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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.