Shown here, a hundred years ago today, in the Washington Evening Star, March 9, 1923, is film star Jackie Coogan, talking from WGY radio in Schenectady, NY. The device shown is the pallophotophone, used for recording sound on film.
Uncle Fester. Wikipedia image.
If the actor’s name rings a bell, it’s because he went on to play Uncle Fester in the Addams Family. Perhaps his trademark image with the lightbulb in his mouth was inspired by the pallophotophone.
The March issue of Popular Mechanics typically carried the plans for a receiver dubbed the “Little Giant,” and despite the war, the March 1943 issue was no exception. The couple shown above are putting the finishing touches on the set.
Wartime parts shortages were taken into consideration, and the set could be constructed with many parts found in the junk box. For example, the coils were wound on the cardboard forms retrieved from an old flashlight battery.
The circuit was a simple 3-tube TRF set, using a 12K7GT as RF amplifier, 12J7GT detector, and a 70L7GT AF amplifier driving a PM speaker. With a good antenna, the set would pull in stations a thousand miles away, but still had good selectivity for use even in a city with many stations.
A hundred years ago this month, the March 1923 issue of Popular Mechanics carried this self-explanatory idea for a homemade variable capacitor. A glass test tube serves as the dialectric, and the “rotor” is a brass tube sized to just fit over the tube. The stator is foil lining the inside of the tube.
With the dimensions shown here, the capacitance was said to be about 500 pF, which would prove useful for many radio circuits.
As promised, here are the answers to yesterday’s quiz, from the March 1963 issue of Popular Electronics.
Today’s quiz is from 60 years ago, the March 1963 issue of Popular Electronics. Can you match up the names with the drawings?
Answers will appear tomorrow.
This picture appeared 70 years ago today in the March 2, 1953, issue of Life magazine.
The gentleman in the center is A.W. Shackleford, the mayor of Lethbridge, Alberta. He is demonstrating the importance of using grounded outlets, or at least polarized plugs. He was speaking into one microphone, addressing 800 Valentine’s Day dancers. A local radio station was covering the event, and being a politician, he grabbed that microphone as well.
Unfortunately, a “difference in grounding systems” between the two systems caused there to be a difference of 50 volts through the two mike stands. Undoubtedly, one or both of the two systems had one lead of the power connection attached directly (or through some resistance, hence there only being 50 volts present) to the chassis. All is well if that’s the neutral lead of the electric wire. But one of the two systems had the hot side of the power lead hooked to the chassis.
A radio announcer (left) and alderman tried to pull His Worship the Mayor away from the mikes, but the current froze him in place, and he was not freed until the power was disconnected. He survived the incident, and went on to win future terms as mayor.
For a snapshot of what was on the radio a hundred years ago today, here’ the radio page from the February 28, 1923, issue of the Washington Evening Star. Click on the image for a larger version.
If you ever had an old radio with a switch marked “marine band,” then perhaps you could have heard what was being played on NAA at 8 PM, namely, a concert by the U.S. Marine Band, concluding with the National Anthem, right before the 10:05 PM weather report.
If your set could pull in Philadelphia, then there was a bedtime story at 7:10 PM. If you missed that one, maybe you could get the one from Chicago at 7:50.
If you were in the market for a radio or phonograph 60 years ago, you could pick up one of these at the local drug store, although the ad admonished you not to call it that.
Shown here are the GE Model 1530 stereo phonograph, and models C465 and C467, and models C433 and C434 clock radios. The radios are typical “All American Five” circuits. Come to think of it, my first ever radio of my very own was a similar model (but without the clock) also purchased from a local drug store.
The ad appeared in the Washington Evening Star, February 27, 1963.
We’ve previously discussed the War Emergency Radio Service (WERS), a wartime civil defense service set up to harness the talents of amateur radio operators who were otherwise off the air for the duration of World War II.
Eighty years ago this month, the February 1943 issue of Radio Retailing takes a look at how the local radio dealer might fill part of the need in supplying equipment and expertise. The illustration shown above is a mobile repair facility, and undoubtedly some of the personnel shown here service radios as their civilian job as well.
In addition to radio operators, a role likely filled by hams, the dealers might fit into one of five other categories: Maintenance, procurement, construction, repair, and training.
The students shown here are now almost 100 years old, but 85 years ago, they were learning about the atmosphere in science class. These students, Marian Oakley, Henry Kehrer, Hannah Esterman, and Bruce Kunkel, were receiving instruction in person from science specialist Harry A. Carpenter, but hundreds of other students were taking part in the same class by radio, on station WHAM.
For several years, the Rochester, NY, schools had been conducting this sort of distance learning via radio. Afternoons, radios would be switched on in classrooms both in and outside of Rochester, and students would get their lectures by radio. Lessons could include well known guest speakers, music programs featuring the Rochester Civic Orchestra, and programs on books presented by the Rochester Public Library. The photo shown here appeared in the February 1938 issue of Rural Radio, and the students shown here attended Frank Fowler Dow School No. 52.