Pierre H. Boucheron was obviously our kind of people, as evidenced by his article a hundred years ago this month in the May 1920 issue of Electrical Experimenter, entitled “A One Tube Radio-Telegraph and Radio-Phone Transmitter.” It appears that Boucheron was on the cutting edge of radio technology. He starts his article by noting: “Amateurs, do you realize that a great deal of interesting experimenting is at the present day done by many amateurs all over the country employing undampt (in other words, CW, rather than spark) transmission? For the most part this is being accomplisht by the use of one or more vacuum tubes on oscillating circuits well below two hundred meters (in other words, above 1500 kHz). This is possibly one of the reasons why you do not hear them. Another reason is that it is continuous wave and not readily intercepted when ordinary dampt wave receivers are employed.”

He went on to point out that there were hotbeds of such activity in places such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He pointed out that ranges of five miles were easy on 100 meters (3 MHz), and offered a number of circuits to get on the air.

One of the most intriguing is shown above. It’s a single tube regenerative receiver, suitable for pulling in CW signals. But since it can quickly be adjusted to oscillate, a key between the antenna coil and ground would turn it into a transmitter.

Another interesting idea is the one shown at the left. If you own an audion, but your buddy across town doesn’t, it’s possible to turn your undamped CW signals into faux spark signals. A buzzer is simply placed in series with the antenna circuit of your transmitter. When it’s keyed, the antenna is interrupted many times per second. The result is a signal modulated at the frequency of the buzzer, which can be picked up by your buddy with a crystal detector.

These young men are mastering the code, thanks to this inexpensive oscillator featured in the May 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics. The set featured a single 117L7-GT tube and ran straight off the line current. The switch provided a choice of four tones, and there was plenty of volume through either the speaker or headphones.

If you look carefully at this picture, from the May 1960 issue of Electronics Illustrated, you’ll see at the top of the mast a Yagi antenna for 89.55 MHz. The ship is the Cheeta, and flies the Panamanian flag.

The ship is in international waters off the Danish coast, and is serving as the transmitter site for Radio Mercur, a pirate radio station. From studios in Copenhagen, programs were recorded in Danish, Swedish, and English, and brought to the ship anchored in international waters.

According to the magazine, the sale of FM receivers boomed in the ship’s listening area of about 50 miles, with an ERP of about 1500 watts. The Danish government had been unable to silence the station, but this changed a few years later with legislation forbidding anyone in Denmark from cooperating with the broadcasts.

The musician shown here, under the watchful eye of J.S. Bach perched atop her radio, is an early adopter of the electronically amplified guitar. She has a small pickup microphone mounted on the guitar, which is fed into the boosting transformer shown. The output went to the radio’s phono jack, or if it didn’t have one, to the volume control.

The picture to the right, while unrelated, shows a hint that is worth noting. The radio knob had come loose from its shaft. The problem was solved by adding a bit of solder to the shaft to build it up and ensure a tight fit.

The illustration appeared in the April 1940 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Broadcast listeners 80 years ago, while tuning the shortwave dial of their set, might occasionally have heard the sounds of “that fool kid down the block,” namely a ham radio operator, coming through the speaker of their console set. But this article, in the April 13, 1940, issue of Radio Guide reminds listeners that that fool kid was a member of an “old and honorable clan–a clan which, out of its own altruism and persistence, has helped give us the wonderful marvels of radio which today we take so much for granted.”

The article highlighted both the technical tinkering and “ragchewing” done by hams, who, according to the article, averaged 27 years of age.

The article starts with a story that is familiar, but I suspect at least partly apocryphal. A ham in Alaska was working a ham in New Zealand. The ham in Alaska gave a report of 549x. But suddenly, the “sharp dots and dashes faltered, once, twice, then pieced out falteringly. ‘I feel ill ….” Suddenly, the radio went silent.

The ham in New Zealand put out a distress call, and eventually raised a station on the West Coast of the U.S. He put out a call for Alaska, and soon raised another station in the Alaskan ham’s hometown. That ham raced to the house, dragged the unconscious ham outside from the home where he had been suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

No names were given, and the story is almost identical to the one given in the 1939 film Radio Hams, which appears at the bottom of this page.   The story recounted in the film took place “some years ago,” and similarly contains few details.  It does mention the name of the ham, Clyde De Vinna, and there seems to be some corroboration on his Wikipedia entry, although few details of the incident.

The article does identify another ham, Frank Carter, W2AZ, of East Rockaway, Long Island, who maintained daily contact with the Archbold Expedition in New Guinea. Other stations involved in that communication were K4FAY in Puerto Rico, W6LYY, W4DLH, and K6OQE in Hawaii. The magazine recounted a story of W2AZ getting an urgent call from a station in Colobmia looking for information on his children who were ill in a New York hospital.