Conventional wisdom is that, prior to the Internet, it was impossible for individuals to reach a wide audience. Fortunately, nobody bothered to share this conventional wisdom with Charles Edward Caswell of Concord, N.H. , who wrote, edited, printed, and distributed his own magazine, Friendly Cheer.

This article appeared in Popular Science, May 1940, which noted that copies of the magazine went to every state and 14 foreign countries.

We haven’t been able to figure out what happened to Friendly Cheer magazine, and the domain name friendlycheer.com is still available. So if anyone wants to pick up where Caswell, left off, there’s your opportunity. And if anyone has a copy of the magazine, we would love to see it.

There’s a good reason why this young man dressed up to go ride his bike. That’s because its basket contained a four-tube radio capable of providing loudspeaker volume on local broadcast stations.

Because of its nondirectional characteristics, a four-foot rod antenna was used. Grounding was necessary, but an attachment to the bicycle frame provided an excellent counterpoise.

The set featured a DPDT key-lock switch to keep curious onlookers from running down the batteries. The magazine also advised locking the set to the basket or bicycle frame. The set used three 1N5GT tubes as RF amplifier, detector, and the first stage of AF amplification. A 1T5GT served as final AF amplifier to drive the speaker.

The set appeared 80 years ago this month in the April 1940 issue of Popular Science.

The plans for this handsome four-tube superhet portable appeared 80 years ago this month in the April, 1940, issue of Popular Mechanics. The set was said to be suitable for anyone with even a little radio construction and wiring experience. It used 1.4 volt tubes and was a highly flexible and portable receiver.

For those without metalworking tools, the chassis was available pre-punched and drilled. A loop antenna meant that no external antenna was necessary for local stations.

Wikipedia image.

Today is the 20th birthday of Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was born on February 29, 1940.

A hundred years ago this month, the February 1920 issue of Electrical Experimenter detailed this plan which surfaces from time to time: To get hydroelectric power by piping water from the Mediterranean Sea to the Dead Sea, which lies 1400 feet below sea level.

The necessary tunnel would be 37 miles long, and would pass about 2500 feet under Jerusalem. According to the magazine, the plan would bring electric lights and electric trolleys to the Holy Land.

More information about the various proposals for this project over the years can be found at Wikipedia.

For this Kentucky coal miner in 1946, the radio was his link to the outside world. The photo is from the Department of the Interior, Solid Fuels Administration for War, and is dated September 4, 1946. It has the following caption:

Charlie Lingar and his son listen to their battery radio. He has worked for the company for fourteen years but was injured in a mine explosion last December and hasn’t been able to work since then. His three room house for which he pays $6.75 monthly has no running water, no toilet, no electricity. Kentucky Straight Creek Coal Company, Belva Mine, abandoned after explosion [in] Dec. 1945, Four Mile, Bell County, Kentucky.

Lingar was more than injured in the explosion.  He was trapped underground for over fifty hours after the explosion.  He and eight other men barricaded themselves in, but left a note in the slate that they were there.  The oldest of the men died, but the other eight, including Lingar, survived.  According to some accounts, a mysterious lumberjack (or perhaps it was a telephone lineman) appeared out of a door leading to a well-lighted room and assured the men that they would be rescued.  The man then returned to the well lit room, and closed the door.

I’m not able to identify the radio, but maybe some reader can. It’s a battery set, also often called a “farm set.” It seems to have two bands. If that’s the case, then it probably pulled in shortwave signals in addition to the standard broadcast band.

The original photo is available at the National Archives, which has this description of the collection:

In 1946 the Department of Interior and the United Mine Workers agreed to a joint survey of medical, health and housing conditions in coal communities to be conducted by Navy personnel. Under the direction of Rear Admiral Joel T. Boone, survey teams went into mining areas to collect data and photographs on the conditions of these regions, later compiled into a published report. The bulk of the photographs were taken by Russell W. Lee, a professional photographer hired by the Department of Interior for this project; others were taken by the Navy. These photographs cover a complete range of activities in mining communities. They show the interior and exterior of both company-owned and priv dispensaries; miners at work performing various tasks; mining grounds, equipment and wash houses; women performing household functions; children at play; recreation facilities, churches, schools, clubs; scenes of mining townspeople in and around company stores and town streets; family portraits; members of the medical survey group inspecting grounds and speaking to mine company administrators, local mine operators and union officials.

If I didn’t know any better, I would say that these Soviet diagrams from 50 years ago were suggestions for burglar alarms. Of course, they didn’t have to worry about burglars in the workers’ paradise, so they must have been something else. If I were able to read the text in the February 1970 issue of Юный техник, I would be able to come up with a more accurate description. But I’m guessing they’re probably designed to catch capitalist imperialist running dogs.

In any event, the two-transistor circuit at the left appears to be a solid-state relay to drive a buzzer. The other diagrams are self-explanatory, such as how to make a switch from a clothespin.

A century ago, these children didn’t have to worry about their friend going home and taking the ball. The ball was supplied to children by their San Francisco playground. The only rule was that children could take the ball as far as they liked.

The picture appeared a hundred years ago today in the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger, January 26, 1920.

This handsome device from 80 years ago wasn’t a clock radio. Instead, it was merely a radio clock, namely, a clock and a radio in the same enclosure, both of which operated independently. It is the Belmont Model BRC-571, also known as the Clockette, and it’s shown here in the January 1940 issue of Radio Today.

The set tuned 540-1720 kHz, meaning that it would pull in police calls in addition to standard broadcast stations. The clock was described as self-starting, and the radio was a standard 5-tube superhet, both of which were housed in a walnut cabinet.

You can see a nicely preserved example of the set at the Radio Attic Archives.

Shown here are the televisions that were available 70 years ago from the Belmont Radio Corporation, 5927 West Dickens Avenue, Chicago.

The ad featured two sets. “The Criterion”, a console set, had a list price of $349.95. “The Challenger”, a table set, sold for $299.95. Both were billed as having a 176 square inch picture. This was apparently before the days when TV manufacturers started measuring the picture diagonally. 176 square inches would be equivalent to about a 19 inch diagonal tube. Other sets in the Belmont line went as small as 74 square inches, or about 12 inches diagonally.

The ad appeared in the December 1949 issue of Radio Retailing.