Seventy-five years ago, the January 13, 1947, issue of Life magazine carried this ad showing General Electric’s radio offerings, especially its FM offerings, such as the model 417 console.
Since there were still prewar FM stations on the air, the deluxe set tuned both FM bands, 42-50 MHz and 88-108 MHz. It also tuned two shortwave bands in addition to standard broadcast. The set’s ten tubes drove a 12 inch dynamic speaker.
This interesting short story appeared 80 years ago in the January 1942 issue of Radio Service Dealer. The story appeared in the magazine’s “Serviceman’s Diary” feature written by contributing editor John H. Potts.
The story must have been written days after Pearl Harbor, and the author is fantasizing about an air raid warning. Ordered to shelter by a police officer, a radio repairman found himself in front of a big apartment building. Somewhat counter-intuitively, he remembered that the safest place would be on the third or fourth floor, so he went to the third floor and rang the bell of the first apartment he saw. An attractive woman answered the door, and the story has its happy ending when she falls for him after he is able to fix the radio.
It’s an interesting prediction of home front life early in the war, and makes an interesting read:
For a snapshot of grocery prices 75 years ago today, here is an ad for Guyton’s Food Store, at the corner of Fifth and Castle Streets, Wilmington, N.C., from the January 10, 1947 issue of the Wilmington Morning Star.
These prices look like real bargains, but there has been a lot of inflation since 1947. According to this inflation calculator, one dollar in 1947 is the equivalent of $12.46 in 2022 dollars. So a dime for a roll of toilet paper sounds cheap, but that’s the same as paying about $1.25 today. A pound of bacon for 65 cents works out to over $8. And a pound of butter was 85 cents, but that’s over $10 a pound today, which is very expensive. Even the margarine at 42 cents a pound is about $5 a pound.
A hundred years ago today, the January 9, 1922, issue of the Indiana Daily Times carried this feature describing a radio store, Hoosier Radio Company of Indianapolis. RADIO CREATES NOVEL BUSINESS
Wireless Telephone and Telegraph Open New Field.
Radio telegraphy, which a few years ago was regarded by the general public as only for real experts when operated on a big scale, for youngsters to amuse themselves with on a small scale, now has come to assume an important place in the life of the community, and the radio telephone Is In far more general use than the average person realizes.
This new science, developed along lines all its own, has resulted in the growth of an entirely new business, the supply business for radio equipment, according to L. H. Smith, president of the Hoosier Radio Company, 108 Pembroke Arcade.
“When radio work was Just becoming popular users of equipment found it difficult in the extreme to buy supplies. Supplies of this character were handled by only a few shops as a sideline, the clerks knew very little about them and the technical nature of the equipment made it almost impossible for anyone not enthusiastic about radio work to deal
intelligently with the trade,” Mr. Smith said.
“This led me to establish a store handling nothing but supplies for radio telephone and radio telegraph equipment. My patronage comes from about every part of Indianapolis and Includes persons of all ages from the enthusiastic school boy to the business man, who is interested in radio work. I believe that at present there are more than 1,000 persons actively interested in radio work in this city and the number is steadily Increasing.
“There has been a genera! misunderstanding In the public mind as to the expense of a radio plant. Contrary to the general belief it is not at all prohibitory. A receiving set with a range of 4OO to 500 miles under favorable conditions may be purchased for $15, and no great amount of study is necessary to use these machines.
“Radio telephony is growing more popular every day, a popularity that is increased by the concerts sent out nightly by the Commonwealth-Edison Company of Chicago. These concerts are given by the Chicago Grand Opera Company and are heard in this city and all over the country. Dally concerts are sent out by the Westinghouse Company at Pittsburgh at the same time, and by simply tuning the instrument the owner of a wireless telephone plant has his choice of the music to which he desires to listen.”
The building in which this shop was located, shown above, the Pembroke Arcade, was located in downtown Indianapolis and built in 1895. It was what we would call today a shopping mall–an enclosed building with a large number of stores inside. It was torn down in 1943.
Because of his official duties as Training and Education Officer with the Office of Civil Defense, Mr. Bryan would be on duty at such time as the shelter was occupied, but he built it, at an expense of about $300 for the benefit of his wife, daughters, and mother in law.
According to the Washington Evening Star, the shelter was surprisingly cheerful looking, with yellow walls. It measured 10 by 11, with a height of six feet. Concrete blocks eight feet thick surrounded it. About 40 gallons of water were stored in the shelter, with an additional 160 gallons in tanks in the basement connected to the shelter by a hose. Food consisted largely of canned goods, with crackers and other items. A canned heat stove was on hand to heat meals, but when Bryan participated in a shelter occupancy experiment, it was discovered that this type of stove was very slow to heat the food. They also had a ratemeter and dosimeter, and as shown above, a portable radio. Little money was spent on furnishings, since most were hand-me-downs or camping gear.
The children slept on the double-decker cots, and one cot was left out during the day for seating. Another cot was unfolded at night for sleeping. A folding table rounded out the furnishings. Toilet facilities consisted of a portable toilet using plastic bags, which would be sealed in food cannisters after they had been emptied.
Seventy-five years ago, these youngsters, shown on the cover of the January 1947 issue of Radio News, had been especially good, since Santa had brought them, among other gifts, this Motorola Playmate Junior portable radio (Model 51M1U).
The four-tube (1R5, 1U4, 1U5, 3S4) portable covered the broadcast band, and ran off batteries or AC. On AC, the set used a selenium rectifier.
Actress Jeanne Crain had apparently also been a good girl, since she is also shown with the same model in the ad below, which noted that the set was the company’s most compact portable and had excellent signal pickup and shock-resistant tubes. It also notes that the antenna is conveniently built in to the cover. Since the ad mentions the film “Take Care of My Little Girl,” it must have been from about 1951, meaning that the set remained in production for quite some time.
For a snapshot of the cost of living a century ago, these grocery ads appeared a hundred years ago today, January 6, 1922, in the Seattle Star. The prices look cheap, but these are all in 1922 dollars. According to this inflation calculator, a dollar in 1922 was the equivalent of $16.54 in 2022 dollars. So you need to multiply all of these prices to get the corresponding value. So ten pounds of sugar for 57 cents is close to $10 today. Coffee was 42 cents a pound, but that’s close to $7 today. Pot roasts were 12-1/2 cents per pound, which is about $2 today, which isn’t bad. I don’t know if the supermarket today as a “fresh killed jack rabbits,” but back then, they were 35 cents each, or $5.76 in today’s money.
If you did your grocery shopping at these stores, what would you buy? Click on the ad to see a full-size version.
Seventy years ago this month, the January 1951 issue of Radio Retailing carried this ad for Jewel’s combination table model/portable set, the model 5050. The ad notes that whether on a table or being carried, the dial is always in a convenient position, and the sound is always pointing in the right direction.
The set operated on household current or battery, and featured a ferrite core antenna. The set had four tubes, 1R5, 1U4, 1U5, and 3V4
Eighty years ago, these gentlemen probably realized that they would soon be serving in the armed forces, and their stint would probably be more comfortable if they came to their induction in possession of a skill useful to Uncle Sam. Therefore, they have undertaken to learn Morse Code, thanks to this one-tube oscillator described in the January 1942 issue of Popular Mechanics.
The set used a single 117L7-GT tube, whose 117 volt filament meant that it could run straight off the AC power lines, without worrying about dropping resistors or transformers. It had plenty of volume, which could be controlled with a volume control, to drive a speaker or up to 20 pairs of headphones for group practice.
Most N95 respirators are intended to be disposed of after a single use. However, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were insufficient numbers of respirators for healthcare workers, and strategies for preserving the supplies were necessary. Therefore, the Centers for Disease Control published strategies for reusing masks, rather than disposing of them after each use. Those strategies were published online.
As of May 2021, that agency reported that the supply of approved respirators has increased significantly, and most healthcare facilities should resume conventional practices, namely, disposing of masks after one use.
However, with the increased availability of N95 masks, many consumers are using them for protection outside of the healthcare context. We have previously published a review of some of the available N95 and KN95 masks.
While they are now readily available, the cost might be prohibitive if a whole family wears them all day and then has to dispose of them. Therefore, many consumers may want to employ the same strategies to be able to use a single mask for more than a single use.
I rarely wear an N95 mask for more than a few minutes at a time, and it’s usually in relatively low-risk situations, such as a supermarket. Therefore, it would be extremely expensive to discard it each time. Therefore, I store the mask and re-use it at a later time. I use a procedure similar to these instructions from the North Dakota Department of Health, which show the approved procedure for re-use. Basically, I carefully remove the mask in a brown paper bag until the next use. This video from the University of Nebraska is a good overview of the procedure:
If you are looking for particular masks, I have used and recommend all of the following, all of which are made in the USA. You can view my full review of these masks at this link. (Note that availability varies, but all of these are usually available at Amazon. You may need to search for different colors or different size packages.
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Since there were still prewar FM stations on the air, the deluxe set tuned both FM bands, 42-50 MHz and 88-108 MHz. It also tuned two shortwave bands in addition to standard broadcast. The set’s ten tubes drove a 12 inch dynamic speaker.
Most N95 respirators are intended to be disposed of after a single use. However, during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were insufficient numbers of respirators for healthcare workers, and strategies for preserving the supplies were necessary. Therefore, the Centers for Disease Control published strategies for reusing masks, rather than disposing of them after each use. Those strategies were