Category Archives: Radio history

September 15 1945 Florida Hurricane

Miami Daily News, Sept. 16, 1945.

Miami Daily News, Sept. 16, 1945.

Seventy years ago today, September 15, 1945, a hurricane made landfall in Key Largo and then swept across Miami and Homestead, Florida. It was a Category 4 storm, and winds of 145 mph were clocked at Homestead Army Air Corps Base. Most of the city of Homestead was destroyed, and at Richmond Naval Air Station, a fire ignited during the storm burned down three hangars. 1632 homes were destroyed in Florida, and there were four deaths.

Amateur radio had not yet returned to the air after V-J Day, but hams were still available to help, since they formed the core of the War Emergency Radio Service, which had been formed during the War to allow hams to provide emergency communications for both civil defense and during natural disasters.

The November 1945 issue of QST reported “September Hurricane Finds Miami WERS Ready.” The Dade County civil defense operated under the call sign of WKNW, which used hams to link ten district headquarters stations to the main control station on the roof of the fifteen-story Technical Vocational Building. A Red Cross mobile disaster unit was also equipped with radio, as were a number of privately owned mobile units. Operations began as soon as the wind subsided enough for operators to get to their designated stations.

At the peak of the storm, all lines to the civil defense headquarters were down, and the WERS station, manned by hams and powered by an emergency generator, was the only link. When the phone line to Jackson Memorial Hospital went out, one of the mobiles was dispatched to that location, and contact was re-established in fifteen minutes.

When it was clear that Homestead had suffered damage, a convoy of vehicles set out from civil defense headquartrs. The antenna at headquarters had been repeatedly destroyed, and a temporary antenna was set up inside, with only limited range. Since it couldn’t reach Homestead, one of the mobile hams in the convoy backtracked until reliable communications was established. However, with the 2-1/2 meter equipment in use, it was not possible for that station to reach all the way to Homestead. It wasn’t until the third day that a reliable link was established between Miami and Homestead, after which a considerable amount of traffic flowed.

Singled out for praise were W4NB, W4AFF, W1KVB, W4CFC, w1JMT, and W4ANP, along with two other hams who were licensed after Pearl Harbor and hence had no amateur call sign.  Of those calls, the only one where I could find any later reference was Francis W. Jenard, W1JMT, who died in 1999, according to a QST Silent Key listing.  He was a member of the ARRL A-1 Operators Club, and you can see his 1963 QSL card at this link.

 

 

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Radio Goes to School, 1925

RadioSchool1925a

Ninety years ago, radio went to school, and these Kansas schoolchildren were starting their day by doing their morning calisthenics under the direction of Mike Ahearn, athletic director of the Kansas State Agricultural College. (Ahearn carefully avoided the word “exercise,” since he knew the children had been up for hours and had walked a mile or more to school.)  The same scene could be played out in any of the state’s 9000 country schools, but Ahearn was behind the microphone of the college’s radio station, KSAC in Manhattan.

RadioSchool1925bBy September 1925, when these pictures appeared in Radio in the Home magazine, a good percentage of those schools had already been equipped with receivers, and plans were in place to add a radio set to all of them.  In the photo shown here, the antenna is mounted to the school’s belfry, and it is powered by the teacher’s Model T parked outside.

The college’s director of radio extension, Sam Pickard, was doing more with radio than just morning calistenics. The sets would be in place for Kansas farmers to attend statewide radio meetings of farm organizations, and they could be used on Sundays to receive church service broadcasts.  Pickard’s vision for radio saw him appointed two years later by President Coolidge as one of the first five commissioners of the Federal Radio Commission.

KSAC had first come on the air on December 1, 1924, broadcasting with 500 watts on 880 kHz. In 1928, it moved to 580 kHz. In 1929, the Topeka Daily Capital wanted to start a radio station, and asked the college whether it could share the frequency. Since the college couldn’t afford to keep its station on the air 24 hours a day, it quickly came to terms, and was able to boost its power to 5000 watts to match the new station, WIBW.

By the 1980’s, the college had been known as Kansas State University for 30 years, and KSAC got around to requesting call letters that would match the University’s name. However, the call letters KKSU had been assigned to a ship, and even though the ship was mothballed, the owner wasn’t willing to relinquish them. So the station became KEXT (Kansas Extension) for a time until finally getting the KKSU call letters.

Over the years, the commercial station, had tried to buy out the college station, but the college refused. It wasn’t until 2001 that they had relented. WIBW had carried Wildcat football, and the University was planning on moving it to another station. WIBW used the opportunity to point out a clause its 1969 contract with the University. In exchange for allowing WIBW to carry the games, the college had been allowed to extend its operating hours by an additional 15 minutes each weekday. Finally, the University agreed to sell out for $1.5 million. The games would go to the other station, and KKSU would sign off for the last time in November, 2002,

Kansas wasn’t alone in putting radio receivers in the schools. Radio was already installed in schools in Cleveland, Ohio, and the superintendant predicted that within a few years, American schoolchildren would be receiving ten percent of their lessons by radio. Some of the big stations were involved. For example, KGO was broadcasting to the schools in Oakland, California, and WLS in Chicago was broadcasting “Uncle Ben” Darrow’s Little Red Schoolhouse into 150 schools in Cook County, Illinois, and was also popular at schools in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

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Allied “Tiny Knight” Model B10509 & B10510, 1941

 

1941Allied4TubeIn an earlier post, we showed an inexpensive 1940 four-tube broadcast radio for $7.95 available at Walgreen’s. A modest radio such as this one would probably stay in service until the end of the War, because on April 22, 1942, the War Production board ended the production of civilian radio receivers. So if you had a radio, that’s the one you would have for the duration.

Shown here is probably one of the least expensive prewar receivers of all. This model, the “Tiny Knight” from Allied Radio is shown here in the 1941 Allied catalog, and had a catalog price starting at $5.30. It measured 6-1/2 by 4-1/4 by 4-1/2 inches and weighed four pounds, and was billed as being something that you could hold in the “palm of your hand.” It was marketed as a second radio, or for travel: “It’s so small you can pack it into any size suit-case or overnight bag and take it along when you travel.” But it was also billed as being “so low-priced that anyone can afford it.” At the tail end of the depression, it’s likely that more than a few households had a set similar to this one as their only radio. And with the ban on the manufacture of new radios, quite a few of these sets were what many families depended upon for war news.

The set’s four tubes consisted of a 12K7GT RF amplifier, 12J7GT detector, and 50L6GT audio amplifier, with a 35Z5GT serving as the rectifier. It tuned as high as 1720 kHz, making it capable of picking up police calls in many areas.

This set was a TRF (tuned radio frequency) receiver. On the same page, Allied showed its least expensive superhet, a five-tube model starting at $8.30.

The four-tube set was Allied model B10509 or B10510, depending on the cabinet.

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1940: FCC Announces NARBA Rules

BC091540

Saturday, March 29, 1941, was a big day in broadcasting in the North America. At 3:00 AM Eastern Time, most of the broadcast stations in the United States had to change frequency, due to the North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA).  The agreement was signed in Havana in 1937 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1938. The ratification stipulated that it should take effect a year after the treaty was ratified by four of the participating countries, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States.

The treaty was necessitated mostly by the powerful Mexican “border blaster” stations which operated on the same frequencies as U.S. stations and caused considerable interference. For example, an earlier post details how Chicago’s WCFL suffered interference from XEAW in Reynosa, Mexico.

Mexico had no incentive to deal with the situation, since it had never been assigned any “clear channel” stations on which these powerful stations could operate. The interference was Uncle Sam’s problem, and Mexico had no reason to fix it. As an incentive, NARBA gave Mexico its own clear channels on 800, 900, 1050, 1220, 1550, and 1570 kilocycles. The rest of North America agreed to keep these channels clear for Mexico. And in return, Mexico would limit its superpower stations to those channels.

The make room for the new channels, the broadcast band was expanded. It had previously run from 550 to 1500 kHz. The new band would extend from 540 to 1600 kHz, where it remained until 1990 when the top of the band was expanded to 1700 kHz.

As a result of the change, 777 of the country’s 862 standard broadcast stations got their orders to move. In most cases, the stations moved up the dial. Near the bottom of the dial, the move was generally up 10 kHz. Toward the top of the dial, most stations moved up 40 kHz. For example, WCCO in Minneapolis moved from 810 kHz to its present spot on the dial at 830.

Over the next few months, there was a great deal of activity. Transmitters would need some tuning during the early morning hours of March 29. But the most pressing matter was new crystals, and the change put a strain on the country’s crystal manufacturers. Since most stations had a spare, stations were encouraged to buy the spare from an existing station on their new frequency and to sell their own spare to a station moving in. For broadcast engineers, the night of March 28, 1941, would be a busy one.

Radio dealers could also take advantage of an opportunity for some business. It was estimated that there were ten million sets in use with pushbutton tuning. The September 15, 1940, issue of Broadcasting
pointed out that a service call to reset the buttons should cost about $2, although any listener “who can read and handle a screw-driver” should be able to do the job. As the months went on, many radio dealers sought to capitalize on the opportunity to visit customers’ homes, and perhaps sell a new set while they were there.

On this day 75 years ago, September 11, 1945, the FCC announced the new channels. The headline shown above is from the September 15, 1940, issue of Broadcasting.  It marked the start of a six-month frenzy to make the necessary changes.

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Book Review: The Knowledge by Lewis Dartnell

WikiReader.

My website contains a review of the WikiReader. This little device set me back about $20. It’s apparently no longer available on Amazon, but there do seem to be examples available on eBay and elsewhere. It’s a small battery-operated device that contains in its internal memory (with some limitations) the full contents of the English language Wikipedia.

In other words, it contains what its manufacturer called “the Internet without the Internet.” If you’re transported back in time, if you get stranded on another planet or on Gilligan’s Island, or if the world suffers TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It), you’ll no longer have access to the Internet, but you’ll have a pretty good summary of just about any subject. The batteries of the WikiReader will eventually go dead, but before that happens, all you need to do is find the Wikipedia article on the history of the battery, take some good notes, and you’ll be able to whip yourself up a new one when the time comes. Once you’re settled in in your new era, you find an interesting article such as the one on the electrical telegraph, put together a prototype, and then make arrangements to demonstrate it to Julius Caesar or Louis XIV.

The WikiReader has a number of practical limitations, and I rarely use it. But it’s carefully put away just in case I’m involved in inadvertent time travel. In my pocket, I have the important knowledge of the 21st century. If I accidentally get stuck in a time warp, I’m going to make the best of the situation.

It appears that I’m not the only one who thinks that way. I recently got an e-mail from Amazon stating that customers who bought the WikiReader also bought a book with the intriguing title The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm by Lewis Dartnell. The book is available in the usual places, such as Amazon, amazon.ca in Canada, or your local library.

As the title suggests, the book is written for the benefit of some future inhabitant of Earth who needs to reconstruct (or “reboot” as  author Dartnell calls it) civilization after some sort of cataclysm.  The first chapter suggests some possible sources of the disaster, and the second chapter discusses the “grace period.”  After some types of disasters, such as a pandemic (such as happened in Earth Abides by George Stewart or in my own novel Caretaker), the survivors of the disaster have at their disposal the spoils of the earlier civilization.  It’s a relatively simple matter to eat canned food, set up generators, and take advantage of what was left behind.  In some cases, such as pandemic, that grace period might extend for generations.  In other cases, such as nuclear war, there will be fewer benefits available from the earlier civilization, and survivors will need to get to work right away tending to their immediate needs.

Dartnell doesn’t dwell a great deal on the grace period, since he correctly notes that numerous other survival manuals have been written.  What he spends most of his time talking about is rebuilding a technological civilization after the grace period has ended.  With a few exceptions (such as how to make soap), he doesn’t provide enough detail about any given technology in order to show exactly how they’re done.  But Dartnell does give enough clues in order to point survivors in the right direction.

For example, in the section on radio communication, he describes how to build a crystal radio, and he gives enough detail to allow the future archaeologist to recreate one.  He gives some of the theory, but no unnecessary theory.  In our current timeline, for example, it probably would have been impossible for society to come up with radio without first having an understanding of Maxwell’s Equations.  Instead, Dartnell gives only enough theory to make the thing work.  After building a few radios, the post-apocalyptic society would eventually come up with Maxwell’s Equations on its own.  So future history would follow the same general course, but in the opposite order from ours in some instances.

In addition to the plans for the receiver, Dartnell also gives enough detail so that someone could probably come up with a workable spark-gap transmitter.  I think the stumbling block for the future inventor would be coming up with an earphone sensitive enough to work with the receiver described.  Armed with theory in our own civilization, the telephone was created first, which gave the required prior technology.  Dartnell does qualitatively describe both a magnetic and piezoelectric earphone, but either one would require a great deal of trial and error.  In our own history, a skilled inventor would know enough theory to realize that sound would come out of a telephone receiver if hooked up properly.  If it didn’t work the first time, he would eventually figure out that he needed to make it more sensitive by adding more windings to the coil.  The post-apocalyptic inventor would have more trial and error.  But if he or she had enough faith in the book (perhaps because he knew that the soapmaking description was correct), that might provide the incentive to keep experimenting.  (Dartnell does provide the future inventor with Edison’s admonition that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.)

Similarly, Dartnell gives enough clues to invent the triode tube.  There isn’t nearly enough detail to make one, but he tells just enough about the Edison effect so that a gifted future scientist could verify it, and some hints as to how this effect could be harnessed to provide amplification.  Dartnell mentions in passing that oscillation is possible, although I hope the future scientist figures out that feedback is necessary in order to get the thing to produce radio signals.

In order to jump-start science, Dartnell provides a few simple experiments to prove non-intuitive concepts, such as the Earth spinning on its axis (Foucault’s Pendulum) and revolving around the sun (stars rising four minutes earlier each night).   In case the surviving society has lost track of time, he shows how to establish the year, either by the proper motion of Barnard’s Star or changes in the night sky due to the Earth’s axial precession.  The book contains convenient charts showing the reader the year (as well as a map and picture to locate the Svalbard Global Seed Vault).

In short, the future reader will get a lot of useful information from this book.  In most cases, the ideas contained in the book will need additional details, but Dartnell points the future inventor on the right path for either experimentation, or at least a clue as to which ancient texts he or she should try to recover.  (The book contains an extensive bibliography to help the future inventor in that quest.)

Chances are, nobody would read a book entitled, “The History of Science and Technology.”  But when you get to the end, you realize that’s exactly what you read.  In detailing the easiest course for future civilization, he necessarily recreates our own.  There will, of course, be some differences.  For example, most readily accessible deposits of fossil fuels will be gone for the next civilization.  But he offers a number of workarounds.  And since the current nitrate supplies of our early civilization (see The Guano Islands Act for an interesting discussion of a seemingly mundane commodity) are also depleted, he goes into more detail regarding the relatively simple chemistry required to fix nitrogen from the air.  On the other hand, aluminum requires a great deal of industry to refine.  But in the case of a future society, even hundreds of thousands of years in the future, our dumps will provide ample mines of high-grade ore that will need little more than melting down and re-casting.

In short, if you bought a WikiReader after reading my review, then, yes, Amazon was right.  You’ll want a copy of Dardnell’s book as well.

More information, including a discussion forum, is at the book’s website:  the-knowledge.org

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USA:                              Canada:

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KGEI, GE’s Shortwave Station

KGEI

Photo courtesy of John Schneider and Bay Area Radio Museum. Used with permission.

Seventy five years ago, this date’s issue of Radio Guide magazine concluded a two-part feature on GE’s short wave station KGEI.  Part 1 appeared in the August 31, 1940 issue, and part two appeared on September 7.

The station was owned and operated by General Electric and went on the air in San Francisco in March 1939. Short wave broadcasting was not new to GE. It first put a short wave signal on the air with station W2XAF in Schenectady, New York. That station later became WGEO. The next year, another transmitter was installed at the same site with call letters W2XAD, later WGEA. By 1940, WGEO was transmitting with 100,000 watts and was the world’s most powerful station. The two stations were popular with listeners in Europe and Latin America.

Golden Gate International Exposition, 1929-40. Wikipedia image.

Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-40. Wikipedia image.

By 1940, KGEI was running 20,000 watts, but there were plans to increase it to 50,000. The Schenectady stations operated on 9.53, 15.33, and 21.5 MHz. KGEI broadcast on 9.67 and 15.33 MHz, and provided an additional signal to Latin America as well as Asia and Oceania. The station, both studio and transmitter, was part of GE’s exhibit at the Golden Gate International Exposition, and was located on Treasure Island, between San Francisco and Oakland. The Island was also to serve as a terminus for Pan American‘s Clipper ships, and the station was used to promote Pan American as well as GE. According to the article, “one of the most interesting and colorful programs is ‘Clipper Departure.’ This program is a dockside complementary describing the actual departure of the China Clipper for Hawaii, Guam and points westward. The captain and various members of the crew of the Clipper are interviewed, each contributing some bit about the interesting aerial journeys to and fro across the Pacific. Passengers ready to embark give their reactions as they prepare to set forth on their fascinating trip. The program concludes with the roar of the Clipper’s motors as it moves down the ramp and into the bay off to Hawaii on the first leg of its voyage to Manila and Hong Kong.”

THe station had a studio on the Exposition grounds, and it also carried network programming, such as Burns and Allen, Bing Crosby, and the Don Ameche Show.

Photo courtesy of xxxxx. Used with permission.

Photo courtesy of John Schneider and Bay Area Radio Museum. Used with permission.

The picture at the top of the page was taken in late 1939, and bears the KGEI call letters.  The picture of the transmitter and enclosed studio at the left was taken earlier in the year and shows the W6XBE call sign.  The public was allowed to be in the same room as the 50 kW transmitter, separated only by a flimsy guardrail.

After the Exposition, the station continued operation.  During the War, it remained under GE’s control, but at the request of the Government, did carry programming that was recommended.

The station was widely listened to, especially in the Phillipines. Many resistance fighters listened to the station,, which included broadcast in Tagalog. In 1954-55, the station carried broadcasts from Stanford University, billed as “The International University of the Air.” During that period, the University received 12,000 letters from listeners in Latin America.

In 1960, the station was acquired by the Far East Broadcasting Company, a religious broadcaster. Even though FEBC operated other stations in Asia and the Pacific, KGEI was directed mostly to Latin America, billing itself as La Voz de la Amistad (The Voice of Friendship). During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the station once again put under Government control. In fact, a Cuban listener wrote to the station in 1962, and his letter included the exact positions and descriptions of Russian missile sites. This hadn’t been publicized in the world press yet, but KGEI decided to reproduce this interesting letter in one of its fundraising letters. Unbenknownst to KGEI, that mailing list included the CIA, which hastily arranged a meeting and asked that such letters be made available to them prior to making them public.

A few months later, presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger called and informed the station that the President was requesting use of the station to rebroadcast the VOA. The station was reluctant, since it valued its voice as being independent of the U.S. Government. But FEBC was eventually convinced of the need to “volunteer” the station, and it carried VOA programming during the crisis.

KGEI remained on the air until 1994. The original 50 kW GE transmitter was donated to another Christian organization organization for use in Liberia. However, it was destroyed by rebels prior to going on the air. The station’s then main transmitter, capable of 250 kW, was donated to another organization for use in broadcasting to Russia from Alaska.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank John Schneider and the Bay Area Radio Museum for allowing me to use the photos shown on this page, and for providing much of the information for this post.  More information about KGEI can be found on the Museum’s website.

References 

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Hurricane Betsy, 1965

Hurricane Betsy satellite image, 4 Sept 1965. Wikipedia photo.

Hurricane Betsy satellite image, 4 Sept 1965. Wikipedia photo.

Fifty years ago today, Hurricane Betsy started bearing down on the United States. On August 27, 1965, the storm formed as a tropical depression off the coast of French Guiana and started moving northwesterly. It caused only minimal damage to the Leeward Islands before heading over open waters for several days. It achieved hurricane intensity on August 30. On September 5, 1965, the hurricane stalled over the Bahamas, where it inflicted the worst damage since 1929, before resuming a westward track. It made its initial landfall in Key Largo, Florida, before reemerging in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where it continued to gain strength.

Flooding in New Orleans. Wikipedia photo.

Flooding in New Orleans. Wikipedia photo.

On early September 10, it made landfall again near Houma and Grand Isle, Louisiana, with winds of 155 mph. The eyewall was in the New Orleans area for over eight hours, with winds in the range of 120 mph. It caused a strom surge into Lake Pontchartrain and considerable flooding and levee breaches in New Orleans, lasting ten days. Near Baton Rouge, the storm caused the sinking of a barge loaded with enough chlorine to kill 40,000 people, necessitating mass evacuations in the harbor area.  In New Orleans, most antennas were down, and 90% of the city was without power.

The November, 1965, issue of QST reported on how Radio Amateurs responded to the storm. K5AOE set up on the 8th floor of City Hall, where considerable traffic was handled on 75 meters. This included health and welfare traffic, and also a dedicated medical net. Fifteen mobile stations, each assigned to a doctor, were set up at shelters, and there was constant traffic as conditions were reported and medical supplies requested. The FCC declared a communications emergency for the duration.

The Hurricane Watch Net was formed informally during Hurricane Betsy as stations came on the air to provide communications to and from affected areas. Since then, the net has continued to operate with a more formal structure any time a hurricane is within 300 miles of projecte landfall or otherwise threatening any populated area.

 

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Don Wallace, W6AM, and WCCO Radio

DonWallace1925I always knew that reknowned Amateur Radio operator Don Wallace, W6AM, had a background in Minnesota radio history. For example, I knew that he was involved with the University of Minnesota Amateur Radio Club, and I knew that he was involved with the Minnesota Wireless Association, whose antenna was a prominent feature on Minneapolis City Hall in 1915.

But I never knew the role that he played in the founding of WCCO radio. His role is detailed in a profile of WCCO which appeared in the September 1925 issue of Radio in the Home.

An earlier post recounts how WCCO first came on the air in October 1924. Its predecessor, WLAG, first came on the air in 1922. One of the problems encountered by WLAG before its demise was the transmitter location. The 500 watt transmitter was located in the city. When it was on the air, it made listening to more distant stations impossible. But when it was off the air, the listeners with crystal sets weren’t able to get anything. When a major investor in WLAG pulled its support, the station was off the air.

A group called the “Northwest Radio Trade Association” took the lead in getting a new station on the air. Obviously, the lack of a radio station put a dent in radio sales. In particular, without a local station, crystal set owners were left with nothing to listen to.

By this time, Wallace was employed by General Electric. As he recounted in a 1984 interview, when offered a position right out of college, he was offered a salary of $100 per month. He noted that his wife made more than that as a teacher, and that he could make more working as a telegrapher. GE was unwilling to budge very much, but they upped the offer to $125, and also offered him 1% of his department’s sales. Within a few months, he was making more than the company’s president.

Wallace was also the president of the Northwest Radio Trade Association in 1924, and took the lead in organizing a new station for the Twin Cities. Along with the group’s secretary, H.H. Cory, he proposed a more powerful 5000 watt station about 20 miles away from the Twin Cities. This would result in a signal powerful enough for the crystal set owners, but far enough away so as to allow owners of more powerful sets to pick up distant stations.

The plan met with some initial skepticism, as local businessmen noted that the area couldn’t support 500 watt WLAG, and they were hesitant about investing in a 5000 watt station. But eventually, Washburn-Crosby pledged to buy the station, provided that additional subscriptions of $50,000 per year from both Minneapolis and St. Paul could be secured.

WCCO transmitter site in about 1930.

WCCO transmitter site in about 1930.

As proposed by Wallace, the transmitter was located away from both Minneapolis and St. Paul, at its current site in Anoka. Studios were located in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, and to avoid any rivalries, announcers alternated announcing the location as “Minneapolis-St. Paul” and “St. Paul-Minneapolis.”

WCCO Minneapolis studio, Nicollet Hotel, 1925.

WCCO Minneapolis studio, Nicollet Hotel, 1925.

Wallace graduated from high school in 1912. He first became involved in amateur radio in 1910, prior to licensing, and got his first license in about 1912. He is listed in the 1913 call book as 6OC at 1431 Linden Avenue, Long Beach, California.

He served as a radio operator during World War I, and after the war, was assigned to serve as the radio operator for President Wilson at Versailles. He came to Minnesota after the war to attend the University of Minnesota. In Minnesota, he was licensed as 9XAX and 9ZT. In the 1922 call book, he is also listed as 9DR at 1830 Stevens Avenue in Minneapolis.

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1945 “Tom Thumb” Crystal Set

1945SeptPMXtalSetSeventy years ago, the September 1945 issue of Popular Mechanics carried the plans for this “Tom Thumb” crystal set, about the size of a match box. The circuit was very basic, with no variable condenser, instead using a simple slider across the coil to tune. The coil was flattened, and wound on a 5/8 by 1-9/16 by 2-5/8 inch block of wood. It notes that this block is recessed at one end to take a small fixed detector. For a modern replication, a diode could easily be used, with many sources for obtaining it noted on my crystal set parts page.

1945SeptPMXtalSet2The article notes that the block should be baked in a moderate oven before winding the coil, presumably to drive out moisture. The slider is made of a partially flattened Fahnestock clip, and the “cabinet” is constructed of cardboard. The outside contains four more Fahnestock clips for the antenna, ground, and headphones. The article notes that in areas with a strong station, about 20 feet of wire tossed on the floor should give adequate reception, with a spring clip attached to a convenient ground.

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WOI, Ames, Iowa, 1925

WOI operating room, 1925.

WOI operating room, 1925.

Ninety years ago, the September 1925 issue of Radio Age carried a profile of radio station WOI, at Iowa State College (now Iowa State University) in Ames, Iowa. In 1925, the station’s focus was clearly on the farmer, and the article notes that the station was “maintained for the farmer by men who have practical farm experience.” The station began operating as WOI in May 1922. Programming included market reports, seasonal lectures of interest to farmers, and weather reports. Entertainment programs included both classical and popular music.

Even prior to the station being licensed as WOI, Iowa State College was a hotbed of radio activity. Even before World War I, weather reports had been broadcast by station 9YI, the predecessor of W0YI, the University’s Amateur Radio club station.

The article notes that the college offered an annual course in radio construction “which has enabled the farmer and especially the boys and girls on the farm to build their own sets.” At one such course, held annually in April, more than 500, from Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and Nebraska, descended on the campus to take part in the free course. In addition to the construction of broadcast sets, there was instruction in Amateur Radio, offered by students connected with Amateur station 9LC.

The station then operated on 270 meters (1111 kHz) with a power of 500 watts. The antenna consisted of wire aerials connected to a water tank and massive smoke stack 150 yards apart.

WOI is currently the flagship station of the Iowa Public Radio network. It’s 640 kHz signal (5000 watts daytime, 1000 watts nighttime) covers most of the state of Iowa during daylight hours, as well as good portions of adjoining states.

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