Another collection of clandestine Dutch radios.

Clandestine radio concealed in book.

When the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, they didn’t want to deal with the possibility of the Dutch tuning in foreign radio broadcasts. So in the spring of 1942, they simply confiscated all radio receivers.

Undaunted, Dutch radio enthusiasts simply went underground and constructed sets to listen to the BBC and Radio Boston to learn how the war was going. A number of interesting radios were described in the March 1947 issue of Radio Craft, in an article by one Mr. J. Maquerinck, who described sets built by himself and others.

The simplest, or course, was the venerable crystal set, such as the one shown here, constructed by one of the author’s friends. This set pulled in England quite well and was constructed in a wooden box. When the friend wanted to listen, he opened the box, hooked up an antenna and ground, and tuned in the BBC.

Another friend, who had in his possession a vacuum tube, constructed the simple one-tube set shown here. This friend had no variable capacitor, but the coil wound on an iron core provided adequate selectivity, and was sensitive enough to pull in England.

The author himself wanted to avoid the complication of an external antenna, which could be seen. He was fortunate enough to own a dual tube, which he was able to use in the circuit shown here as RF amplfier, grid-leak detector, and audio amplifier. To conceal the set, he hollowed out his telephone and built it inside the phone cabinet. His finger served as enough of an antenna to pull in the BBC on 200 kHz. The telephone’s ground connection served as the radio’s ground.

To avoid detection, he had the phone set up so that the dial had to be turned to 7 to power up the radio. As an added precaution, he placed above the radio the sign shown here, meaning “Take care, don’t use. Defective!” He noted that the loss of the telephone wasn’t much of a loss, since it had been out of order most of the time anyway.

This “real radio-telephone” was never discovered. In September 1944, the civilian population of the author’s town was evacuated. When he returned, everything else in the house had been stolen, but the receiver remained.  I guess even Nazis were afraid of messing with the telephone company’s equipment.

The author was evacuated to the town of Aalten, population 10,000. The owner of the home in which the author resided had not previously owned a radio, but the town’s serviceman constructed a regenerative which used plug-in coils, one for 200 kHz and the other for 1000 kHz. The 200 kHz frequency was used to tune in the BBC, and 1000 kHz was the frequency of a station in a part of Holland that had already been liberated.

For another look at clandestine radio receivers used during the war, see our prior post on radios in occupied Guernsey.

Radio concealed in camera, constructed by F.M. Leopold of Eindhoven , Holland.

Each March, Popular Mechanics carried plans for a receiver dubbed the “Little Giant,” and the 1942 version is shown here.

With a war going on, this one differed in that it had been stripped of all unnecessary frills and designed for economy.  But the little four tube AC-DC set still offered high grade performance with its superheterodyne circuit, featuring automatic volume control, an electro-dynamic speaker, and vernier tuning.  The set’s open chassis construction also made it easier to build than earlier models.  It tuned from the bottom of the broadcast band to 18 MHz, with three plug-in coils used to change bands.

Seventy-five years ago, the War was new for Americans, but Britain had been at war for over two years. As America would also soon discover, labor shortages meant that women would play an increasing role in the workplace and even the military.

The cover of the British magazine Wireless World from February 1942 here shows British women in wireless.  This cover illustration shows women doing practical work on a field set.  The magazine notes that women continued to invade the hitherto predominantly masculine field of radio.  In the illustration below, a group of “girls” are shown practicing their Morse skills.

Chicago Tribune, Feb. 8, 1942.

Seventy-five years ago today, February 9, 1942, the United States went on War Time, or year round Daylight Savings Time.  At 2:00 AM that morning, all clocks were to spring forward an hour for the wartime measure, which was intended to conserve electricity.

The measure had been adopted by Congress nationwide, and was to remain in effect until six months after the end of hostilities.

Broadcasters welcomed the change. The January 19 issue of Broadcasting magazine noted that “broadcasting’s semi-yearly headache, partial daylight saving time” would disappear and that the new law “inadvertently fulfills an industry campaign favoring ‘fast’ time on a universal basis, preferably year-round.”

The clock had previously presented headaches to broadcasters, not only due to the twice yearly need to change the clock, but because daylight savings time had not been universally adopted. Some states and communities moved the clock ahead, but others didn’t. For the first time, the entire nation would follow the same scheme.