Category Archives: World War 2

1945 “Little Giant” TRF Broadcast Set

1945MarPM31945MarPM1Every year, Popular Mechanics featured plans for a receiver dubbed the “Little Giant,” and these gentlemen are putting together the version described in the magazine’s March 1945 issue.

Despite a war going on, this set was somewhat more elaborate than most.  It featured push-pull audio, with two 6G6-G tubes driving the speaker.  To drop the voltage for the filament string, a 40 watt light bulb was used.  It could be mounted on the chassis, or a lamp could be plugged in to the radio.  The set used a TRF circuit, and the magazine recommended a 75 foot antenna to pull in distant stations.

1945MarPM2

1945MarPMSchematic

 



Answer to Yesterday’s Quiz

1945MarPSYesterday, we featured this brain teaser from the  March 1945 issue of Popular Science.

At first glance, it looks like it will work.  If you trace the path with button a pushed, bell A should ring.  But what you might not have noticed is that with neither button pushed, both bells are hooked up to the transformer in series.  So they will ring continually, albeit probably at reduced volume.

So wartime shortages or not, Jones will have to scrounge up some additional wire.



1945 Electrical Quiz

1945MarPSWartime shortages were undoubtedly the reason that Jones tried to save wire when hooking up his two doorbells. But can you figure out what went wrong? We’ll have the answer tomorrow.

This item appeared 75 years ago this month in the March 1945 issue of Popular Science.



Chicago War Worker: 1945

1945FebRadioNews
Seventy-five years ago, this Chicago war worker was testing RF chokes for their Q factor as they rolled off the assembly line of the Ohmite Manufacturing Company plant. The picture is the cover of the February 1945 issue of Radio News.



Mahr & Van Name, 1945

1945FebRadioRetailing29BeachStStatenIslandSeventy-five years ago, this trapezoidal building was the home of Mahr & Van Name, a radio dealer at 29 Beach Street, Stapleton, Staten Island, New York. The shop was featured in the February 1945 issue of Radio Retailing.

According to the magazine, both before and during the war, the shop stressed quality and material, rather than selling on a grand scale. With wartime shortages, that philosophy proved to be especially important.

Even before the war, the shop also sold table lamps, and those sales, along with service, kept the store open during the war. The owner predicted big things for both FM and TV, both of which the store had sold before the war.

As shown from the current Google Street View shot, the building still stands, although its unclear who occupies the radio shop’s former space.

1945FebRadioRetailing2



Admiral Model 12-B-5, 1940

1940FebRadioRetailingEighty years ago this month, the February 1940 issue of Radio Retailing carried this ad for the Admiral model 12-B-5, a five tube set that covered both standard broadcast (including police at the top of the dial) and shortwave signals from 5.65 to 17.1 MHz.

With Europe at war, this inexpensive set would pull in the news straight from the warring powers. I wasn’t able to find much information about this set, but it looks like an “All-American Five” with the shortwave band added. It probably did an adequate job with the strong stations, and at $12.95, it was modestly priced for a shortwave set.



1945 Army Flight Nurse

1945Feb12LifeShown here, in the February 12, 1945, issue of Life magazine is U.S. Army flight nurse Lt. Victoria Pavlowski, giving a glass of juice to Pvt. Charles V. Reusch, who is being evacuated from Leyte to a hospital in Hawaii. Lt. Pavlowski, described by the magazine as “young, courageous, and pretty,” was among the first class of flight nurses, and was working the 18-hour round-trip flight evacuating injured servicemen from the Pacific theater.

The Life article was penned by Shelley Smith Mydans, who with her photographer husband had been captured in Manila and spent two years in a Japanese internment camp. (We previously wrote about her capture.) She described the group of nurses as “very young, almost like college girls, sitting cross-legged on their beds, smoking and laughing. Their make-up was fresh, their nails brightly polished and their man-sized khakis and flight suits less baggy than the modern coed uniform.”

ArmyNurseLt. Pavlowski went on to marry another officer, and retired from the Army some 20 years later as Maj. Victoria Dragoui. She was profiled in Warrior Medic magazine in 2011, from which the picture at left is taken. She died in 2010 at the age of 98.



Yalta Conference

Yalta conference. Wikipedia image.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the conclusion of the Yalta Conference, 4-11 February 1945, at which Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin worked out postwar plans for carving up Europe.  Roosevelt would be dead two months later, with Harry Truman taking over at the Potsdam Conference that summer.



1945 Grocery Prices

1945Feb9PittsburghPostGazFor the American housewife fighting on the Home Front in 1945, here was the battle plan, as published 75 years ago today in the February 9, 1945, issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

One way to compare the spending power in pre-1964 dollars is to remember that one dollar was one silver dollar, which is worth about $18 dollars today. So 25 pounds of flour was 98 cents, which works out to about 70 cents per pound in today’s money. That seems pretty reasonable, but eggs work out to about $10 per dozen, and pork sausage to over $6 per pound, meaning that the housewife had to be creative when it came to getting protein into her family’s diet.

Some items, such as beef, sugar, and butter, were rationed. But all of the items in this ad were freely available.



1945 One-Tube Shortwave Superregen

1945FebRadioCraftShown here, from the February 1945 issue of Radio Craft, is a compact one-tube shortwave set dubbed “The Ultra.” It’s a superregenerative set covering 10-120 meters using a 117ZP7-GT tube. One half of the tube is the rectifier, with the other half serving as the superregenerative detector. The magazine notes that the set features post-war details such as phosphorescent panel marks. These are made from glow-in-the-dark paper coated with calcium sulphide which is carefully applied to the panel. After being exposed to the light, the markings will then glow in the dark with a purple hue.

The set is shown here with a bent antenna, and the author notes that this antenna is sufficient for strong stations. He cautions against use of an outdoor antenna, as the set will radiate and interfere with other nearby receivers. He suggests the use of one stage of RF amplification if an outdoor antenna is used.

One shortcoming of a superregenerative receiver is that it’s practically impossible to listen to code. When the key is down, the receiver is silent, and when the key is up, the receiver is making a loud rushing noise. Since this is the exact opposite of how it should sound, the author acknowledges that this is a shortcoming. But for AM signals, it would appear that this little set would really pull in the stations.

1945FebRadioCraft2