Category Archives: Uncategorized

Making Your Own Hardware, 1941

1941decpmSeventy five years ago, if you couldn’t find a nut to fit a bolt, you could just make your own! The Radio department of the December 1941 issue of Popular Mechanics showed how to do it, with this self-explanatory drawing.

You would use the nut to serve as the mold, and cast one yourself using solder. A small container such as a bottle cap served as the other half of the mold. Before pouring the molten solder into the mold, you would coat the container and threads with a layer of shellac.

The magazine noted that this was a temporary solution for use when the mechanical load was light. But in many cases, it would provide a suitable piece of hardware without a trip to the store.



Peace Light and NPOTA: Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

img_20161201_163719

 

I was recently in Iowa to present some Continuing Legal Education programs in Cedar Rapids and Des Moines.  Whenever possible, I like to combine trips, and I used this opportunity to take part in two other events.

Cedar Rapids is close to the birthplace of Herbert Hoover in West Branch, Iowa.  It is the location of the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, as well as the Hoover Presidential Library and Museum.  I’ve been looking forward to putting this National Park Service (NPS) unit on the air during the NPS Centenial year as part of the  ARRL National Parks On The Air (NPOTA) event.  During this event,  Amateur Radio operators are setting up their equipment in NPS units  to make contact with other Amateurs around the world.  Since the beginning of the year, the event has been extremely popular.  There have been over 900,000 individual two-way contacts made from the parks, and it appears almost certain that this number will top a million before the end of the year.  As I’ve reported in other posts, I’ve made contact with over 300 different parks and operated multiple times from parks in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.

I was especially eager to operate from President Hoover’s birthplace, since he played such an important role in the history of radio.  Indeed, his son was an avid amateur radio operator, and served in the 1960’s as president of the American Radio Relay League, the national organization sponsoring the event.

img_20161201_164804I didn’t have time for a long operation, but I was able to spend about an hour operating from the parking lot of the historic site’s visitor center, as shown in the photo above.  President Hoover’s birthplace home is barely visible in the photo (just to the left of the larger building in front of the car.  Despite the short time available, I managed to make contact with about 30 stations, all CW (Morse Code), ranging from Alaska to Florida.  After operating, at dusk, I paid my respects at the gravesite of President and Mrs. Hoover, shown here.

img_20161203_145243The next day, I used my drive home to the Twin Cities to transport the Peace Light of Bethlehem from Des Moines to the Twin Cities.

For at least the past several hundred years, and possibly more than a thousand, a lamp has continuously burned at the grotto of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the traditionally accepted location of Christ’s birth.  Since 1989, the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides of Austria have annually sent a child to Bethlehem, who lights a lamp from the light and returns it to Austria.  From there, it is passed on around Europe during the Advent season.  Since 2000, the Peace Light has been delivered to North America where volunteers, most of whom are connected with Scouting, deliver it around the country.

This year, there was a gap in the distribution, and it wasn’t making it to the northern tier of states.  I coordinated with members of the Peace Light North America Facebook group, and made arrangements to meet with an Iowa Scouter in the parking lot of a Des Moines coffee shop.  From his kerosene lantern, we lit my lanterns, shown here, and I took the burning lanterns home.

From there, others have come to light their candles and lanterns, and the same ancient flame is burning in lamps in Minnesota and Wisconsin.  Another volunteer from North Dakota is on the way here, and within a few days, the Peace Light will be burning in North Dakota, Manitoba, Montana, Washington, and probably other places along the way.

Many are curious as to how the Peace Light crosses the Atlantic.  It is transported by Austrian Airlines in the passenger cabin of an aircraft.  The ailine transports the flame from Israel to Austria, and then to New York and Toronto.  The flame is held within a blastproof miner’s lamp, which allows the open flame to be transported safely by air.  At Kennedy Airport, it’s walked through customs by an airline employee to the airport chapel, where a ceremony is held attended by those who fan out around the country to transport it.  Among those were one or more volunteers who transported it to Chicago.  From there, it went to Davenport, Iowa, where it was picked up by the person who gave it to me.

B



WWV Moves to Colorado: 1966

1966wwv

Today marks the 50th anniversary of WWV’s move to its current location in Fort Collins, Colorado. At 0000 hours GMT on December 1, 1966 (5:00 Mountain Standard Time on November 30), the station began its transmissions from the new location on the familiar internationally allocated standard carrier frequencies of 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 megacycles.

The move was announced in the November 1966 issue of Electronics Illustrated, which contained the photograph shown above. At the center of the photo is the station’s 10 MHz dipole antenna. The 3-1/8 inch diameter transmission line can be seen snaking off to the right. In the background to the left is the WWVB transmitter building (WWVB and WWVL had previously been located at Ft. Collins). The antennas in the background are, at the left, a backup 88 foot monopole, and at the right, the 400 foot WWVL tower.

To celebrate the move, the station issued a special first-day QSL card for reception reports on the first day. To ensure that SWL’s had really picked up the station, the voice identifcation used a special message on the first day, which had to be copied exactly to receive the special QSL, which is shown here.

According to the accompanying note on the card, WWV had apparently planned to award a photograph of the new station to the first three reception reports. However, it proved impossible to determine which were the first three, and three were selected from the batch. One of those went to long time ARRL staffer Lewis “Mac” McCoy, W1ICP.

The station had previously been located at Greenbelt, Maryland. The move was designed to give better coverage and to move the station closer to the National Bureau of Standards’ frequency standard lab in Boulder, Colorado.

 



Philco Model 1013, 1941

1941novradioretailing3

Seventy-five years ago this month, Radio Retailing magazine, November 1941, carried this ad showing the Phiclo model 1013 (42-1013) radio phono console. The set retailed for $230 in mahogany or $225 in walnut. In addition to the automatic phonograph, the set covered the broadcast band, the prewar FM band, and 9-15.5 MHz shortwave.

This ad reminded retailers that there would be considerable advertising support for the set during the Christmas season, including a window display and special rotogravature ads.

3986 were manufactured in walnut, 1755 in mahogany.  You can see a nice example of the set at this site, and a video of a nicely restored model can be seen playing here:



No Serviceman Would Sneer at an Extra $5: 1936

1936octoberradionews

The 1936 radio serviceman shown here is netting an extra five dollars is netting an extra five dollars for the service call, simply because he uttered the words, “any other electrical appliances in your home need repairing?”

The accompanying article, in the October 1936 issue of Radio News points out that no serviceman would sneer at an extra $5, but these words often reminded customers of other repair needs that had slipped their mind.

One serviceman noted that during a recent call, he was delivering a midget radio decorated with Mother Goose characters for the customer’s nursery. After installing the set, he replaced a belt on a vacuum cleaner, repaired a few frayed electrical cords and damaged outlets, and replaced an old iron with a new automatic model. “Most people prefer to have radiomen repair their vacuum cleaners and other appliances since dealers too often send out high-pressur salesmen to attempt to sell new apparatus when only the simplest repair is required.”



1936 “Wrist Watch” Radio

1936octoberpsYou can probably barely see it, but this gentleman is listening to an ultra-compact radio, as described 80 years ago in the October 1936 issue of Popular Science.

This “wrist-watch” radio is crammed into a chassis measuring two and a half inches square.  It’s a two-tube circuit, but uses a dual 6A8 tube, with one half serving as regenerative detector and the other half as audio amplifier to drive the headphones.  The set is powered by batteries around the gentleman’s waist.  If you look very carefully at the photo, you might see them.

The set called for a fifteen foot antenna, which he is presumably dragging along.

So even in 1936, if you wanted an ultra-discrete method to listen to the radio, you could put together one of these, and nobody would even notice that you had a radio with you.



Women in Radio: 1916

A hundred years ago this month, the October 1916 issue of Electrical Experimenter devoted a large portion of the magazine to “the Wireless Girl,” and featured on the cover this painting by George Wall.  Loyal readers will recognize the painting as being based on a photograph of Kathleen Parkin, 6SO/6BP, of San Rafael, California.  As we related in an earlier post, she built the quarter kilowatt transmitter shown here, along with a vacuum tube receiver, and had one of the more impressive stations on the West Coast.

In the Electrical Experimenter article, Miss Parkin writes of her interest in wireless:

With reference to my ideas about the wireless profession as a vocation or worthwhile hobby for women, I think wireless telegraphy is a most fascinating study, and one which could very easily be taken up by girls, as it is a great deal more interesting than the telephone and telegraph work, in which so many girls are now
employed. I am only fifteen, and I learned the code several years ago, by practising a few minutes each day on a buzzer. I studied a good deal and I found it quite easy to obtain my first grade commercial government license, last April.

It seems to me that every one should at least know the code, as cases might easily arise of a ship in distress, where the operators might be incapacitated, and a knowledge of the code might be the means of saving the ship and the lives of the passengers. But
the interest in wireless does not end in the knowledge of the code.

You can gradually learn to make all your own instruments, as I have done with my 1/4 kilowatt set.

There is always more ahead of you, as wireless telegraphy is still in its infancy.

Graynella Packer operating the wireless aboard the

Graynella Packer operating the wireless aboard the Mohawk.

Miss Parkin was not the only young woman at the forefront of radio, as the article cited a number of others. For example, Graynella Packer of Jacksonville, Florida, was the first woman wireless operator to serve on a commercial vessel, aboard the Mohawk of the Clyde Line, where she was in full charge of the vessel’s wireless.

Numerous other women radio operators were featured in the article, which stressed the role that wireless played in national preparedness.  The photo below shows a group of young women studying wireless at a summer preparedness camp.

1916preparednesscamp

 

 



Babi Yar, 1941

Soviet investigators view opened grave at Babi Yar, 1944. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum photo.

Soviet investigators view opened grave at Babi Yar, 1944. U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum photo.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of one of the largest acts of mass murder to take place during the Holocaust, the massacre at Babi Yar, on the outskirts of Kiev, Ukraine. On September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 Jews were killed at that ravine.

German forces entered the city on September 19, 1941. Prior to the German invasion, about 160,000 Jews had resided in the city, about 20% of the population. About a hundred thousand fled in advance of the Germans, and most of those remaining were women, children, the elderly, and the sick.

Wikipedia image.

On September 29, the German military government issued the order shown here, requiring all Jews in the city to report, along with documents, money, valuable, warm clothing, and blankets.

The Nazis conducted the operation with efficiency. The Jews were ordered to proceed and give up first their luggage, then their coats, then their outer garments and shoes, and finally their underwear. By the time they knew what was happening, it was too late. By the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance of escape.

They were led to a ravine about 150 meters by 30 meters. At the bottom of the ravine, they were made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot. A marksman, standing on the layers of corpses, then shot each in the back of the neck.

The corpses were then buried in the ravine, and the money, valuables, clothing, and even underwear was distributed to local ethnic Germans.

Wikipedia photo.

Shown here is Dina Pronicheva (1911-77), one of the handful of survivors of the massacre. She initially claimed that she was not Jewish and was only seeing someone off. The Germans decided to kill her anyway so that she would not be a witness. She played dead in a pile of corpses as the Nazis covered the mass grave with earth. She was eventually able to exhume herself. She was the only survivor to testify at the Kiev war crimes trial.

References

Read More at Amazon

 

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon



Univ. of Minn. Electrical Engineering Bldg., 1926

1926septradiobroadcast

1926septradiobroadcastjanskyShown here ninety years ago is the Electrical Engineering Building at the University of Minnesota, from the September 1926 issue of Radio Broadcast magazine.

The magazine reported that the entire top floor of the building consisted of communication laboratories, principally devoted to radio instruction.  It was under the direction of Prof. C.M. Jansky, Jr., who believed that the program was the equal of any in the United States.

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon



1917 Crystal Set

DSC_0025

I don’t have any information about this set, other than that it appears to be a well-made crystal set from 1917.

These photos were sent to me by Donald O. Caselli, the President of the Tuckerton Historical Society.  The set was donated many years ago to the Tuckerton Historical Society Giffordtown Museum in Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, where it is currently housed.

DSC_0026

DSC_0024

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank  Donald O. Caselli, President of the Tuckerton Historical Society, for sharing these images.

Click Here For Today’s Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Cartoon