Ninety years ago this month, the April 1926 issue of Radio News showed this metal detector.

The magazine billed the device as one to prevent employee pilferage: “During the past few years, and especially since the war, it has been found necessary by the management of many large factories to maintain a close inspection of their employees when the latter pass from work; as otherwise the dishonest element, always found among them, would be certain to seize the opportunity to carry away tools and valuable small articles of manufacture, either completed or partially of manufacture, either completed or partially so.”

To solve the problem, this device served as a metal detector. Inside the gate was a coil, which was part of an audio oscillator. When metal passed through the coil, the permeability changed, which caused the frequency to change.

To detect small changes in frequency, this oscillator was paired up with another oscillator set to the same frequency. The signals were mixed, and the guard listened to the resulting beat in his headphones. A sudden change in the low frequency would alert him to an employee who would need to be searched more thoroughly.

This system was apparently in use in at least one German factory, as shown in the photo here.

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It’s likely that many of the first transistor radios to show up in the British Isles were the “Transistorette,” built according to plans appearing in a four-part series of articles in Radio Constructor magazine. The April 1956 issue contained the third in the series, which completed the electronics of the set. The final article the next month provided details on constructing the cabinet for the portable set.

This issue covered most of the electrical wiring of the set, and included some precautions for those who were new to work with transistors. “Apart from the care which is normally needed when wiring up any miniaturized equipment, especial attention has to be paid in this case to the question of preventing damage to the transistors by overheating.”

The article cautioned to use sufficiently long leads on the transistors, and to install them last. In particular, it called for using “laid-on” joints for the transistors. Another piece of wire was used to the final connection. Then, the lead of the transistor was quickly tinned and laid against that conductor.  “A quick application of the soldering iron then causes the solder on the tag-spill to cover the lead-out wire and a quite satisfactory joint results. This joint should be just as good as that given by the more normal method of twisting the appropriate lead around its tag before soldering, and it has the considerable advantage of reducing any possible risk of overheating the transistor. It also enables transistors to be removed from the chassis in a similarly quick manner, should this ever be required.”

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Enrico Caruso

The name Enrico Caruso comes up regularly on these pages. His career was in its prime in the late 1910’s, just as both radio and audio recording were coming of age.

He was first on the air in 1914, and in 1915, his voice appeared on what was probably one of the first “pirate” radio broadcasts.

110 years ago today, Caruso earned another distinction, namely, being a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

He was on tour in San Francisco and had appeared in Carmen at the Mission Opera House just hours before the quake. On that Wednesday morning at about 5:00, he wwas awakened to the bed rocking “as though I am in a ship on the ocean, and for a moment I think I am dreaming that I am crossing the water on my way to my beautiful country.”

Wikipedia image.

As the shaking continued, he went to a window, where he witnessed the buildings crumbling around him. His valet rushed to his room and advised him to get dressed and go quickly into the open. His valet gave him some clothes and they rushed to the street. The valet hauled six trunks to the street, where someone tried to take them away. When the man didn’t go away, Caruso identified himself to a soldier, and the solder advised the man to “skiddoo.”

After wandering the city for the day, Caruso found some friends, and wound up sleeping in the open that night. The valet managed to contract with a cart, who took the party to the Oakland Ferry. From Oakland, he was able to catch a train to New York.

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References

Caruso in The Sketch, London, July 1, 1906.

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In case you’ve been wondering what the largest number you can represent with three digits, the answer was provided ninety years ago this month, in the April 1926 issue of Science and Invention magazine.  That number is:

According to the magazine, this is equal to a is a 369,693,100 digit number, the first digit of which is 4, the last of which is 9.  In other words, rounded, it is 4 x 10^369,693,099.

According to the magazine, the number was calculated by one M. Laisant of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris.  However, it’s unlikely that M. Laisant wrote down the answer, since, it would take 28 years to write down the number, as depicted by the presumably hypothetical gentleman shown in the illustration.  If written with the digits spaced a sixth of an inch apart, the number would stretch about 919 miles.  (The 919 mile figure is given by the magazine, although it seems to me that the answer ought to be 972 miles, since 387,420,489/6/12/5280 = 972.)

It should be noted that the order of operations makes a huge difference in the outcome.  To put it another way, the associate property of addition or multiplication does not apply to exponents.

(9^9)^9 is a very modest 78 digit number, 1.9662705 x 10^77, since it is merely 387,420,489 multiplied by itself nine times.  9^(9^9), on the other hand, is 9 multiplied by itself 387,420,489 times, which results in 4 x 10^369,693,099.

We can do a quick plausibility check of the magazine’s answer by noting that 9^(9^9) < 10^(10^10),  Ten to the tenth power is one followed by ten zeroes, 10,000,000,000.  Ten to the power of 10,000,000,000 is one followed by 10,000,000,000 zeroes, a ten billion and one digit number.  The answer given by the magazine, a mere 369,693,100 digit number, is indeed smaller.  The quick jump from 369 million to 10 billion digits isn’t surprising when you consider the following:

1^1^1 = 1

2^2^2 = 16

3^3^3 =  7,625,597,484,987

Unfortunately, Google calculator fails us, since it reports merely that the answer is “infinity.”  But on the other hand, that’s probably close enough.  Since there are only about 10^80 atoms in the observable universe, a number much larger than that probably has little practical use.

The M. Laisant identified in the article is apparently Charles-Ange Laisant, who wrote more about the problem in Thresholds of Science: Mathematics, published in 1914.

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Sixty years ago this month, the March 1956 issue of Radio-Electronics published the plans for this solar powered radio, probably the first instance of a project using a photovoltaic cell for power.

The actual radio receiver was a simple crystal set, using a germanium diode, with a single CK-721 transistor serving as the audio amplifier.  The basic circuit was about the same as the Boys’ Life CONELRAD receiver shown here previously, which appeared the same year.

The power came from a type B-15 self-generating selenium photocell, manufactured by International Rectifier. The cell didn’t put out the required 1.5 volts, so it was necessary to cut it into four pieces with a hacksaw, and then wire the resulting four smaller cells in series.

For times when the sun wasn’t shining, the plans also called for a mercury cell, which could be switched in in place of the solar cell.

A much smaller version of the selenium solar cell can be seen in this Popular Mechanics advertisement for $1.

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Images from another winter storm. NOAA photo.

Seventy-five years ago today, March 25-26, 1941, central and northern Maine were hit with a severe storm that did considerable damage to telephone and telegraph lines. Strong winds and heavy wet snow took down many lines, and most of the northern part of the state was cut off from any wire communications.

The telegraph companies contacted W1BAV who established communications with Presque Isle and relayed instructions to the service men there. By night, lines were reestablished to many parts of the state.

Between 7:30 and 9:30 PM on the night of the 26th, hams had most of the state hooked up and standing by. By 9:30, the telegraph companies had established enough service so that they were able to advise the hams that they could stand down.

These details were recounted by Maine Section Communication Manager H.W. Castner, W1IIE, in the July 1941 issue of QST.

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Fifty years ago, the February-March 1966 issue of Radio TV Experimenter magazine published a review of the Eico 753. This was a bare-bones SSB and CW (with AM tossed in as an  afterthought) transceiver for 80, 40, and 20 meters. I happen to own one of these monsters, and it’s actually a nice radio for what it is. I’ve worked DX with it, and I even took it with me on a mini-DXpedition to YV-land. I worked a few stateside stations from there, and even worked Europe on 40 phone.

The review was generally favorable, concluding that “so far, the EICO 753 stacks up as the best ham transceiver buy for 1966.

The radio is affectionately known as the “Seven Drifty Three” for its propensity to drift. The review covers this point:

After a 15 minute warmup the EICO 753’s stability was well within the specified 400 cycles–in fact, we were able to work relatively long contacts with but one or two tuning corrections (done with the receiver offset). We must allow for the other ham’s station having some drift.

In 1966, the radio sold in kit form for $179.95, $299.95 wired. Unless you had a power supply, you would need that as well. The AC supply with speaker sold for $79.95 in kit form, $109.95 wired. Mobile power supplies were available for the same price.

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Ninety years ago, this date’s issue of Radio Digest, February 20, 1926, featured this picture of eighteen year old Fay Wray, who is probably best remembered for her role in the 1933 film King Kong.

Her fame on the cover of this magazine was a result of her being named one of the thriteen WAMPAS Baby Stars for 1926, in a program broadcast by KNX in Los Angeles.  The honor was conferred by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers, which each year honored thirteen young actresses believed to be on the threshold of stardom. Other familiar names in the class of 1926 included Mary Astor and Joan Crawford.

Canadian-born Wray resided in Hollywood, and had appeared in a number of minor roles. After the recognition brought about by the WAMPAS award, she was contracted by Paramount, where she made more than a dozen movies. Her most famous role in King Kong was for RKO.

She died in New York in 2004 at the age of 96. Two days later, the lights of the Empire State Building were extinguished for fifteen minutes in her memory.

There was a time when Americans dressed up for coffee and donuts. The ad here appeared in Life magazine 75 years ago today, February 17, 1941.

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