Shown here is Miss Yukona Cameron, a singer who appeared nightly on WQJ in Chicago. The caption of this photo from the April 1925 issue of Radio Age notes that she often favored her audience with old-time selections, but that she received the most requests when she presented a popular ditty.

According to an article in the May 17, 1925, Chicago Tribune, the station had come on the air on May 22, 1924. It was owned by Calumet Baking Powder Company and the Rainbo Gardens Ballroom and broadcast from the Rainbo at 4812 North Clark Street.  Interestingly, when the building was finally torn down in 2003, a collection of human bones and tennis shoes were discovered in what had been the building’s basement. The mystery of how those bones ended up there has never been solved.

WQJ shared time at 670 on the dial with WMAQ until it was finally bought out by WMAQ in 1927.

After the station closed, Miss Cameron appeared in two Broadway shows in 1927 and 1930. In 1935, she was back in Chicago, at least for one engagement. According to the Chicago Tribune, August 4, 1935, she was appearing at the Palace, doing a show with comedian Al Trahan, with whom she also appeared in the 1930 short film The Musicale.

Trahan and Cameron, in addition to being Vaudeville partners, were also husband and wife. According to the Palm Beach Daily News, Feb. 20, 1934, the pair had performed before King George, who reportedly remarked, “that American made me laugh.” They had also performed for King Gustav of Sweden and the Prince of Monaco.

Miss Cameron owed her first name to the fact that she was the first White child born in the Yukon, where her parents were prospecting for gold. She was a musical prodigy, and was a concert pianist at the age of 18 with the Chicago symphony.

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Fifty years ago this month, QST carried an article entitled “Vacuum Tubes The Hard Way.” The author was Sam Diaz Pumara, ex-LU2DII. The Argentine ham’s address was listed as being in care of HRB-Singer, Inc., of State College, Pennsylvania, which is now part of Raytheon. Diaz details the meticulous process for building vacuum tubes in his basement. The end result is some of the samples shown here.

Making a vacuum tube at home is not a trivial proposition, but it is within the capabilities of an experienced craftsman. The first problem is creating a sufficient vacuum, which the author accomplished by using a variety of oil pumps, the last of which produced a vacuum of 10^-8 Millimeters (presumably meaning a column of mercury of that height). But the vacuum wouldn’t last, since the elements of the tube (and the glass itself) would occlude gasses. This problem was solved by heating the tube during the evacuation process to a temperature of 500 degrees centigrade.

The actual construction of the internal elements of the tube is a simpler proposition, but the painstaking detail needed in this work is also described in detail.

Another interesting article on the construction of homemade tubes can be found at the website of Dr. Rüdiger Walz. He mentions some of the other experimenters in this field, including Diaz.  One of the experimenters in this field had a call similar to my own, Marold Ross, W6IS, of Baldwin Park, California.

Finally, the video below shows Claude Paillard, F2FO making tubes:

You can view the 1965 article at this link.  (You need to be logged in to your ARRL account to download the QST article.)  For a much simpler method of making a diode vacuum tube, see my earlier post.

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We recently shared a 1940 picture of opera singer Lily Pons listening to her GE radio-phono combo. But it appears that Miss Pons had more than a passing interest in radio. Here, we see her in the April, 1938, issue of All Wave Radio magazine at the mike of amateur station W2JKQ. Shown in the picture are, from left to right, maestro Andre Kostelanetz, Miss Pons, and W2JKQ.

Miss Pons was probably first introduced to ham radio by her camera man, C. Roy Hunt, W6CNE. Mr. Hunt had allowed her to speak to her South American manager, who was at the mike of LU1DA in Buenos Aires. In this photo, she duplicated the contact from W2JKQ’s New York station. She also chatted with a fan in Greece, SV1KE.

Lily Pons in 1940.

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Film actress Hope Hampton starred in several silent movies. With the dawn of the sound era, she retired from the cinema and turned to opera, singing with the Philadelphia Opera. She returned to the screen in 1938, in The Road to Reno. She died in 1982 at the age of 84.

And in the 1920’s, she had an interest in radio. In the top photo, she is shown using one of the piano wires as an antenna. And the lower photo shows her confidently handling a soldering iron as she solders the tuning coil of her set. The pictures above appeared in the July 15, 1922, issue of Radio Digest.

Here, she appears with Lon Chaney in The Light of Faith (1922):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8zPmWFZn-Q

Hope Hapmpton, undated photo. (Wikipedia)

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