The musician shown here, under the watchful eye of J.S. Bach perched atop her radio, is an early adopter of the electronically amplified guitar. She has a small pickup microphone mounted on the guitar, which is fed into the boosting transformer shown. The output went to the radio’s phono jack, or if it didn’t have one, to the volume control.

The picture to the right, while unrelated, shows a hint that is worth noting. The radio knob had come loose from its shaft. The problem was solved by adding a bit of solder to the shaft to build it up and ensure a tight fit.

The illustration appeared in the April 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Broadcast listeners 80 years ago, while tuning the shortwave dial of their set, might occasionally have heard the sounds of “that fool kid down the block,” namely a ham radio operator, coming through the speaker of their console set. But this article, in the April 13, 1940, issue of Radio Guide reminds listeners that that fool kid was a member of an “old and honorable clan–a clan which, out of its own altruism and persistence, has helped give us the wonderful marvels of radio which today we take so much for granted.”

The article highlighted both the technical tinkering and “ragchewing” done by hams, who, according to the article, averaged 27 years of age.

The article starts with a story that is familiar, but I suspect at least partly apocryphal. A ham in Alaska was working a ham in New Zealand. The ham in Alaska gave a report of 549x. But suddenly, the “sharp dots and dashes faltered, once, twice, then pieced out falteringly. ‘I feel ill ….” Suddenly, the radio went silent.

The ham in New Zealand put out a distress call, and eventually raised a station on the West Coast of the U.S. He put out a call for Alaska, and soon raised another station in the Alaskan ham’s hometown. That ham raced to the house, dragged the unconscious ham outside from the home where he had been suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

No names were given, and the story is almost identical to the one given in the 1939 film Radio Hams, which appears at the bottom of this page.   The story recounted in the film took place “some years ago,” and similarly contains few details.  It does mention the name of the ham, Clyde De Vinna, and there seems to be some corroboration on his Wikipedia entry, although few details of the incident.

The article does identify another ham, Frank Carter, W2AZ, of East Rockaway, Long Island, who maintained daily contact with the Archbold Expedition in New Guinea. Other stations involved in that communication were K4FAY in Puerto Rico, W6LYY, W4DLH, and K6OQE in Hawaii. The magazine recounted a story of W2AZ getting an urgent call from a station in Colobmia looking for information on his children who were ill in a New York hospital.

The April 1950 issue of Radio Electronics carried the plans for this one-tube home broadcaster, dubbed the “Carry-Talkly” by author Otto Wooley, W0SGG. The microphone and chassis were easily sourced, since they were both war surplus, a Signal Corps BC-1366 jack box, and the T-17 microphone. The circuit used a 1R5 tube, and an 18-24 inch antenna provided a good signal around the house.

The author’s set was tuned to 550 kHz, although he pointed out that on a receiver with a high-gain IF stage, the broadcaster could be tuned to the intermediate frequency and be picked up regardless of the receiver’s dial position.

Roger Dickey of Grand Prairie, Texas, had been a radio serviceman since 1933, and had frequent requests from local farmers for a small economical battery operated radio. Even though the farms weren’t electrified, there were a number of strong local stations, including 50,000 watt WFAA only about 10 miles away. The expensive commercial sets on the market were overkill, and Dickey set out to come up with a better set suited to local needs.

He did so with the two-tube TRF set shown here, which he said performed about as well as a superheterodyne. The set used a 1N5GT as RF amplifier, with a dual tube, a 1D8GT serving as detector, and first and second AF stages. A short antenna pulled in all of the local stations during the day. At night, with the longer antenna, the set pulled in WGN and WMAQ from Chicago, WLW Cincinnati, and WSM Nashville, without any overload from the 50,000 watt station just ten miles down the road.

The design was featured in the April 1940 issue of Radio Craft magazine.