Seventy-five years ago, the gentleman shown here wanted one of the new soldering guns, but didn’t want to pay the high prices they were then commanding. So he did what anyone would have done, namely, make his own. He started with a power transformer, and removed the secondary windings by cutting them with a hacksaw, leaving the primary winding in place. He then added a new secondary winding of Number 4 stranded wire, with enough turns to provide a voltage of 1/2 volt. Since the voltage was stepped down by a factor of 240, the secondary current was stepped up by the same amount, which was short circuited through a 12 gauge copper wire, which served as the heating element. The author reported that in 10 seconds, the tip was ready to be tinned.

Fortunately, today, the costs are low enough that it’s not necessary to make your own tool. As you can see below, equivalent soldering guns are quite reasonably priced. And for those of us who prefer an old-school iron, the cost can be even lower.

The plans appeared in Radio Craft, August 1947.

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Shown here, 75 years ago, is the assembly line of Templetone Radio Mfg. Corporation. The picture appeared on the cover of Radio News, August 1947, which noted that postwar radio sales were at an all-time high, and that this assembly line was typical of the activity of radio plants throughout the country.

The factory was located at 100 Garfield Avenue, New London, CT. The building still stands, and is shown below. It was built in 1920 and originally known as the Edward Bloom Silk Mill.
The building, judging from the Google street view below, appears vacant, but is apparently in the process of being converted to housing.

Sixty years ago this month, the August 1962 issue of the British Practical Wireless carried the plans for this handsome set, dubbed the “Atlantic S.W. Two” The two-tube regenerative set was designed for 15-40 meters, but with plug-in coils, the range could be extended. It was said to give good performance and was easy to construct. Also shown was an AC power supply, with transformer, which kept the headphones isolated from the high voltages, and rendered the set safe.

Seventy-five years ago, if you wanted to be the first on your block with a receiver for the new postwar FM band, you couldn’t go wrong with the Model FM-7 receiver kit from the Radio Kits Company, 120 Cedar Street, New York.

The set was complete with speaker, but there was also provision to use the set as a tuner to feed a separate hi-fi amplifier. The RF section was pretuned at the factory.

This ad appeared in the August 1947 issue of Radio Craft.  You can find a schematic of the set at this link.

And if you want to put together your own FM radio today (and practice your soldering skills at the same time), you can’t go wrong with the Elenco kit shown here.

And if Junior wants in on the fun, then the Snap Circuits FM receiver shown below can be put together by kids of any age. The manufacturer recommends it for kids over 8 years old, but as long as Junior knows not to eat the parts, it should be fine.

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Starting about a hundred years ago, radio was becoming very much a rural phenomenon, as shown by this cover illustration from the August 1922 issue of Radio News.

For an interesting scholarly look at radio’s impact on rural America, see the article “Radio in the 1920s: A Social Force in South Dakota,” by Reynold M. Wik, South Dakota History, Vol. 11, p. 94 (1981).

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This handsome one-tube six-meter transceiver made its debut 60 years ago this month, in the August 1962 issue of Popular Electronics.  The set was put together by author Michael Robbins, K6OAH, who reported that from his Los Angeles location, during a band opening, the set was able to pull in signals from the Mexican to the Canadian border. The transmitter put out a respectable 2 watts.

The secret of the design was the 6EZ8 triple triode. On receive, it allowed one stage of RF amplification before the superregenerative receiver, which probably meant that the receiver didn’t radiate an annoying signal. The set ran on AC power, although it included two flashlight batteries to power the carbon microphone.

Shown here from a hundred years ago is one of the first examples of a radio-phonograph combination. According to the August 1922 issue of Popular Mechanics, the set was a one-control radio receiver with a super-amplifier (using three tubes to accomplish what had previously required five) mounted in the cabinet of a console phonograph. The radio was connected to the phonograph’s horn, and no ground or antenna connection was required, thanks to a special loop antenna.

With a single control, the owner simply tuned the set to the correct wavelength.

Seventy years ago this month, the August 1952 issue of Popular Mechanics showed how to build this extremely compact broadcast receiver. The set was named “The Salesman’s Pal,” as it was designed to meet the needs of the “honest-to-goodness salesman–on the road most of the time,” although it was also suitable for the once-a-year vacationer.

The set was a typical “All-American-Five” AC-DC set, but was small enough to conveniently slip inside a briefcase. Two recently available parts made the small size possible. The first was a Centralab Audet PC-150 printed circuit unit, which we might today call a predecessor of the integrated circuit, as it contained several resistors and capacitors in the same package. The other, which became ubiquitous in later portable radios, was the “Ferri-Loopstick,” a ferrite core antenna coil.

The article pointed out that while the set was not difficult to build, the limited space meant that it was not intended for beginners.