Category Archives: World War 2

1939 One Tube Shortwave Regen

If you had put together this minimalist little shortwave set when it was published in Popular Science in August 1939, you would have been able to use it to pull in the news of the beginning of World War II the next month.

The little set is simplicity itself. It uses a single 1E7G tube, a dual pentode. Half is used as regenerative detector, with the other half serving as audio amplifier. There are only three controls on the front panel: The tuning dial, regeneration control (with on-off switch built in) and another potentiometer for adjusting filament voltage. The voltage was a compromise, since the RF section needed slightly less voltage than the audio amplifier, but there was still plenty of volume left to drive the headphones and pull in the war news.

1944 Canadian Scouting Reminiscences

Shown here is Canadian Boy Scout Frank Lay, of the 67th Winnipeg (St. Aidan’s) Troop. He is featured on the cover of the August 1944 issue of Manitoba Calling, the monthly program guide of CKY Winnipeg, and sister station CKX in Brandon, Manitoba.

The entire issue of the magazine paid tribute to the value of Scout training for Citizenship. It noted that while scouting was designed as peace training, the organization had a fine record in its services to the war effort. At least 100,000 members of the Armed Forces had been Scouts. Indeed, of the 63 Victoria Crosses awarded to date, eight were won by former Scouts.

The magazine includes the reminiscences of W.F. “Bill” Seller, the manager of station CKX. The magazine calls him probably the veteran of all old Scouts in Canada, as he was a member of one of the earliest troops, in fact the first official troop formed in London. It noted that when Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited Winnipeg in 1935, they met with Seller and exchanged reminiscenses of the early days of Scouting in England.

Here is the full text of Seller’s article:

Early Days in the Boy Scouts
By W. F. SELLER (Manager CKX)

Robert Baden-Powell at the first Scout encampment on Brownsea Island held in August 1907. Wikipedia image.

In August, 1907, two men, an orderly and 20 boys pitched tents and hoisted a Union Jack on Brownsea Island, near my home at Poole, Dorset, England. The leader of the party, General Baden-Powell with a friend (Major MacLaren), was making his first experiment in teaching English lads the scouting games he had learned himself as a boy and had used to such good advantage in South Africa, to test his idea of an organization for boys.

The twenty boys were gathered from several sources, from Eton and Harrow and from elementary schools; from the homes of the aristocracy and from the fisherman’s cottage. The troop was divided into four Patrols–each with a leader, Curlews – Ravens -Wolves -and Bulls. From morning till night they were busy learning to live in the open, to cook their own meals, to develop their powers of observation and above all to cultivate comradeship.

Canadian Scouts training for the Fireman’s badge, 1944.

Baden-Powell taught them how to follow trails, how to find a few grains of Indian corn in an acre of heather and how to hide and find messages in trees. Then, too, there were organized games and bathing and all the time these twenty boys were unconsciously acquiring habits of self control, fair play and manliness; in other words, the underlying principles of the Boy Scout Movement. The evenings were topped off with the group gathering round the campfire listening to thrilling stories, bird calls, lessons on stalking and singing, all led by “The Chief “.

By the end of two weeks Baden-Powell had proved that his scheme was sound to the core and he settled down to launch it upon the world. Its value was soon realized, the movement grew and Baden-Powell not only became a hero to but beloved by boys throughout the world.

It was not my good fortune to be in on the experimental camp but a cousin of mine was and his glowing accounts of Baden-Powell and his ideas fired a small group of us with enthusiasm, so in 1908 after purchasing one of the first issues of “Scouting for Boys“, we decided to become Boy Scouts. There was no local organization, we just got together, ten of us, using a shack at the bottom of the garden for our “club house “. We met Thursday nights and Saturday afternoons. There were no uniforms at first and then we were able to buy Scout supplies and started to become real Scouts. This, too, was tough, it was all so new.

1909 uniform, scouts.org.uk image.

For the first few weeks after getting our shorts, shirts, hats and shoes, etc., we used to carry the stuff up to the woods, change under the rhododendron bushes, practise our scouting and then in native’s dressing rooms change back again and amble off home.

After a while we decided that this would not do: if we were going to be Scouts we should be proud of the fact, and so we went one step farther and we changed into uniform in the shack and all marched in patrol formation to our scouting practises. For a time we had to take the public taunts of other boys whose ideas of sport were not always satisfied with wordy insults, but were backed up with sticks, stones and sometimes eggs!

Paying Their Way

1909 Crystal Palace Scout Rally. Wikipedia photo.

Soon, however, we had two patrols of ten each and we looked for a scoutmaster and rented accommodation in one of the schools. To pay the rent, we each donated a few coppers each week to the club funds. If one could afford six -pence o.k., if only a penny, again o.k. But often when rent day came around funds were inadequate, so instead of “scouting” on the Saturday afternoon, we would all go out and hunt up odd jobs, running errands, digging gardens, cutting lawns, etc. Everyone brought in whatever he had earned to the common funds and it worked. Came the day when we had three patrols and could officially qualify as a “troop “. We applied for a Charter and Troop Flag, which was presented to us at a special ceremony at Canford Manor by Lady Wimborne and so we became the first troop of Boy Scouts in the world, registered as the 1st Parkstone Troop, afterward Lady Baden Powell’s own. We attended the first scout rally which was held at the Crystal Palace, London. 15,000 I believe were present, and we were impressed by the size of the old Crystal Palace, when due to rain the march past was held entirely under glass. The following year we attended the rally at Windsor Castle and later one at Birmingham. This last, numbering close to 200,000, was made most interesting for us by the presence in our troop of a prince of the royal house of Ethiopia, dressed in his native costume, one of the sons of Haille Selassi. The lad, about 13, had stowed away on a liner leaving his country for Great Britain and had to remain in England until dignataries from Ethiopia could arrive and return with him in befitting splendour. He was sent to our home town and in despair the gentleman responsible for his care asked our troop to share the responsibility and many were the interesting episodes provided by this young man.

I believe the troop justified its membership in the great brotherhood of scoutdom. Our ambulance patrol was on duty at most public functions and a sports gathering including the first flying meet ever held. This was at Bournemouth, and during this meet the pioneer A. V. Rowe was killed in a vol-planing competition. [Louis] Bleriot, the first man to fly the English Channel, was there and we also saw [Hubert] Latham flying one of the first monoplanes, a crazy looking contraption with the appearance of an over -developed kite. We had the first King’s Scouts and the first Silver Wolf; won many district and national trophies, and had a good time doing it, with clean keen competition and the joy of contest rather than conquest being strongly stressed.

I could ramble on like all pioneers, to tell you of the time when camping, the troop saved a group of cottages from destruction by forest fire, the time a boat -load of us were nearly drowned but for the timely rescue of the Coast Guards, the course of home nursing undertaken by some of the boys, the concerts we ran, the bazaars we organized to rase our own funds.

“B.P.’s” Marriage

I could tell how we got news of Baden-Powell’s wedding at St. Peter’s Church, Parkstone, and were able to turn out in time to salute him and his bride.

We were very fortunate that Baden – Powell had selected our district for his experiment and that he chose a lady from our home town for his bride, for as a result, we enjoyed many informal visits and interesting evenings at our club rooms with the Chief himself. Many members of that first troop of Scouts are living in Canada and most of that same troop served in the first World War. We all carry pleasant memories of the wonderful experiences we had as Scouts and one of my prized possessions is the old Scout shirt resplendent with badges, all-round cords and service stars, together with the scarf and many pictures that are now historical but unfortunately not good enough for reproduction.

Simple Modification to Receive CW: Zenith 6B16BT

Seventy five years ago, Capt. William W. Orr, stationed somewhere overseas with the U.S. Army Coast Artillery Corps, had a Zenith Model 6B16BT receiver similar or identical to the one shown above, but no way to listen to Morse Code transmissions with it. The set covered the standard broadcast band and 2.3 – 22 MHz shortwave, but the set was intended for listening to broadcast programs, and didn’t contain a Beat Frequency Oscillator (BFO) for listening to Morse Code. If there hadn’t been a war going on, adding a BFO would have been a relatively straightforward proposition of building a one-tube oscillator running near the set’s IF frequency of 455 kHz. But as Capt. Orr points out, he was “unable to secure the parts needed for building one.”

Instead, he came up with a solution elegant in its simplicity. It is shown here from Hints & Kinks in the August 1944 issue of QST. He turned the IF into a regenerative stage by adding a “gimmick” capacitor to provide feedback. This consisted of nothing more than two short pieces of wire, sticking out the back of the set. It wasn’t even necessary to solder the wires. One was stuck into the socket for the plate pin, and the other one to the grid pin. To copy CW, the wires were moved close to one another. For listen to voice programs, the wires were moved apart.

Interestingly, the Knight Star Roamer receiver later used a similar method for copying CW. To copy CW, feedback was switched in to the IF stage to make it go into oscillation.

He used a similar trick to turn the set into a code practice oscillator. The key was hooked between the speaker transformer and the phono input. When the key was pressed, the resulting feedback could be used to generate the code.

I would like to thank Dave McClellan for providing the image of the beautifully restored Zenith receiver shown above. You can read about his restoration and see more pictures at this link.

1944 Radio Rentals

Shown here in the August 1944 issue of Radio Service Dealer magazine is the proprietor of Acme Radio Service Co., 880 Third Avenue, New York, NY.

Before the war, he got half of his business from repairs and the balance from sales and rentals. But there were no new sets to be sold, and labor shortages made service problematic. So he focused on rentals to the point where they represented 75% of his business. He acquired used sets, refurbished them, and put them into circulation.

He did this by canvassing all of the hotels within ten square blocks. He managed to place ads in rooms and elevators, but his real success came from the fact that he paid a flat $1 commission to the clerk or bellboy who made the sale. For the bellboy especially it was a lucrative proposition, since when he delivered the set and plugged it in, he was probably going to get an additional tip. Hotels were packed, and it became a very lucrative part of his business.

Good record keeping was key, and the magazine offered some suggestions. The article suggested that a set could be rented out for an average of 100 days per year at an average rental of $1 per day. The magazine noted that the resulting $100 was “many, many times over the original cost of the average midget or table model radio that would be used for rental.”

1944 Radio Hospital

When “Dr.” Ernest C. Augsten entered the radio business in Hartford, CT, in about 1938, he realized that there were so many others in the field that he had to make himself stand out. So he decided to try a different angle, and make his shop at 714 Maple Avenue a Radio Hospital.

The dealership was featured in the August 1944 issue of Radio Retailing, which revealed that he employed one Nurse, his wife, who received the patients and maintained their records. His two interns assisted in operations.

Dr. Augsten wore a stethoscope, which he used on occasion in diagnosing a set. The article also explained how a hypodermic needle (filled with carbon tetrachloride) was used for cleaning a dirty part, and a scalpel was used for jobs such as loudspeaker repair. The ambulance was largely grounded for the duration, due to wartime gas and tire rationing. But before the war, when the ambulance was sent out to pick up a set, it was typically carried out in a stretcher.

This usually caused a crowd to gather, and invariably a member of that crowd had a set at home in need of repair.

Dr. Augsten had been licensed as a ham as early as 1924, as shown by this callbook listing, with callsign 1BFU.

Interns Cliff Islieb and Russ Johnston working on patients with a hypodermic syringe and scalpel.

1949 Emergency Beacon Transmitter

This airman doesn’t look particularly happy about being forced down in the middle of nowhere, but there’s a glimmer of hope in the form of the AN/CRN-16 radio beacon that he’s feverishly cranking. The set weighed in at only 2-1/2 pounds, a marked contrast to the famous “Gibson Girl” AN/CRT-3 from World War II. The CRT-3 had a range of over a thousand miles thanks to its 500 kHz signal and large antenna, but it was bulky, and there was always a possibility of it being lost at sea while trying to transfer it to a lifeboat. The new model operated on 140.58 MHz, which only covered line of sight. But a plane at 2000 feet would be able to pick up the signal 50 miles away. The main advantage of the VHF signal was the short antenna.

As with the original Gibson Girl, the hand crank served two purposes. First, it ran a generator to power the set. It also generated the Morse code message. The picture appeared on the cover of the August 1949 issue of Popular Mechanics.

Wartime Tube Price Ceilings

These wartime burglars, shown in the July 1944 issue of Radio Craft, know where the good loot is, and it’s inside the radio, in the form of the tubes. Much to the consternation of radio owners and servicemen, many needed tubes were hard to come by.

The prices were reasonable, if you could get them. This is because of wartime price caps, as shown in this table in the same issue of the magazine. The 12SA7 that these crooks were about to nab had a maximum price of $1, but they knew that it would fetch more on the black market.

1944 TL-122 Flashlight

On this day 75 years ago, the July 21, 1944, issue of the Milwaukee Journal carried this ad from Schuster’s Department Store for this military surplus flashlight. It came complete with batteries and bulb for $1.99.

Because of small mars or scratches, the flashlights were rejected by the government, but their loss was the public’s gain, since a shipment had just arrived. The ad bears the name “Micro Light,” which presumably means that the flashlights were manufactured by the Micro Lite, one of the four manufacturers of this design, the TL-122. More history of the flashlight can be found at this site.

KFI “On The Scouting Trail” 1944

Seventy-five years ago today, KFI Los Angeles ran this ad in the July 17, 1944, issue of Broadcasting, touting its public service in the form of the program “On the Scouting Trail.” The show served the 60,000 Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts in the region by dramatizing experiences of former scouts and how they were relevant in wartime.

If you look carefully at the shoulder of the scout lighting the fire, you’ll see that the patch has the station’s call letters at the bottom. The text on the top appears to be “COMMANDO.” This patch was given to scouts appearing in the show’s studio audience each Saturday morning. You can see specimens of this and other patches at this page on the Crescent Bay Council website. The scout here appears to be wearing the “late 1940s” version of the patch.

Superior Radio Service, Westfield, MA, 1944

Seventy-five years ago this month, the cover of the July 1944 issue of Radio & Television Retailing showed this scene of downtown Westfield, MA, specifically, Supreme Radio Service, 28 Main Street. The store’s owner was Joseph R. Davich, who had gotten his start in radio at the age of fourteen, when he built sets “using a piece of coal or potato for a detector.” He reportedly also had a spark transmitter with a range of about six miles. He had been in the radio business since 1932, and had expanded into both large and small appliances in 1935.

With wartime consumer manufacturing shut down, Davich had sold his last radio in the fall of 1943. Washers and ranges were soon also out of stock for the duration. The service business continued, but all of his regular technicians had departed, four to the armed forces, one to teaching, and one to a war plant. “Not a man of prejudices, but concerned solely with getting the work done, Davich is willing to train women, if they are interested and willing to learn.” His most recent protege was a 17 year old gird who had just graduated from high school.

The store’s record department was holding its own during the war under the management of a young woman. The magazine noted that records were paying the rent, with service completing the volume. Davich also had a government subcontract to produce plastic radio parts for submarine detector radar equipment. This contract employed five to eight men.

If the New England church steeple looks slightly out of place in the picture, well, that’s because it is. A modern view of the shop from Google street view. The 1944 radio shop is in the spot where the Rovithis Realty sign is, and the building next door is very distinctive. But there’s no church steeple in the modern view. But this isn’t because the church isn’t there. It’s actually located a half block away. It’s actually the steeple of the First Congregational Church, as shown in the modern image at the right. Apparently, the magazine editors took a bit of artistic license and “photoshopped” in the nearby steeple.

OneTubeRadio.com

Radio – Emergency Preparedness – Scouting – Law – Politics