could solve another problem, namely allowing those with poor hearing to fully participate in church services and other public events. Personal hearing aids worked well for conversation with another person nearby. But they were largely useless for picking up a speaker at the other end of a large auditorium. For that reason, churches and other public venues were beginning to wire what the article called “group hearing aids,” or what we would today call assistive listening devices.
As seen from the schematic here, the circuit is quite straightforward. A microphone is placed near the pulpit, is amplified, and is then fed to telephone receivers with individual volume controls.
The article concluded by noting that the date was not far distant when those with defective hearing would be able to walk confidently into any hall or meeting place knowing that provision had been made for them to participate fully in one more phase of well-rounded living.
Modern assistive listening devices (ALD’s) are typically wireless, most frequently operating below the FM broadcast band at 72-76 MHz. You can read more about modern systems at my ALD receiver page.
http://epa-arrl.org/fcc-approves-two-new-amateur-bands/
The Kindle edition is currently being offered at a sale price, and it’s well worth downloading this interesting book. You can do so at the link below.
Then 16 year old Hodgkinson at the CKY microphone, circa 1930. Manitoba Historical Society photo.
This postcard from RCAF prisoner of war Sgt. Brian Hodkinson appeared 75 years ago this month in the March 1942 issue of CKY’s program guide, Manitoba Calling. Prior to the war, Hodkinson was an announcer at the Winnipeg station. With the outbreak of war, he enlisted in the air force, and on one of his first missions over France, he was shot down and held prisoner for the duration of the war.
This card was sent to a friend in WInnipeg, Dr. John Toole, and reports that the Germans were treating him well. He requested “cigs. & chocolate, etc.” via the Canadian Red Cross. Dr. Toole shared the card with the radio station.
Hodgkinson spoke little of the war years, but after much prodding by friends, he did put his memoirs on paper. After the war, Hodgkinson moved to the United States and was for many years a newscaster and commentator at WHK, WERE, and WDOK in Cleveland.
The book is a fascinating look not only at Hodgkinson’s time as a POW, but also at his training. The RCAF had to get pilots in the air as fast as possible, and the training was intense. Hodgkinson recounts that he got lost on his first solo cross country flight, which was supposed to be from Ottawa to Kingston. He got lost, and finally spotted an airport, which turned out to be Montreal. Low on fuel and daylight, he landed and called his base for instructions. After some discussion, he was told to return to Ottawa the next day. He got lost again, and once again he landed at an unfamiliar airport. When a friendly airport worker came out to meet the plane, he asked where he was, and was told that he had landed in Ogdenburg, New York.
Since the United States was still neutral, Hodgkinson realized that his navigation blunder would result in his spending the duration of the war in an American internment camp. So he asked which way it was to Ottawa, and promptly flew north.
Despite these false starts, Hodgkinson was quickly sent to England, and on one of his first missions over France, he was shot down. Most of the book recounts his experiences in a hospital in France, and then in prison camps in Germany.
One feature that stood out was the fluent English speakers that Hodgkinson encountered. While he and his other prisoners in the hospital in France noted that before long they would be speaking a mixture of three languages, there were English speakers among his captors. The first that he encountered was the doctor who oversaw the treatment of his injuries, Dr. Rudy Meinhoff. Hodgkinson was surprised to hear the doctor address him with a clearly American accent. It had turned out that the German doctor had practiced in Milwaukee before the war, and had even attended a medical conference in Winnipeg.
Hodgkinson (front row, center) along with fellow prisoners, 4 New Zealander and 1 English. Manitoba Calling, Apr. 1944.
And upon his transfer to the German prison camp, Hodgkinson’s interrogator was Wehrmacht intelligence officer Col. Gustave Metterling, who also surprised Hodgkinson with an American accented English. Before the war, Metterling had lived in New York, where he made a career of selling forged oil paintings, often made to order by wealthy buyers.
The book is not available in the United States, but used copies are available at a reasonable price on Amazon. In Canada, it’s also available at Amazon.ca.
The book is a fascinating look at the war by one who had to sit most of it out. According to Worldcat, relatively few libraries, American or Canadian, have a copy. But it is apparently still in print from its Canadian publisher, and reasonably priced copies are available on Amazon. It’s definitely worth seeking out.
We previously wrote about Margaret Donahue of Boston, who was reportedly the first woman to receive her first class commercial radio operator’s license. This fact was reported a hundred years ago today in this clipping from the March 29, 1917, edition of the Bridgeport (CT) Evening Farmer.
She was at that time employed as a wire telegraph operator in Boston. With her new credential, she had volunteered her service to her country in the upcoming war.
