The universal remote control is nothing new, as shown by this photograph from 50 years ago, in the November-December 1969 issue of Elementary Electronics. The accompanying article dealt with some of the finer points of operating a public address system, such as dealing with hum and feedback. Sometimes, the remedy for feedback was just shutting off the offending speaker. This ceiling speaker in a hotel banquet room had a convenient on-off switch, and this hotel maintenance man is shown shutting it off with what those in the industry called a “skyhook.”

Today, remote controls are typically electronic rather than mechanical, but there are some jobs where having a long stick is what you need. For those jobs, having a golf ball retriever or a painter’s pole can quickly save the day, and you can order them from Amazon. They are telescoping for easy storage, and once you get one, you won’t know what you did without it. In addition to being useful for extending your reach, they can be used for applications such as supporting an antenna or being a tent pole.

Eighty years ago this month, the November 1939 issue of of Radio Retailing, carried this description of what it called a “community record player. ” The system was operated from a studio in a New York office building operated by the Wire Broadcasting Corporation of America. The company provided two channels, each free of commercial advertising. One channel provided dance music, with the other carrying concert selections. Broadcasting took place from 11:00 AM until 3:00 AM the next morning. The signal was sent out by leased telephone lines.

The subscribers to the service were apartment buildings, such as the Essex House apartment hotel shown in the picture.

The young woman shown here is on a weekend jaunt, but that doesn’t stop her from tuning in her favorite radio programs, thanks to the four-tube set described in the November 1939 issue of Popular Science. The set was specially designed for overnight travels, since it nested inside an overnight luggage carrier. The entire piece of luggage could be built according to the plans in the magazine, or it could be made up at the local luggage shop. Both the radio and the baggage were attractively covered in airplane-luggage fabric. When she arrived at her destination, she simply took the radio out of the top of her case, plugged it in, and she was again connected with the world.

The receiver itself was a four-tube TRF design.  A curtain burner cord provided the filament voltage.

The young man shown here is doing some code practice in anticipation of getting his novice license, using this receiver described sixty years ago this month in the October, 1959, issue of Popular Electronics . The magazine showed how to construct this simple two-tube receiver designed especially for the novice. It tuned the 80, 40, and 15 meter bands using plug-in coils, and those coils were carefully designed to give maximum bandspread over the CW bands, allowing the new novice to tune in the crowded novice bands.

The set was regenerative, but according to the article, it would give most superhets a run for their money.

Yesterday, we presented a homemade headphone from a hundred years ago, from the October 1919 issue of Radio Amateur News. That issue also contained a number of other homemade parts, such as the variable grid leak resistor shown above, submitted by the aptly named Arno Kluge. The part is made on bakelite or rubber, and the resistance is formed by a line of India ink traced with a compass.

The magazine also contained two capacitors, one fixed and one variable.  The fixed condenser is made using sheets of mica as the insulator.  For those wishing to make a reproduction today, the best source of mica would probably be the waveguide cover from an old microwave.

The variable condenser is made from two tubes.  In this case, the author used parts from an old bicycle pump.  The inner tube is shellacked, then covered with wax paper, and then shellacked again.

Seventy years ago this month, the October 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics showed off some of the new pocket portable receivers that were hitting the market. The illustrations at left show the young man fishing while listening to the “Privat-Ear” portable, which weighed in at under six ounces. The young woman is listening to the 5-1/4 ounce “Micro Pocket Radio.” Both sets took advantage of micro tubes developed during the war, and were said to retail for under $20.

Those with a smaller budge but some skill with a soldering iron could put together the slightly larger two tube set described in the same issue. It had a built-in loop antenna and used two 3S4 tubes. One tube served as regenerative detector, with the second serving as audio amplifier.

The set was tested initially in Denver, where it easily pulled in all of the local stations with its built-in loop antenna. Out of town stations hit the dial at night, and with an outdoor antenna at night, stations from hundreds of miles away filled the dial.