Eighty years ago this month, the May 1939 issue of Radio Retailing carried this feature explaining how salesmen from Austin, Minnesota, based Hormel Foods did their jobs. To tell the story of “a new canned meat,” the salesmen brought along on their calls to grocers a portable phonograph and played a record of the canned meat’s story. They “stood speechless while the record did the selling, softened up the prospect with suitable musical interludes.”
This salesman was employing an Emerson radio-phono.
While the meat is not identified in the caption, it is plainly visible in the photo, which reveals that the phonographic sales pitch was for Spam, the venerable luncheon meat which had been introduced by the company in 1937.
This ad for Rolite trailers appeared fifty years ago this month in the April 1969 issue of Popular Mechanics. The Rolite was a solid-walled trailer that folded down. A 12-volt electric motor raised the roof and front and rear walls. The side walls were then raised manually, after which the roof was jogged down a couple of inches to lock everything in place.
Rolite was originally manufactured in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, in the mid-1960’s. By the time this ad appeared, they had become part of Larson Industries, 5000 Normandale Rd., Minneapolis. More information on the Rolite can be found at this Facebook group.
The ad was part of a 30-page supplement on camping, which also included the ads shown here:
The first is for a 5 horsepower motorbike kit (with optional ski), with a name familiar to regular readers, namely Heathkit! You can read more about the GT-18 at this link.
The second ad is for a class of product that has largely ceased to exist, namely, inexpensive, lightweight, no-frills tent trailers. They still exist, but most are marketed as motorcycle tent trailers. However, there’s no reason why one can’t be pulled behind a car. While I don’t think they are available in the U.S. any more, shown below is the 1980’s era Danish made Combi-Camp trailer we owned for a few years. Its empty weight was only a couple hundred pounds and could easily be towed by any car. Most importantly, it allowed you to camp but sleep off the ground, which is a huge luxury, but provided even by the simple trailer shown above.
This ad for WCCO Minneapolis appeared in Broadcasting magazine 75 years ago today, August 30, 1943. It reminded advertisers that the station’s 6-7 AM program, time on which could be booked at the early morning rate, was hosted by Lew Brock, who had a loyal following with the station’s loyal listeners.
According to the ad, former vaudeville star Brock emceed the “Sunrisers” program, which included an orchestra and other musical regulars.
Here’s a snapshot of the state of television 70 years ago this month, Agusut 1948, from that month’s edition of Televiser magazine. New York was still the nation’s hotspot when it came to the new medium, with just over half of the nation’s sets in the New York metropolitan area.
Minneapolis-St. Paul now boasted 5600 sets, 3900 in private homes, with the remaining 1700 in public places.
According to the magazine, over 64,000 sets were rolling off the assembly lines each month. By comparing with the previous year’s numbers, it was clear that TV was growing fast. In September 1947, the same survey had shown just over 93,000 sets, with well over half in the New York area. Minneapolis and Milwaukee hadn’t appeared in the 1947 survey, but were now growing TV markets.
Wartime parts shortages in 1943 meant that radio repairmen had to improvise to make do with what was available, and magazines were full of tips to allow substitutions.
Goldberg noted that tubes for the standard “All American Five” circuit were hard to find, but equivalent six volt tubes were still available, and that 6 volt filament transformers were also fairly easy to come by in most areas. So one solution to the problem was to replace the series-string tubes with 6 volt equivalents, as shown here. This particular version meant that the tube sockets could be kept as-is, other than rewiring the filaments. The article also suggested other possible substitute tubes, although other substitutions would require rewiring the sockets.
For those of us who grew up in Minnesota, or ‘CCO Land, as it was called, an important winter morning ritual was tuning to WCCO to listen for school closing announcements. Thousands of schoolchildren would listen intently for their town to be named, perhaps for the announcement of “buses and school two hours late.” Of course, the grand prize was simply to hear the word “cancelled,” meaning that there would be a carefree day of play in the snow.
This was a longstanding tradition, as shown in this ad in the July 5, 1943, issue of Broadcasting.
In addition to the morning closing announcements, the station reminded advertisers that listeners throughout the state would stay tuned in, perhaps so that mothers could be told that children from a stalled bus were safe and warm at some wayside farmhouse.”
Can you spot the typo in this ad? It’s not a minor error. And yes, if you’re wondering, this ad was printed in 1943. If you find the typo, comment on our Facebook page.
This picture of the remote unit of WTCN radio in Minneapolis appeared in the June 1948 issue of FM and Television magazine. It operated in the 152-162 MHz range. According to the accompanying article, the FCC had moved the allocation for that service to the 450-460 MHz band, which caused some consternation for broadcasters, since equipment for that band was not yet available. Existing licensees would be able to continue on the old allocation for a few more years, but the cost of installing a new system would be prohibitive, since it could be amortized over only a few years, due to the pending change.
The WTCN system was provided by Link Radio Corporation of 125 W. 17th Street, New York. The mobile unit was a 50 FM transmitter operated by a 12 volt dynamotor. Twelve volts was chosen rather than six due to the power consumption and long duty cycle. It was also possible to switch over to operation from AC power where available. A vertical antenna was mounted on the roof.
At the receiving end, the station had a vertical antenna mounted on top of its FM broadcast antenna on the Foshay Tower, which was also pictured in the article. A rack-mounted receiver picked up the program for delivery to the station. Other types of antennas could be employed.
For a history of the WTCN call sign, see this link and this link. The station was owned by the Twin Cities Newspapers, hence the call sign. Since the article is about the remote unit, there’s no explanation of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune helicopter shown next to it. It appears to be a two-seat Bell 47B, as shown at left.
Eighty years ago today, the May 15, 1938, issue of Broadcasting carried this snapshot of the adoption of radio in the United States, including figures broken down by state and county.
Nationwide, 26,666,500 homes had a radio, representing 82% of the nation’s families. The highest adoption was in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, with 95% of households having a radio. Mississippi brought up the rear, with only 42% of the state’s households having a radio.
Minnesota was well served by radio. 93% of urban households and 77% of the rural had a radio, for a statewide rate of 85%.
One of our readers recently sent us the catalog shown here. The full catalog is 168 pages, and we’ll periodically post a few pages.
The catalog is from a distributor I had never heard of, Lew Bonn Co., 1211 LaSalle Avenue, Minneapolis. It doesn’t seem to have a date, but it appears to be from early 1941. The book listing includes the “new” 1941 edition of the Radio Handbook, and it also includes the Rider Manuals up through volume 11, covering 1940-41 radios. It also notes that the 12th volume will be available soon.
The catalog also contains a full selection of amateur gear, indicating that the catalog came out before Pearl Harbor. Therefore, I conclude that the catalog dates to early 1941.
Included here are the first twelve pages of the 168 page catalog. In the coming weeks, we’ll add more pages until it’s completely available. You can click on any of the images below to see a larger version.
Today, we present the index (pages 1-3), some of the specials to be found in the Bargain Basement (pages 4-7), electrical appliances (pages 8-10), car radios (page 11), and power supplies and inverters (page 12).
Millions of Americans were able to witness the Great American Eclipse of 2017 or will be able to see the eclipse of April 8, 2024. The 2017 eclipse crossed the United States from northwest to southeast, and the 2024 eclipse will run from southwest to northeast. The Soviet Union had a similar pair of eclipses on 25 February 1952 and 30 June 1954. The intersection of the two American eclipses is near Carbondale, Illinois. The paths of the two Soviet eclipses had their intersection at a point in northern Iran, just south of the Caspian Sea.
The illustrations shown here are from a Soviet booklet published in 1950. In addition to discussing solar and lunar eclipses generally, it contains information about the two Soviet eclipses of the 1950’s, including the map shown above. It also contains a table showing all total solar eclipses worldwide through 1999.
The booklet, Солнечные и лунные затмения (Solar and Lunar Eclipses) by Prof. A.A. Mikhailov, part of the series Научно-популярная библиотека (Popular science library), reveals that the path of the 1954 eclipse came very close to a number of Soviet cities, including Kaliningrad, Vilnius, Minsk, Kiev, Rostov, and Baku. The 1954 eclipse had also been visible in the United States, starting at sunrise in Nebraska, and passing over South Dakota and Minnesota (including Minneapolis and St. Paul). It then passed over Canada, Greenland, a tiny portion of Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, before entering the Soviet Union near Kaliningrad.
The 1952 eclipse, after passing over Africa, went over a less populated area of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Asiatic Russia.
This video shows the 1954 eclipse from Minneapolis:
This page contains a reminiscence and photo of the same eclipse from Kiev. The Google translate function does an admirable job of making it readable in English.
One of the scientific observations made during the 1954 eclipse was the measurement of radio emissions by the sun on various frequencies, documented in this 1955 article in the journal Astrophisica Norvegica, vol. 5, p. 131. The graph below shows the signal as received in Vesterøya, Norway, on 200 MHz. As would be expected, the solar noise reaches a minimum value at the time of total eclipse.
Eighty years ago this month, the May 1939 issue of Radio Retailing carried this feature explaining how salesmen from Austin, Minnesota, based Hormel Foods did their jobs. To tell the story of “a new canned meat,” the salesmen brought along on their calls to grocers a portable phonograph and played a record of the canned meat’s story. They “stood speechless while the record did the selling, softened up the prospect with suitable musical interludes.”
