This young woman is now close to 90 years old, but she is shown here, according to the calendar on the wall, in September 1937, in her living room in a farm house near Northome, in Koochiching County in far northern Minnesota. The house looks humble, and I’m not sure exactly what’s going on there in the corner. They don’t have electricity, as evidence by the kerosene lamps, but they do have a radio, and it’s a rather impressive radio.

The radio is a Zenith model 4-B-132. You can see a beautifully preserved example at the Radio Attic Archives.  (In fact, if you want to buy that radio, it’s for sale at the Radio Attic.)  Most farm sets used two batteries–a low-voltage battery to run the filaments, and a B battery of something like 90 volts.  But with this set, Zenith used a different tactic, which probably saved the owner a lot of money over the years.  It used a single 6-volt battery, and, like a car radio, it included a vibrator power supply to generate the B+.  When the battery got low, it could be recharged with the car or tractor.

Now that we know what the radio is, we want to know what they were listening to.  And if we do a close-up of the dial, we can see that it’s tuned between 1400 and 1500 kHz.  That makes it easy.  The only logical suspect is KSTP, which was then (prior to the NARBA switch, when they moved to 1500) on 1460 kHz, with 25,000 watts day and 10,000 watts night.  At 206 miles away, the station would come in loud and clear at night, and probably during most of the day as well.  It was a good receiver, there was little in the way of electrical interference, and there were few other stations close to it on the dial.  In fact, a 1937 promotional brochure from the station claims the county’s 2400 radio homes (out of a total of 3345 families) as being part of the station’s secondary service area, along with counties in Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas.

The photo was taken by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee, and is available at the Library of Congress website.  Another picture featuring the family and the radio can be found at this link.

Some people look at a picture like this one and feel sorry.  There was a depression going on, and there’s a reason why there aren’t a lot of farms these days in Koochiching County.  Life was undoubtedly tough.  But despite their otherwise austere living conditions, they owned a $40 radio ($854 in 2023 dollars) which undoubtedly brought much pleasure during the long winter nights.  And by zooming in on the left side of the picture, we see that this girl, along with her brother and sister, also owned this pinball machine.  We suspect this girl had a happy childhood, and a happy life.

Unfortunately, while many of these old Farm Security Administration photos include a caption with the names of the people, this one does not.  All we know is that this family lived on a farm near Northome, probably in the house shown below, which was the next negative on the roll.

It’s a longshot, but if you know the people in the picture, or you are a member of this family, we would love to hear from you at clem.law@usa.net.

A hundred years ago, radio was rapidly becoming a familiar part of the home, whether it was in the city or on the farm. The cover of the January 1923 issue of Wireless Age, above, shows an idyllic scene of radio by the hearth.

But radio was more than just a pastime for the urban upper class.  It was rapidly making it’s way to the farm, and it was bringing rural people closer to the city.  The magazine contained a feature describing how radio was rapidly becoming a necessity on the farm.  Farmers could receive up-to-the-minute market reports, and the main complaint from farmers was that they were being read too fast to write down.  And weather warnings could make a huge difference in the safety and profitability of farm life.  But in addition to the purely practical, radio was changing rural life by allowing residents to hear news, concerts, and lectures.  Shown here are Mrs. Albertina Schockweiler, her daughter and grandson, as the pull in a program on their farm in Osseo, Minnesota.

Seventy-five years ago today, the June 23, 1947, issue of Broadcasting magazine carried this ad from WCCO radio in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The gentleman shown speaking at the microphone is Rep. George I. Clem (no relation to the author of this website), who served one term in the Minnesota Legislature representing the 56th District, which at that time was the Pine City area, about 100 miles north of the Twin Cities.

Inexplicably, the ad copy states that Clem drove to Minneapolis to assume his duties in the Legislature, which seems unlikely, seeing that the state capital is St. Paul. But in any event, while carrying out his legislative duties by day, by night he attended WCCO’s “Radio School for Legislators,” in which station personnel taught legislators the nuts and bolts of communicating effectively by radio. The faculty included the station’s educational director E.W. Ziebarth, program director Gene Wilkey, news director Sig Mickelson, and farm services director Larry Haeg.

Rep. Clem reported that his attendance at when addressing the Pine City Commercial Club, he knew that his attendance at the school made the difference, and also made it possible for him to keep the people of his district better informed.  He served a single term in the Legislature, and died in 1988 at the age of 78.

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Amateur Radio signals first crossed the Atlantic 100 years ago the night of December 11/12, as documented here in the December 12, 1921, issue of the New York Herald.

An attempt the year before had been unsuccessful, and in 1921, the American Radio Relay League pulled out all the stops to ensure success. In addition to European operators who would be listening in, American Paul Forman Godley, 2ZE, was sent to England with the latest in American receiving equipment. He set up in a field at Ardrossan, Scotland, with only a tent to house himself and the receiver.

Transmissions from North America followed a pattern. Between 7:00 and 9:30 PM Eastern Time, all stations were invited to send, with a 15 minute period designated for each call area. These stations simply called TEST and their call sign. Starting at 9:30 until 1:00 AM, about two dozen pre-selected stations took turns calling. Each of these stations sent a five-letter cipher which had been given to them in a sealed envelope.

My personal connection to the tests is the fact that one of these stations, 9XI at the University of Minnesota is one I personally operated many times, and of which I served as trustee for several years. In those early years, there was a fuzzy line between amateur stations and broadcast stations. At some point there was a split, and the broadcast side of 9XI became licensed as WLB, and later as KUOM, under which call it still operates.

Amateur station 9XI became 9YC, later W9YC, and after the war, W0YC, the call it held when I was a member and later the licensee. With the exception of 6XH at Stanford University in California, 9XI was the furthest west station participating. It was not heard in Europe, but the station sent the cipher SFLJT on 300 meters (1000 kHz) using CW. The transmitter was undoubtedly the one shown at left, described by Prof. Cyril M. Jansky, Jr., in the December 1921 issue of QST.

Numerous stations were heard the night of December 11, the most notable being 1BCG, as reported in the news clipping above. The signals from Connecticut were heard not only in Britain, but also on the Continent. A full message was picked up by Godley from the station at 3:00 AM GMT, or 10:00 PM in America.

Through special arrangements with the Marconi Company, word was sent back to America on the high powered commercial station MUU. Even though Marconi used automated high-speed code, it allowed this message to be sent by hand so that it could be copied by Amateurs in America directly. The message was acknowledged by Marconi’s American station, WII, also hand keyed for the occasion, to make sure that the word was heard throughout North America that the tests had been successful

Back in Hartford, ARRL officials were gathered around the longwave set tuned to MUU. According to the account in the February 1922 issue of QST, the air was so thick with tobacco smoke that it was hard to see how a signal could get into the room.

Today, communicating across the Atlantic is a pretty routine occurrence. We’ve learned over the years that even higher frequencies work even better than the ones used in 1921–most of which were in what we today consider part of the AM broadcast band. When I operate portable from a park using 5 watts, I made numerous contacts with Europe. It’s pretty easy now, and it’s something that’s been going on for a century now.

Various events will be taking place this weekend to commemorate the event.  Most of these are listed at the ARRL website.  In particular, I want to do my best to listen to a recreation of 1BCG’s transmitter, and you can read details of that event at this link.

A hundred years ago, Montgomery Ward was a supplier of just about everything the radio experimenter might need.  This ad appeared a hundred years ago this month in the November, 1921, issue of Radio News.

The St. Paul, MN, store with its iconic tower shown in the ad was a familiar landmark for me.  It was torn down in 1996, but for decades, it served as the distribution center in our area.  We lived in Minneapolis, and usually shopped at our local store.  But when we needed something more exotic, we knew that everything in their thick catalog would be available at that store.  Frequently, it was tires or auto parts.  We would drive to the big store, my dad would use the catalog to fill out the order form, he would hand it to the guy behind the counter, and a few minutes later, they would return with our order.  It was like having Amazon, but with immediate delivery.

Sixty years ago this month, the August 1961 issue of Electronics Technician carried this ad for ATR Electronics, formerly known as American Television & Radio Co., of St. Paul, MN.  The street address for the business isn’t listed, but the postal zone is 1, meaning it was in the downtown area.

The company’s specialty was vibrators, but as shown here, its product line included inverters (which undoubtedly contained those vibrators), “A” battery eliminators, and car radios.  The two radios appear to be identical, but the “truck” version of it mounts “airplane” style in the roof of the cab.  The installation took only minutes, consisting of cutting a hole in the roof, and bolting in the combination antenna/mounting bracket.

I’ve been able to find little information about the company, other than that they were involved in a labor dispute which made its way to the Minnesota Supreme Court in 1960.

I found this ad from 75 years ago to be intriguing. It’s an inverter for running 120 volt appliances from a car’s electrical system, presumably six volts. The ad appeared in the June 1946 issue of Radio Retailing.

I haven’t found much information about this unit, model 6-1160,  But it’s almost certainly vibrator driven.  The electromechanical vibrator changes the DC to a square wave, which is stepped up by a transformer.  It’s billed as providing up to 40 watts.

It’s priced at $15.95.  According to this inflation calculator, that works out to about $330 in 2021 dollars.  By comparison, a modern one such as the one shown here outperforms it and sells for just a few dollars.

The manufacturer, the Terado Company, appears to be defunct, but their street address jumped out at me.  I drive past it, 1068 Raymond Avenue, St. Paul, MN, almost every day.  There is currently an apartment building at that address, which I believe was built in the 1980s.

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