If you live in Minnesota house district 66A (Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, most of Roseville, and parts of St. Paul), you are invited to attend an ice cream social to meet both candidates for this November’s election. Rep. Alice Hausman and Mr. Jon Heyer are both expected to attend. For more details, click here. It’s Saturday, September 20 at 2-4 PM.
Author Archives: clem.law@usa.net
Battle of Mons, 1914
This dramatic illustration, apparently a photograph, appeared in the Washington Times a hundred years ago today, September 20, 1914.
The picture was probably taken on August 23 at the Battle of Mons, Belgium. While the Germans ultimately forced a British retreat, the suffered heavy losses as they attempted to cross the Mons-Conde canal on pontoon bridges. The ultimately successful Germans suffered over 5000 casualties, while the British defenders suffered 1638.
Acting Bears Come to Indy, 1864.
150 years ago today, Hoosiers were undoubtedly excited by the soon to arrive circus. But this wasn’t just any circus. The acting bears depicted here (realistically, no doubt) were but one of the many attractions to be featured at what was billed as “positively the largest exhibition of the amusement world,” The Monster Equescurriculum! It was going to be an immense and unparalleled combination, heralded here in the September 19, 1864, edition of the Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel.
The bears shown here were “Old Grizzly Adams’ Troupe of Acting Bears, from California.” Adams himself, it would appear, wasn’t traveling with the bears, since he died in 1860 from a succession of injuries caused by the bears (and in one case, a monkey). The bear depicted on the California state flag is apparently one of Adams’ bears. It is not known whether that bear was one of the bears to visit Indiana, although the bear wearing a top hat bears a strong resemblance to the one on the flag.
But according to the announcement, since the combination of acts is such as had never before been attempted by private enterprise, it gave notice that the management will be “pardoned for directing attention to the fact that this magnificent phalanx of exhibitions not only combines and infinitely greater degree of novelty, variety and effect within itself than can be found in any other place of amusement in the world, but also a nearer approach to perfection in every detail.” It also notes that the performance entailed such an enormous expenditure of money that only the most liberal patronage could render it remunerative.
Admission for one of the four performances was fifty cents, 25 cents for children under 12.
Visit Mr. Zip on Facebook!
Mr. Zip.
OneTubeRadio.com now hosts the unofficial facebook fan page for the beloved postal icon Mr. Zip.
Please like Mr. Zip on facebook. And if you haven’t done so already, please like OneTubeRadio.com on facebook for updates on new posts.
1939 British Gasproofed Room
Seventy-five years ago today, September 18, 1939, Life Magazine carried this illustration from the British Home Office showing a basement room equipped and gasproofed. The caption notes that if the occupants remain quiet, there will be enough oxygen in the sealed room to accommodate five persons for twelve hours.
Presumably, the gramophone is to keep you entertained between bulletins from the wireless.
Allied Radio Newspaper Ad, 1964
We didn’t have an Allied Radio store in my neighborhood, but they were still big in 1964, as evidenced by this full-page newspaper ad fifty years ago today, in the Milwaukee Journal, September 17, 1964.
Having good stereo gear was a rather expensive proposition. A turntable, amplifier, and speakers would set you back $129. A set including an AM-FM stereo receiver was $199. A twelve-inch black and white TV was $99.
A 3-1/4″ reel-to-reel tape recorder was available for only $9.99 (limit one to a customer). For the serious audiophile, a stereo tape deck was $169. Transistor radios started for $4.44. The nine-volt batteries for that radio were six for 99 cents, and flashlight batteries were nine cents each, but both limit 6 per customer.
While those prices appear modest, 1964 was the last year that that money was made out of real silver. By comparison, other ads in the same issue show that you could buy a case of beer for $1.79. At the Walgreen’s lunch counter, you could get a turkey dinner for 65 cents. Tires for your car started at $5.99. And at the supermarket, chuck roast was 45 cents a pound, carrots and bananas were a dime a pound, and five pounds of flour was 42 cents.
One would think that very few products made by Gonset showed up in normal commercial newspaper advertising, but this is a case where one did. The ad shows the Gonset G-15 CB transceiver, normally $199.95, on sale for $99. The 10-tube radio had four crystal-controlled channels, and its receiver tuned all 23 channels. It operated on either 120 volts AC, or 6 or 12 volts DC with its built-in vibrator power supply.
OneTubeRadio.com To Visit Moon
The location of our latest expansion. (NASA photo.)
OneTubeRadio.com will soon have a lunar presence. On October 23, the 14 kilogram 4M-LXS spacecraft will be launched from China. The spacecraft was developed by LUXspace in Luxembourg and has now been transported to the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. About eight days after launch, it will pass within between 7440 and 14,480 miles of the moon, depending on the final orbital injection vector. At this point, the craft will be approximately 248,000 miles from Earth.
One of the partners in the mission is the International Amateur Radio Union, and the spacecraft will be transmitting digital data throughout its mission, including during its lunar orbit phase. The transmissions will take place on 145.990 MHz using JT65B mode. The transmitter power will be 1.5 watts to a quarter-wave monopole antenna. Transmissions will begin about 77 minutes after launch. When the spacecraft is in the vicinity of the moon, the signal-to-noise ratio will be comparable to that of Earth-Moon-Earth communications (EME) signals routinely copied by hams, and thousands of amateurs equipped for EME should be able to decode the digital signals.
LUXspace made available a limited number of slots for 13-character messages to be sent from the moon. And one of those messages will be the URL for our parent website: w0is.com. On that page, we have a direct link to OneTubeRadio.com. (The direct URL for this site would have exceeded the 13-character limit.)
Only a limited number of messages can be sent, but there might still be available slots. You can upload your message at the 4M-LXS website. To steer your antenna to receive the signal, azimuth and elevaton tracking data for throughout the mission is also available.
More information is also available at the ARRL website.
Operation Washtub: Stay-Behind Agents After Soviet Invasion of Alaska
1954 letter seeking background on Valdez, Alaska, amateur radio operator.
A recent batch of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by
GovernmentAttic.org paints a fascinating picture of U.S. Government plans to deal with the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Alaska in the 1950’s. The 701 pages of formerly secret documents are available at this link.
The program, code named Operation Washtub, was put into place, and agents were trained as detailed in many of the documents. The plan was to have in place “stay-behind” agents who would be recruited and trained in peacetime and paid a stipend of $3000 per year to remain on standby. At such time as Alaska fell to Soviet invaders, they would provide intelligence, engage in covert activities, and aid downed U.S. airmen.
Rather extensive equipment was assigned to the agents, including a “Gibson-Girl” type radio transmitter-receiver.
Interestingly, one potential agent was an Amateur Radio operator. It appears that the author was referring to a particular individual, although there doesn’t seem to be any indication that this particular individual was ever recruited. But he does seem like a quintisential resident of the last frontier:
An example of a typical person to be one of the principals is a professional photographer in Anchorage; he has only one arm and it is felt that he would not benefit the enemy in any labor battalion; he is an amateur radio operator; he is a professional photographer; he is licensed as a hunting or fishing guide, and well versed in the art of survival; he is a pilot of a small aircraft; he is reasonably intelligent, particularly crafty, and possessed of sufficient physical courage as is indicated by his offer to guide a party which was to have hunted Kodiak bear armed only with bow and arrow. If such an individual were chosen it is believed that he would be eminently satisfactory as a principal.
A one-armed ham is one thing, but this one was apparently proficient with archery!
At least one ham was, however, recruited. The last page of the 701 pages of FOIA documents are the request for a background check of the manager of a Valdez hotel. His name is redacted in the document (probably because he was born after about 1914 and might be a living person), but the document does alert the FBI that this person is a Ham radio operator.
Surely there weren’t very many one-armed Anchorage photographers who were also hams and archers. And surely there weren’t very many hotel managers in Valdez who were hams. It would be interesting to follow up on these gentlemen and learn more about their role in the Cold War. If you have any information as to their identities, I’d appreciate hearing from you.
References:
Childproofing the Home: 1944
Assuming he survived childhood, the young daredevil shown here has been drawing Social Security for about six years now. He is shown attempting to poke his fingers into the outlet in the September 1944 issue of Popular Mechanics. The accompanying article explains how to make the dummy plug shown in the inset.
Just in case mom and dad didn’t figure it out, the article points out that to use the outlet normally, “the dummy plug can be removed and a plug with wires inserted in its place.”
Completion of the Transcontinental Telephone, 1914
A hundred years ago, it became possible for the first time to make a telephone call from coast to coast. The September 1914 issue of Popular Mechanics reports that the line from Denver to San Francisco had been completed on June 17, 1914. On that date, crews working westward from Salt Lake City and eastward from San Francisco met at the Nevada-Utah state line. The lines were spliced together at a pole erected on the state line and “the last splice was accompanied by a ceremony much like that of driving the last spike on a transcontinental railway.”
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