In 1944, with wartime bans in place, Hallicrafters didn’t have any equipment for sale to civilians. But they were gearing up for a postwar boom, and they figured a lot of Boy Scouts would be in the market for radio equipment as soon as the war was over.
This ad appeared 75 years ago this month in the December 1944 issue of Boys’ Life. It encourages young radio fans to send 25 cents to the ARRL to get the most recent edition of “How to Become a Radio Amateur,” a splendid book.
Eighty years ago this month, the November 1939 issue of Boys’ Life shows Boy Scouts lending a hand at NBC radio stations. The images here are taken from network headquarters in New York, as well as WMAL Washington. The magazine shows scouts with Lowell Thomas. And Scout Stan Groner of Troop 248, Bronx, NY, is shown with Charlie McCarthy wearing a scout uniform, although it’s unclear whether McCarthy could pass the Tenderfoot requirements.
The scout shown above is signalling by night, thanks to the signal gun described in the November 1944 issue of Boys Life. Most flashlights can’t be turned on and off fast enough to send Morse code, so this design adds a trigger and pistol grip to be able to conveniently send. The trigger is wired to the spring at the bottom of the flashlight, so that it can be conveniently aimed and keyed.
The magazine carried a number of other signalling devices, in an article penned by William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt.
Eighty years ago this month, the October 1939 issue of Boys’ Life carried this ad for two extremely interesting products from RCA, more specifically, the RCA “Electronics and By-Products Division.” The first is the RCA Sound Control Studio, which enabled aspiring young radio producers to make their own radio programs at home, with a complete selection of devices to make sound effects.
With the set, they could make train whistles, slamming doors, horses’ hoofs, howling wind, driving rain, and many others. And if they also added the “RCA microphone and radio coupling unit,” the program could be heard on the radio in an adjoining room. The set included a book with drama dialogues with certain sound effects specified. The set sold for a mere $5.95.
The other set, which apparently included the microphone and transmitter, was the RCA Electronics Labs kit. The projects contained therein allowed youngsters to build a real radio receiver, transmitter to talk from another room, realistic telegraph set. The electronics labs started at $7.50.
Eighty years ago this month, Chief Scout Executive James E. West penned this editorial in the October, 1939, issue of Boys’ Life, stressing to Scouts the importance of the skill of signaling.
He noted that signaling was included in the Scout requirements because it was “part of the equipment of an outdoorsman” and helped a boy to be “accurate, painstaking, and thorough.”
He began by recounting an episode that took place in Sequoia National Park during a raging forest fire. One crew was at work on a hill when they found themselves trapped by flames on all sides. Frantically, they began signaling with their signal flags for water and more men.
But everyone else in the region was busy fighting the fire and initially nobody noticed their frantic plea. Fortunately, however, another fire fighter had been a Scout, and the signals caught his attention. Out of a crew of sixty men, he was the only one who could read the message, but rounded up a crew to rescue his trapped colleagues, who were saved in the nick of time.
Also, during a flood in Zanesville, Ohio, the flood waters divided the town, and all telephone and telegraph lines were down. The first messages to get through were from Scout troops on the opposite banks of the river.
Another Scout saw a plane circling over his town, and noticed that it was flashing a light. Thanks to his knowledge of Morse Code, he made out the siganl “N-A-M-E.” The quick-witted Scout figured out that the pilot had lost his way. He got a large mirror, turned on the lights of an automobile, and flashed the beam of light upward, sending the name of the town. The pilot answered, “T-H-A-N-X.”
The tradition of Scouts learning signaling continues with the Signs, Signals, and Codes Merit Badge, which I counsel in the BSA Northern Star Council. I have more information about the Merit Badge at this post and this one. I also have links to advice from William “Green Bar Bill” Hillcourt.
If you know any Scouts who are interested in earning the Signs, Signals, and Codes merit badge, I will be counseling it at the North Star Scouting Museum in North St. Paul, MN, on Saturday, October 19, 2019. For more information or to sign up, visit the museum’s website.
Seventy years ago, an aspiring young publisher could make up to 100 copies of important announcements, newsletters, or other documents, by way of the hectograph. The process is described here in the August 1949 issue of Boys’ Life magazine.
Back in the day, acquiring all of the needed parts was simple, as they were available at any office or school supply store. Unfortunately, they are not available in prepackaged form any longer, but at our website, we have have instructions for making yours at home, and the process is quite simple.
For those not familiar with the process, the hectograph was the simpler version of the mimeograph. The image is drawn or typed on paper using special hectograph ink. The ink can come from a special sheet of carbon paper or from markers, and both are still readily available. This image is then transferred to a gelatin surface, and from there it’s transferred to the sheet you want to print. The prefix “hecto” means 100, but in practice, you’ll probably get a bit fewer copies.
Shown here is Canadian Boy Scout Frank Lay, of the 67th Winnipeg (St. Aidan’s) Troop. He is featured on the cover of the August 1944 issue of Manitoba Calling, the monthly program guide of CKY Winnipeg, and sister station CKX in Brandon, Manitoba.
The entire issue of the magazine paid tribute to the value of Scout training for Citizenship. It noted that while scouting was designed as peace training, the organization had a fine record in its services to the war effort. At least 100,000 members of the Armed Forces had been Scouts. Indeed, of the 63 Victoria Crosses awarded to date, eight were won by former Scouts.
The magazine includes the reminiscences of W.F. “Bill” Seller, the manager of station CKX. The magazine calls him probably the veteran of all old Scouts in Canada, as he was a member of one of the earliest troops, in fact the first official troop formed in London. It noted that when Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited Winnipeg in 1935, they met with Seller and exchanged reminiscenses of the early days of Scouting in England.
Here is the full text of Seller’s article:
Early Days in the Boy Scouts
By W. F. SELLER (Manager CKX)
Robert Baden-Powell at the first Scout encampment on Brownsea Island held in August 1907. Wikipedia image.
In August, 1907, two men, an orderly and 20 boys pitched tents and hoisted a Union Jack on Brownsea Island, near my home at Poole, Dorset, England. The leader of the party, General Baden-Powell with a friend (Major MacLaren), was making his first experiment in teaching English lads the scouting games he had learned himself as a boy and had used to such good advantage in South Africa, to test his idea of an organization for boys.
The twenty boys were gathered from several sources, from Eton and Harrow and from elementary schools; from the homes of the aristocracy and from the fisherman’s cottage. The troop was divided into four Patrols–each with a leader, Curlews – Ravens -Wolves -and Bulls. From morning till night they were busy learning to live in the open, to cook their own meals, to develop their powers of observation and above all to cultivate comradeship.
Canadian Scouts training for the Fireman’s badge, 1944.
Baden-Powell taught them how to follow trails, how to find a few grains of Indian corn in an acre of heather and how to hide and find messages in trees. Then, too, there were organized games and bathing and all the time these twenty boys were unconsciously acquiring habits of self control, fair play and manliness; in other words, the underlying principles of the Boy Scout Movement. The evenings were topped off with the group gathering round the campfire listening to thrilling stories, bird calls, lessons on stalking and singing, all led by “The Chief “.
By the end of two weeks Baden-Powell had proved that his scheme was sound to the core and he settled down to launch it upon the world. Its value was soon realized, the movement grew and Baden-Powell not only became a hero to but beloved by boys throughout the world.
1909 uniform, scouts.org.uk image.
For the first few weeks after getting our shorts, shirts, hats and shoes, etc., we used to carry the stuff up to the woods, change under the rhododendron bushes, practise our scouting and then in native’s dressing rooms change back again and amble off home.
After a while we decided that this would not do: if we were going to be Scouts we should be proud of the fact, and so we went one step farther and we changed into uniform in the shack and all marched in patrol formation to our scouting practises. For a time we had to take the public taunts of other boys whose ideas of sport were not always satisfied with wordy insults, but were backed up with sticks, stones and sometimes eggs!
Paying Their Way
1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally. Wikipedia photo.
Soon, however, we had two patrols of ten each and we looked for a scoutmaster and rented accommodation in one of the schools. To pay the rent, we each donated a few coppers each week to the club funds. If one could afford six -pence o.k., if only a penny, again o.k. But often when rent day came around funds were inadequate, so instead of “scouting” on the Saturday afternoon, we would all go out and hunt up odd jobs, running errands, digging gardens, cutting lawns, etc. Everyone brought in whatever he had earned to the common funds and it worked. Came the day when we had three patrols and could officially qualify as a “troop “. We applied for a Charter and Troop Flag, which was presented to us at a special ceremony at Canford Manor by Lady Wimborne and so we became the first troop of Boy Scouts in the world, registered as the 1st Parkstone Troop, afterward Lady Baden Powell’s own. We attended the first scout rally which was held at the Crystal Palace, London. 15,000 I believe were present, and we were impressed by the size of the old Crystal Palace, when due to rain the march past was held entirely under glass. The following year we attended the rally at Windsor Castle and later one at Birmingham. This last, numbering close to 200,000, was made most interesting for us by the presence in our troop of a prince of the royal house of Ethiopia, dressed in his native costume, one of the sons of Haille Selassi. The lad, about 13, had stowed away on a liner leaving his country for Great Britain and had to remain in England until dignataries from Ethiopia could arrive and return with him in befitting splendour. He was sent to our home town and in despair the gentleman responsible for his care asked our troop to share the responsibility and many were the interesting episodes provided by this young man.
I believe the troop justified its membership in the great brotherhood of scoutdom. Our ambulance patrol was on duty at most public functions and a sports gathering including the first flying meet ever held. This was at Bournemouth, and during this meet the pioneer A. V. Rowe was killed in a vol-planing competition. [Louis] Bleriot, the first man to fly the English Channel, was there and we also saw [Hubert] Latham flying one of the first monoplanes, a crazy looking contraption with the appearance of an over -developed kite. We had the first King’s Scouts and the first Silver Wolf; won many district and national trophies, and had a good time doing it, with clean keen competition and the joy of contest rather than conquest being strongly stressed.
I could ramble on like all pioneers, to tell you of the time when camping, the troop saved a group of cottages from destruction by forest fire, the time a boat -load of us were nearly drowned but for the timely rescue of the Coast Guards, the course of home nursing undertaken by some of the boys, the concerts we ran, the bazaars we organized to rase our own funds.
“B.P.’s” Marriage
I could tell how we got news of Baden-Powell’s wedding at St. Peter’s Church, Parkstone, and were able to turn out in time to salute him and his bride.
We were very fortunate that Baden – Powell had selected our district for his experiment and that he chose a lady from our home town for his bride, for as a result, we enjoyed many informal visits and interesting evenings at our club rooms with the Chief himself. Many members of that first troop of Scouts are living in Canada and most of that same troop served in the first World War. We all carry pleasant memories of the wonderful experiences we had as Scouts and one of my prized possessions is the old Scout shirt resplendent with badges, all-round cords and service stars, together with the scarf and many pictures that are now historical but unfortunately not good enough for reproduction.
The cover of the July 1939 issue of Boys’ Life, shows U.S. Boy Scouts at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Scouting at the Fair consisted of a camp in the “Government Zone,” near the pavilions of the various countries represented. The camp would accommodate four troops of 33 scouts and 4 leaders.
At any given time, a third of the scouts were sightseeing at the fair, a third were on duty at the camp itself, and the other third were performing service for the Fair.
During the fair, a citizenship ceremony, officiated by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts, was held for a group of former scouts who had just turned 21 years old and were being naturalized as U.S. citizens.
Seventy-five years ago today, KFI Los Angeles ran this ad in the July 17, 1944, issue of Broadcasting, touting its public service in the form of the program “On the Scouting Trail.” The show served the 60,000 Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts in the region by dramatizing experiences of former scouts and how they were relevant in wartime.
If you look carefully at the shoulder of the scout lighting the fire, you’ll see that the patch has the station’s call letters at the bottom. The text on the top appears to be “COMMANDO.” This patch was given to scouts appearing in the show’s studio audience each Saturday morning. You can see specimens of this and other patches at this page on the Crescent Bay Council website. The scout here appears to be wearing the “late 1940s” version of the patch.
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1993 New Yorker cartoon, via Wikipedia.
According to the familiar adage, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. But as shown by the photo above, the general concept predates the Internet by decades. The photo, from the July 1939 issue of Boys’ Life, shows Maud, an English Bulldog, at the controls of W2KBA, the station owned by Vincent S. Barker, who had written a feature about Amateur Radio for the magazine’s April issue.
Maud appears to prefer operating CW, and is busy putting a weak DX station in the log.
