Category Archives: World War 2

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.



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.

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Canadian Women Needed to Assemble Radio Tubes: 1945

1945Feb7TorontoWith Canada’s men off to war, it was up to the women to work in war industries, as shown by this ad from the Toronto Daily Star 75 years ago today, February 7, 1945.

The ad doesn’t identify the company, but it’s a well-established organization that manufactures radio tubes.  Women were needed full time to work as assemblers, and the work promised to continue after victory.

Application was to be made at an agency located at 832 Bay Street, Toronto.



Doorbell First Aid: 1945

1945FebPS21945FebPSThe woman shown above is fixing her doorbell, courtesy of instructions 75 years ago in the wartime February 1945 issue of Popular Science. The magazine explained the exasperation that would result from a non-functional or intermittent doorbell, but pointed out that even a novice, with almost no equipment, could tackle the job of getting the dead doorbell back on its feet. The troubleshooting process was broken down into four categories: testing the source of current, testing the button, testing the bell, and testing the wiring for shorts.

1945FebPS3It then laid out the procedures for each of these, for different styles of bells and buzzers. In some cases, the power supply was a transformer, and the article explained ways to see if it was putting out juice. If the current source was a dry cell, it could be tested with a flashlight bulb or simply shorting it and watching for a spark. But as any kid who has ever had a 9 volt battery knows, the sure way to test a battery is with the tongue. A good battery was described as giving a “strong sour taste.”

The button was tested by shorting it out with a wire, and the magazine gave various tips for checking the wiring without many instruments. Various bells, buzzers, and chimes were described. The woman shown at the top of the page is cleaning out a sticky solenoid on a chime. That type of sounder has no spark and is very reliable. A solenoid pulls a striker into a chime. Even though the unit is sealed, kitchen grease might get inside, and this woman is cleaning the solenoid with some cleaning fluid.



1945 Radio Circuit Tester

1945JanPS3Seventy-five years ago this month, the January 1945 issue of Popular Science showed this simple tester for troubleshooting radio circuits if problems “can’t be located by guesswork”. The top portion was an audio or radio-frequency circuit tracer. You worked backwards from the speaker to locate the source of the trouble. The bottom section was a continuity tester. If you heard a click in the headphones, then you knew there was continuity. To test a capacitor, you would connect it and hear a click. If you waited a few seconds and repeated the process, a weaker click would tell you that the capacitor was holding its charge.



Postwar VHF Allocations

Screen Shot 2020-01-15 at 1.19.09 PMAs you can see, there were still a few tweaks to be made, such as the elimination of TV channel 1, and the exact limits of the FM broadcast band.  But by January 1945, the postwar allocations for the VHF and UHF spectrum were pretty much in place.  This chart appeared in the January 1945 issue of Radio Service Dealer.



Bringing the Car Radio Inside: 1945

1945JanPS1During World War II, one recurring theme in radio and handyman magazines was bringing the radio from the car inside the house. There were two practical reasons for doing this: First, no new radios were being manufactured, so if you needed another one in the house, you had to use some ingenuity. Second, the radio wasn’t doing much good in the car, anyway, due to gas and rubber rationing.

The January 1945 issue of Popular Science contains some pointers for doing the job. The radio probably used 6 volts for the tube filaments, and a higher voltage for the B+. The high voltage came from a vibrator power supply. The mechanical vibrator changed the car’s 6 volts from DC to AC, which was fed into a transformer to increase the voltage. The radio had a rectifier tube to change it back to the DC required by the circuit. To do the conversion, you needed a transformer that changed the 120 volt household current into 6 volts, with another winding of about 120 volts. This replaced the radio’s vibrator and transformer, and the set’s existing rectifier was used. The wiring for two common circuits is shown below.

For an antenna, the article pointed out that about 20 inches of wire would do a good job, since this is about the length of antenna the set was designed for.

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