Seventy years ago this month, the November 1952 issue of Radio News introduced this transmitter for the novice. While the article contained the full details for constructing the set, it was really a kit, the Messner Model 2-CW. According to that company’s 1954 catalog, the kit retailed for $40, plus $5.50 for a plug-in coil for the desired band. Normally, the novice would start out on 80 meters, with the included coil, but as they upgraded, they could buy coils for 40, 20, 15, or 10 meters.

The transmitter used a single 6L6 tube, plus a rectifier, and was self-contained with a built-in power supply. Cathode keying was promised to keep chirp to a minimum.

Seventy-five years ago this month, the cover of Radio Craft magazine for November 1947 showed this Connecticut State Police officer studying traffic speeds courtesy of a radar, the Electro-Matic Speed Meter from Eastern Industries Ltd. of Norwalk, CT.

The complete unit consisted of three parts, the transmitter-receiver with built-in antenna, the indicator-amplifier, and a power supply. The radar used the doppler effect, since the reflection from an incoming object shortened the wavelength, and this could be measured and correlated with speed.

A number of the units were being tested, and the magazine noted that those tests would probably result in the adoption of radar speed control throughout the state.

According to the magazine, Connecticut speeders protesting that they were only doing forty would soon find themselves arguing with radar.

The complete apparatus weighed in at only 45 pounds, and could operate on either 120 volts AC or 6 volts DC. The radar signal on 2455 MHz was about 0.1 watt. The magazine noted that the radar required an FCC station license, but since it was so easy to operate, no operator’s license was required.

Fifty years ago this month, I got some sad news in the mail.

A couple of years earlier, as previously recounted here, I had been perusing the Publishers Clearing House mailing (which contained numerous personal notes written to me by my personal friend, company head honcho Robert H. Treller) and was intrigued by a magazine named Electronics Illustrated.  I subscribed, and I think the magazine was one of the main things that spurred my interest in radio and all things electronic.

In fact, I even got my name in the magazine, as one of the finalists in the magazine’s “Win the World” contest, for submitting QSL card from shortwave and broadcast stations I had heard, as shown here in the March 1972 issue.  I actually hadn’t submitted that many cards, and I was a little bit surprised that I had done as well as I had.  And I was just a little bit proud to be a ten year old with my name in a national magazine.  I figured the next year, I’d be able to easily win a valuable prize by employing a slightly better strategy.

But unfortunately, there would be no next year.  Fifty years ago, the magazine delivered the sad news shown above, in the magazine’s November 1972 issue, which was to be the last.  The magazine put the best spin on it as possible, and announced it as a “merger” with Mechanix Illustrated.  But I knew better.  I predicted that the “Electronics Illustrated” name would soon disappear completely, and it did.  They had to placate us loyal subscribers by sending something, and they did it by continuing the subscription with Mechanix Illustrated.  That was a good magazine, but it wasn’t the same.

The editor seemed to even concede this, in the full announcement buried deep in the last issue, in which he conceded that he would “miss the club-like atmosphere and special insider’s language.”  He hit the nail on the head.  I felt like I was a member of the club and had learned a new insider’s language, but now the club was to be disbanded.  Bad news on the doorstep, indeed.

A hundred years ago, radio was sweeping the nation, and the Sunday Amarillo (Texas) Daily News for October 29, 1922, had to devote an entire pictorial page to the phenomenon. Bread trucks were getting equipped with radio, voices were heard across the Atlantic, and everything seemed to revolve around radio.