Chen Yi (right) accepting surrender of General Rikichi Andō (left), last Japanese Governor-General of Taiwan, Taipei City Hall, October 25, 1945. Wikipedia photo.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of Taiwan’s Retrocession Day, October 25, 1945. It marked the end of a half century of colonial rule by the Japanese. The anniversary remains a public holiday in Taiwan.
75 years ago today, the October 21, 1940, issue of Life Magazine carried this two-page ad showing what would be some of its last prewar radios, from the company’s 1941 model year. The ad points out that even for your home’s extra radio, you can get RCA Victor quality at a low price, since the models start with the the model 45X-1, later dubbed the “Little Nipper,” for $9.95. This inexpensive set was billed as having, in addition to standard broadcast, “one police band.” A closer inspection reveals, however, that the “police band” means only that it tunes above the standard broadcast band to 1720 kHz, so that police calls in many cities could be heard at the top of the standard AM dial.
Families wishing to tune in to foreign broadcasts with their “extra” set could do so for as little as $19.95 with the model 16X-11, which tuned standard broadcast and one short wave band. Many of the sets featured a “plug-in for Victrola,” meaning that an external phonograph could be added. The least expensive combination radio-phono was the model V-100 for $29.95.
With the end of civilian radio production on April 22, 1942, virtually all of these sets would see service for the next five years, providing war information to their owners.
The wartime Hytron Corporation worker shown here is using a tube tester, but it’s probably a bit bigger than the one down at the drug store. She is operating a master test station for measuring various attributes of transmitting vacuum tubes. It was described in the October 1944 issue of Radio News.
A year later, the editors were undoubtedly looking for a stunning picture for the cover, so they went ahead and used it 75 years ago this month, in the October 1945 issue.
The test station had various power supplies, as well as precise measuring instruments for voltages and currents to each tube element. The nicely crafted drawers provided storage space for jumper cables and adapters. The heights and angles of all of the meters were carefully considered to avoid paralax errors.
Hytron was acquired by CBS in the 1950’s, and was a major producer of tubes under the Hytron CBS label.
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Seventy years ago, the war was over, but radios were not yet available to consumers, since production had been shut down on April 22, 1942. Gasoline rationing had already ended, but after years of tight restrictions on both tires and gasoline, it was likely that there were a lot of car radios that weren’t seeing much use. Therefore, it’s quite likely that many owners of car radios took the lead of the gentleman shown here, and converted the car set for use inside. The October 1945 issue of Popular Mechanics showed how to make the relatively simple conversion.
The conversion required only a few parts. First of all, the car’s 6-volt battery was replaced with a 4-amp filament transformer. Since the transformer put out AC, the vibrator in the car radio was no longer necessary. Therefore, it was simply removed and jumpered. The car radio would have a speaker with a 6-volt dynamic coil, which wouldn’t work well with AC. Therefore, it was simply replaced with a permanent magnet speaker. The rectifier tube, a 0Z4, was replaced with a 6X5. Since the set’s existing power supply filter might not be up to the job of getting rid of all of the 60 cycle hum, the article showed where a choke could be added if hum was still a problem.
The set could be housed in a new cabinet or, as shown here, in a desk drawer.
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Image via Wikimedia.
By 1944, with able-bodied men off to war, a third of the Civil Service was composed of women, and thousands of “Government Girls” descended on Washington to do their part to win the war by taking jobs in the quickly expanding federal government.
This brought acute housing shortages, and many of them lived in boarding houses. Among them was the young woman shown here in this iconic photograph by government photographer Esther Bubley. Bubley was herself one of those Government Girls. She grew up in Superior Wisconsin. After graduating from high school in the late 1930’s, she attended Superior Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Superior) before studying photography at the Minneapolis School of Art (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design).
“I come in here pretty often, sometimes alone, mostly with another girl, we drink beer, and talk, and of course we keep our eyes open–you’d be surprised at how often nice, lonesome soldiers ask Sue, the waitress, to introduce them to us” Wikimedia.
She moved to Washington in 1942, eventually landing a job as a photographer with the Office of War Information, where she documented the home front, including the lives of her fellow civil servants, such as the one shown above, taken in January 1943, with the caption: “A radio is company for this girl in her boardinghouse room.” Another civil servant is shown in the picture to the left.
The girl in the radio picture is, according to this source, quite likely one of Bubley’s sisters. The boardinghouse project was Bubley’s first in Washington. Even though she started out as a microfilm clerk, the results launched her career as a photographer.
The other star of the photo is, of course, the radio. It can be examined in better detail in the available high resolution scan. There aren’t enough details to positively identify it. I thought that the unusual octagonal tuning dial would make the job easy, but I was wrong.
Stromberg-Carlson did have a number of sets with the distinctive octagonal tuning dial, but this doesn’t appear to be a Stromberg-Carlson. First of all, the set is just too low-end for that company’s line. It has only two controls, and the tuning knob is connected directly to the tuning condenser, with no kind of gearing visible. More importantly, the Stromberg-Carlson name is not visible. It would almost certainly have appeared on the dial itself, but the only markings on this one are “kilocycles” and “meters.”
There is a brand name visible under the speaker, but it’s not possible to make it out. It appears to start with either an M or a W, but it certainly isn’t the same script used by Stromberg-Carlson. Despite the passing resemblance to some of Stromberg-Carlson’s sets, I have to rule it out. If anything, it’s a cheap knockoff of a Stromberg-Carlson.
It’s most likely that the radio had its beginnings in the nebulous radio history of Chicago. There’s a good chance that it was manufactured in a mysterious facility known only as “Plant A,” 1217 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago was the home of many small radio factories, the largest of which was “Plant A.” They were known only by the source given on the label in back, which also recited that they were manufactured under license of the patent holders. And good number of them identified the source as being “Plant A.” Plant A turned out radios under the names of Clinton, Corona, Crusader, Cub, Bostonian, Buckingham, Federal, Harmony, Marshall, Nightengale, Universal, and Westminster. In most cases, these were the house brands of individual stores who contracted with the owners of Plant A.
It’s really not known who the owners of Plant A and the other Chicago plants were. One source lists the owner as being Clinton Mfg. Co., but it’s not entirely clear whether Clinton owned the plant, or whether it was simply one of the brands manufactured there.
In any event, the circumstantial evidence seems strong that the radio came from one of these Chicago plants. Civilian radio production ended on April 22, 1942, and the set resembles the inexpensive four-tube radios that were available in about 1940. For example, the circuit is probably very close to the Tiny Knight from Chicago’s Allied Radio, or the 1940 Aetna Midget from Chicago-based Walgreen’s. Like those sets, the Government Girl probably paid about $7.95 for it at a drug store, tire store, or some other store that contracted with a factory in Chicago to put their name on it.
The closest match I was able to find to the Government Girl’s radio is this Clinton Model 440 4-tube TRF receiver. The general layout is the same, and it’s quite possible that there’s an identical chassis inside. In fact, the Clinton seems to have a permanently attached antenna wire, which is visible in the Government Girl’s window.
Now that we have a good suspicion of what the radio was, I’m sure you’re wondering what station the Government Girl was listening to. The dial pointer is visible in the high resolution photo, but it’s impossible to read the numbers. But the top scale is clearly frequency in kilocycles, and the bottom scale is wavelength in meters. The numbers are closer together at the left on the meter scale, indicating that this is the top of the dial (190 meters, or 1600 kilocycles). With that hint, it’s clear that the dial is set to 250 meters, meaning that the position of the top scale is 1200 kilocycles.
The Winter 1943 issue of White’s Radio Log shows that the most likely station as WOL, on 1260 with 1000 watts. The closest possible other contenders would have been 50,000 watt stations WBAL in Baltimore, on 1090, or WRVA on 1140 in Richmond, but it doesn’t appear that the dial is set low enough for either of those stations. In fact, with the simple 4-tube receiver and dubious window antenna, the signal from the Richmond station would probably have been too weak to keep the set’s owner company.
Incidentally, even though the caption says that the radio was keeping her company, it was turned off when the picture was taken. Even a humble radio such as this one would have had a dial light. The dial light wasn’t there as a convenience for the user; that was just a convenient side-effect. In a radio such as this with the tube filaments wired in series, the dial lamp is in parallel with some of the tubes to limit the current to them. Without the dial light, those tubes would fail prematurely, especially when the set is first turned on. So even the radio that a Government Girl bought at the drug store for $7.95 would have had one.
I would like to thank the QRZ.com members who helped me figure out the mysteries of this radio, in particular KP4SX and KC8VWM. And if anyone has further details, please share them, either by e-mail or in the comments.
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Seventy-five years ago, Pearl Harbor was still more than a year away. But it was clear that it was only a matter of time before the United States was at war. And the clearest sign came 75 years ago today, when President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which put into place the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. Initially, all men between 21 and 35 were required to register. If drafted, a man would serve for twelve months, with the service to be limited to the Western Hemisphere or U.S. possessions. Under the act, up to 900,000 men would be undergoing training at any given time.
The term of service was extended beyond twelve months in August 1941, and a handful of desertions occurred when the initial one-year obligation had expired. The age limits for registration were also subsequently extended, and by the end of the war, all men between the ages of 18 and 65 were required to register.
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Miami Daily News, Sept. 16, 1945.
Seventy years ago today, September 15, 1945, a hurricane made landfall in Key Largo and then swept across Miami and Homestead, Florida. It was a Category 4 storm, and winds of 145 mph were clocked at Homestead Army Air Corps Base. Most of the city of Homestead was destroyed, and at Richmond Naval Air Station, a fire ignited during the storm burned down three hangars. 1632 homes were destroyed in Florida, and there were four deaths.
Amateur radio had not yet returned to the air after V-J Day, but hams were still available to help, since they formed the core of the War Emergency Radio Service, which had been formed during the War to allow hams to provide emergency communications for both civil defense and during natural disasters.
The November 1945 issue of QST reported “September Hurricane Finds Miami WERS Ready.” The Dade County civil defense operated under the call sign of WKNW, which used hams to link ten district headquarters stations to the main control station on the roof of the fifteen-story Technical Vocational Building. A Red Cross mobile disaster unit was also equipped with radio, as were a number of privately owned mobile units. Operations began as soon as the wind subsided enough for operators to get to their designated stations.
At the peak of the storm, all lines to the civil defense headquarters were down, and the WERS station, manned by hams and powered by an emergency generator, was the only link. When the phone line to Jackson Memorial Hospital went out, one of the mobiles was dispatched to that location, and contact was re-established in fifteen minutes.
When it was clear that Homestead had suffered damage, a convoy of vehicles set out from civil defense headquartrs. The antenna at headquarters had been repeatedly destroyed, and a temporary antenna was set up inside, with only limited range. Since it couldn’t reach Homestead, one of the mobile hams in the convoy backtracked until reliable communications was established. However, with the 2-1/2 meter equipment in use, it was not possible for that station to reach all the way to Homestead. It wasn’t until the third day that a reliable link was established between Miami and Homestead, after which a considerable amount of traffic flowed.
Singled out for praise were W4NB, W4AFF, W1KVB, W4CFC, w1JMT, and W4ANP, along with two other hams who were licensed after Pearl Harbor and hence had no amateur call sign. Of those calls, the only one where I could find any later reference was Francis W. Jenard, W1JMT, who died in 1999, according to a QST Silent Key listing. He was a member of the ARRL A-1 Operators Club, and you can see his 1963 QSL card at this link.
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In an earlier post, we showed an inexpensive 1940 four-tube broadcast radio for $7.95 available at Walgreen’s. A modest radio such as this one would probably stay in service until the end of the War, because on April 22, 1942, the War Production board ended the production of civilian radio receivers. So if you had a radio, that’s the one you would have for the duration.
Shown here is probably one of the least expensive prewar receivers of all. This model, the “Tiny Knight” from Allied Radio is shown here in the 1941 Allied catalog, and had a catalog price starting at $5.30. It measured 6-1/2 by 4-1/4 by 4-1/2 inches and weighed four pounds, and was billed as being something that you could hold in the “palm of your hand.” It was marketed as a second radio, or for travel: “It’s so small you can pack it into any size suit-case or overnight bag and take it along when you travel.” But it was also billed as being “so low-priced that anyone can afford it.” At the tail end of the depression, it’s likely that more than a few households had a set similar to this one as their only radio. And with the ban on the manufacture of new radios, quite a few of these sets were what many families depended upon for war news.
The set’s four tubes consisted of a 12K7GT RF amplifier, 12J7GT detector, and 50L6GT audio amplifier, with a 35Z5GT serving as the rectifier. It tuned as high as 1720 kHz, making it capable of picking up police calls in many areas.
This set was a TRF (tuned radio frequency) receiver. On the same page, Allied showed its least expensive superhet, a five-tube model starting at $8.30.
The four-tube set was Allied model B10509 or B10510, depending on the cabinet.
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Seventy-five years ago today, September 12, 1940, eighteen-year-old apprentice mechanic Marcel Ravidat was exploring the caves near his home in Lascaux, France. The war was over in the “Free Zone” of Vichy France, and young Marcel went exploring a hole he had discovered a few days earlier, opened the prior winter as an oak tree had been uprooted by a storm.
What Marcel saw hadn’t been seen in over 15,000 years. He had 
stumbled upon the entrance of a cave containing some of the most spectacular cave paintings ever found. He and his friends kept the cave a secret until finally revealing its location to a teacher known to be a scholar of the other less spectacular paintings in the area. During the war, the cave was used by resistance fighters to store weapons. In 1948, the cave was opened to the public. But the breath of the constant stream of visitors, along with exposure to the atmosphere, began to take a toll. The cave was finally closed to the public in 1963.
All images here are from Wikipedia.
References
Lascaux at Wikipedia
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Photo courtesy of John Schneider and Bay Area Radio Museum. Used with permission.
Seventy five years ago, this date’s issue of Radio Guide magazine concluded a two-part feature on GE’s short wave station KGEI. Part 1 appeared in the August 31, 1940 issue, and part two appeared on September 7.
The station was owned and operated by General Electric and went on the air in San Francisco in March 1939. Short wave broadcasting was not new to GE. It first put a short wave signal on the air with station W2XAF in Schenectady, New York. That station later became WGEO. The next year, another transmitter was installed at the same site with call letters W2XAD, later WGEA. By 1940, WGEO was transmitting with 100,000 watts and was the world’s most powerful station. The two stations were popular with listeners in Europe and Latin America.
Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939-40. Wikipedia image.
By 1940, KGEI was running 20,000 watts, but there were plans to increase it to 50,000. The Schenectady stations operated on 9.53, 15.33, and 21.5 MHz. KGEI broadcast on 9.67 and 15.33 MHz, and provided an additional signal to Latin America as well as Asia and Oceania. The station, both studio and transmitter, was part of GE’s exhibit at the Golden Gate International Exposition, and was located on Treasure Island, between San Francisco and Oakland. The Island was also to serve as a terminus for Pan American‘s Clipper ships, and the station was used to promote Pan American as well as GE. According to the article, “one of the most interesting and colorful programs is ‘Clipper Departure.’ This program is a dockside complementary describing the actual departure of the China Clipper for Hawaii, Guam and points westward. The captain and various members of the crew of the Clipper are interviewed, each contributing some bit about the interesting aerial journeys to and fro across the Pacific. Passengers ready to embark give their reactions as they prepare to set forth on their fascinating trip. The program concludes with the roar of the Clipper’s motors as it moves down the ramp and into the bay off to Hawaii on the first leg of its voyage to Manila and Hong Kong.”
THe station had a studio on the Exposition grounds, and it also carried network programming, such as Burns and Allen, Bing Crosby, and the Don Ameche Show.
Photo courtesy of John Schneider and Bay Area Radio Museum. Used with permission.
The picture at the top of the page was taken in late 1939, and bears the KGEI call letters. The picture of the transmitter and enclosed studio at the left was taken earlier in the year and shows the W6XBE call sign. The public was allowed to be in the same room as the 50 kW transmitter, separated only by a flimsy guardrail.
After the Exposition, the station continued operation. During the War, it remained under GE’s control, but at the request of the Government, did carry programming that was recommended.
The station was widely listened to, especially in the Phillipines. Many resistance fighters listened to the station,, which included broadcast in Tagalog. In 1954-55, the station carried broadcasts from Stanford University, billed as “The International University of the Air.” During that period, the University received 12,000 letters from listeners in Latin America.
In 1960, the station was acquired by the Far East Broadcasting Company, a religious broadcaster. Even though FEBC operated other stations in Asia and the Pacific, KGEI was directed mostly to Latin America, billing itself as La Voz de la Amistad (The Voice of Friendship). During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the station once again put under Government control. In fact, a Cuban listener wrote to the station in 1962, and his letter included the exact positions and descriptions of Russian missile sites. This hadn’t been publicized in the world press yet, but KGEI decided to reproduce this interesting letter in one of its fundraising letters. Unbenknownst to KGEI, that mailing list included the CIA, which hastily arranged a meeting and asked that such letters be made available to them prior to making them public.
A few months later, presidential Press Secretary Pierre Salinger called and informed the station that the President was requesting use of the station to rebroadcast the VOA. The station was reluctant, since it valued its voice as being independent of the U.S. Government. But FEBC was eventually convinced of the need to “volunteer” the station, and it carried VOA programming during the crisis.
KGEI remained on the air until 1994. The original 50 kW GE transmitter was donated to another Christian organization organization for use in Liberia. However, it was destroyed by rebels prior to going on the air. The station’s then main transmitter, capable of 250 kW, was donated to another organization for use in broadcasting to Russia from Alaska.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank John Schneider and the Bay Area Radio Museum for allowing me to use the photos shown on this page, and for providing much of the information for this post. More information about KGEI can be found on the Museum’s website.
References
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