A hundred years ago, the New York Sun for June 14, 1914 reported on the beginnings of the ARRL.

The article announces that “H.P. Maxim, who invented a silencer, hopes he has invented a communicator.” It outlines Maxim’s plan, which is generally what the ARRL accomplished soon thereafter. “The scheme is to get all the amateur wireless operators of the country, and they exist by the hundreds of thousands, interested in transmitting messages from coast to coast.” Maxim is quoted that the proposal is to “select those stations which are able to transmit from fifty to 100 miles and which are kept in perfect running order. And then all stations in the league which we are forming, to be known as the American Radio Relay League, will at a predetermined hour ‘listen in.’ That hour will probably be 7:30 each evening.”

Maxim points out that the intention is “to make this thing strictly amateur. The messages are to be relayed by courtesy. There will be no fees for receiving, delivering or relaying the messages. No money transaction of any kind is to be considered in connection with the league.”

He also notes that the Government is likely to be cooperative, since the relay proposal ensures that it “will make it unnecessary for an amateur to have a high powered set,” thus reducing interference.

The War slowed things down a bit, but the first “Transcon” test was successfully carried out in January, 1921, with a successful transcontinental message and reply in “two hours flat.”

I suspect that most who are familiar with the “foxhole radio” learned about it from the 1950’s era book All About Radio and Television by Jack Gould. This book, a staple of many elementary school libraries, includes the crystal set shown here, which was constructed using a razor blade and pencil lead as the detector. Gould recounts how such a radio was used by soldiers in the fox holes of World War 2, and I suspect that it was the appearance in Gould’s book that popularized the name.  And it turns out that Gould probably originated the name.

The name “foxhole radio”, and perhaps the concept, seems to have originated from the construction of simple crystal sets by soldiers at Anzio in 1944. From March through early May, 1944, fighting was light, “living was leisurely” for the thousands of soldiers on the beachhead, and the beachhead was a “honeycomb of wet and muddy trenches, foxholes, and dugouts.”

One of the first references to the fox hole radio I’ve been able to find appeared in QST for July, 1944. It doesn’t use the term “foxhole radio,” but this “Stray” reads as follows:

According to Toivo Kujanpaa, a licensed ham op stationed on the Anzio Beachhead, several of the radio men there rigged up a field version of a “crystal” set using a razor blade for a detector. Their efforts were rewarded by the reception of a “jive” program (along with some German propaganda) aimed at the American forces from an Axis station in Rome.

About that same time was when, as far as I can tell, a variation of the name “foxhole radio” first appeared in print.  Time Magazine for July 17, 1944 made the report,.   Time reported that one Lt. M.L. Rupert was one of “hundreds of U.S. infantrymen” who made the foxhole receiver to kill time and boredom at Anzio.  Lt. Rupert wrote to Marlin Firearms Company (the manufacturer of the razor blades) with a description of the set.As QST later lamented, Time “as usual” hadn’t given credit to hams for coming up with the idea.

A similar account, also crediting Lt. Rupert’s letter to the manufacturer, appeared in the New York Times on June 25, 1944. According to the New York Times, the idea of using the pencil lead originated with O.B. Hanson, NBC’s vice president of engineering, who refined on the concept sent to the razor blade manufacturer. Interestingly, the byline of the New York Times account is none other than Jack Gould, the author of All About Radio and Television.  So it’s safe to say that Gould is the originator of the name “foxhole radio.”

There were two follow-ups in QST. The August issue contains the following Stray:

Further details on the foxhole radio sets now have been received from a correspondent in Italy. The razor blade and safety-pin detector is described as follows: “A station was found by moving the point of the safety pin, anchored at the other end, over the opposite end of the blade from where it is connected to the coil and antenna. The ‘phones are inserted between the pin and the grounded side of the coil.” He adds that “reception was very good.”

Finally, a letter appears in the October issue of QST from Justin Garton. No call sign is listed, but Garton’s address is shown as 448 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. Garton reports that the boys on the Anzio beachhead were able to receive Rome during the day and Nazi propaganda programs from Berlin at night. Garton also includes the following schematic:

I wasn’t able to find a call sign for either Kujanpaa or Garton. Since the Stray indicates that Kujanpaa was licensed but didn’t give his call, I’m guessing what happened was that he was licensed after Pearl Harbor and consequently did not receive a call sign. It’s possible that he received a call after the War, but I wasn’t able to find it. According to this enlistment record, one Toivo J. Kujanpaa of Massachusetts, born in 1910, enlisted on June 11, 1943. According to the Social Security Death Index, he was born on June 19, 1910, and died on January 6, 1991.  Its quite likely that he got his amateur operator license after Pearl Harbor but before enlisting a year and a half later.  With the wartime moratorium on station licenses, he would not have received a call sign, despite being licensed.

If you’re an ARRL member and logged into your account there, you can download the QST articles cited above at the following links:

• Radio Men Rigged Up a Field Version of a Crystal Set, July 1944
• Foxhole Radio Sets, August 1944
• Foxhole Radio (Correspondence), Oct. 1944

And this June 1945 Stray submitted by W2MIB includes an alternative detector,

Update:  Gould’s book “All About Radio and Television” is now available for free download at AmericanRadioHistory.com.

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The  April 1914 edition of Popular Mechanics includes this Complete Wireless Station for $9.85 from the Nichols Electric Company of 35 Frankfort Street, New York.  That address had housed the “Clean and Ready Company” in 1893.  It now appears to be part of the campus of Pace University, next to the Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.

According to this inflation calculator, the $9.85 cost would be $232.75 in today’s dollars. To look at it another way, that would cost ten silver dollars, or about ten ounces of silver, which would be worth about $200 today. This apparatus seems very similar to one described by Alfred Powell Morgan in his book published in the same year, Wireless Telegraph Construction for Amateurs,  with two exceptions: This set doesn’t appear to have the variable condenser shown in Morgan’s schematic, below.  On the other hand, this set includes a knife switch in order to use the same antenna for both transmitting and receiving.

1914 Morgan Schematic

The receiver is a simple crystal set, billed as being able to receive 1200 miles. I suspect this figure involves a bit of hyperbole, but I suppose with a good antenna and good conditions, it might be possible to occasionally log stations such as NAA, transmitting time and weather from massive towers overlooking Arlington National Cemetery, shown here in 1922.

NAA Radio Towers, Overlooking Arlington Cemetery. Radio World, November 25, 1922.

The transmitter is billed as being capable of transmitting 12-15 miles. The ad doesn’t mention anything about a license. Licenses had been required since 1912, but it’s quite likely that the owner of this set wouldn’t have bothered. In fact, it’s unlikely that he would have been able to receive a license after explaining to the radio inspector what kind of equipment he was using.

The license requirements are explained in Morgan’s book.  Morgan explains:

An amateur may not use transmitting apparatus which is sufficiently powerful to send radio signals across any of the boundaries of the state in which he is located and which can be detected by a sensitive receiving set located just beyond the state boundary, nor can he use apparatus which is powerful enough to interfere with the reception of signals by others from beyond the state boundaries unless he has a license….

In other words if the amateur possesses a receiving outfit only which is in working order or if he has both transmitter and receptor and the.former is not powerful enough to send signals out of the state in which he fives, or to interfere with the reception of messages by another when the messages come from beyond the state boundary a license is unnecessary.
This is of course somewhat unfair for those living near the center of large states for they may operate almost as they please with ordinary instruments with no fear of the signals going beyond the border, while those living within a few miles of another state must secure a license.

Morgan goes on to explain why this set probably wouldn’t qualify for a license:

The law also says that the transmitting wave must be pure, and must be sharply tuned, which means that the wave must be of one length and not, as is very often the case, composed of two or more waves of different lengths.

In order to comply with this restriction, the use of an oscillation helix or loosely coupled helix is necessary. A rotary or quenched gap is also necessary in place of the ordinary spark gap.

The transmitter shown here fails in two regards. First of all, there’s no way of quenching the spark, although I suspect if it was run on batteries, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. The main problem is that the “helix” is basically a tapped autotransformer, and it will probably radiate quite well on at least two wavelengths. In addition, the signal from a transmitter like this is going to have a very wide signal.

I suppose, with a good antenna, this transmitter might be heard 12-15 miles away. But if the owner was more than 15 miles from the state line, it would appear that he could use this without fear of the radio inspector, as long as a licensed station didn’t complain of interference.

By the way, if the name Alfred Powell Morgan rings a bell, you’ll recall why when you visit my Alfred Powell Morgan page.

The April 1914 issue of Popular Mechanics includes this interesting portable zero-tube radio.  It appears to be a crystal set consisting of a detector mounted directly to the headphone, with two wires for clipping to a convenient antenna and ground connection.

This particular receiver is billed as being for receiving time signals from the Eiffel Tower, which had begun on May 23, 1910.  The station, FL, was operated by the French
Bureau des Longitudes, and transmitted time signals from the Paris Observatory. It operated on 2000 Meters (150 kHz) with a spark transmitter of about 40-50 kW. Service even continued during the war, which began for France about three months after this magazine was published.

Despite the apparent lack of any tuner, a crystal set such as this ought to have been able to receive the signal for quite a distance from Paris. As you can see, the two wires had clips for attaching to any suitable antenna and ground. The signal from the powerful station was so reliable that a guide to receiving the signals, published by the Bureau of Longitude in 1913, was translated and published in English in 1915. The translation is available to read at Google Books.

The original 1913 edition, Réception des signaux radiotélégraphiques transmis par la Tour Eiffel, is also available online.

Any doubts about whether a crystal set would be able to receive the powerful signal should be put to rest by the mere fact that this guide book was published in England. The guide states that the “energy radiated by the Eiffel Tower Station in transmitting signals is great enough to permit the use of receiving aerials of reduced height and dimensions throughout the whole of France and in the French possessions in North Africa.”

Station FL transmitted the exact time nightly at 11:45, 11:47, and 11:49 PM.  And it seems quite likely that the little pocket receiver shown here would have been suitable for receiving it throughout much of France.

The Eiffel Tower time signals had the very practical purpose of an indispensable aid to navigation. There are many ways by which one can determine latitude. But longitude depends on knowing the exact time at a fixed location on Earth, and then comparing that to the local time. One early method of determining the exact time was by observing the moons of Juipter.  Good chronometers largely solved the problem of having to go to these lengths, but there was still the matter of having to periodically set the chronometer. And time signals such as those provided by the Eiffel Tower greatly simplified the process.  A pocket sized receiver such as the one shown here would have been a most useful accessory.