The AWA Review

The AWA Review Volume 28 • 2015 Published by THE ANTIQUE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION PO Box 421, Bloomfield, NY 14469-0421 http://www.antiquewireless.org Devoted to research and documentation of the history of wireless communications. THE ANTIQUE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION PO Box 421, Bloomfield, NY 14469-0421 http://www.antiquewireless.org Founded 1952, Chartered as a non-profit corporation by the State of New York. The AWA Review EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Robert P. Murray, Ph.D. Vancouver, BC, Canada EDITOR FOR EUROPE Anders Widell, MD, Ph.D. ASSOCIATE EDITORS Erich Brueschke, BSEE, MD, KC9ACE David Bart, BA, MBA, KB9YPD, Julia Bart, BA, MA FORMER EDITORS Robert M. Morris W2LV, (silent key) William B. Fizette, Ph.D., W2GDB Ludwell A. Sibley, KB2EVN Thomas B. Perera, Ph.D., W1TP Brian C. Belanger, Ph.D. OFFICERS OF THE ANTIQUE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION DIRECTOR: Tom Peterson, Jr. DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Robert Hobday, N2EVG SECRETARY: William Hopkins, Ph.D., AA2YV TREASURER: Stan Avery, WM3D AWA MUSEUM CURATOR: Bruce Roloson, W2BDR ©2015 by the Antique Wireless Association, ISBN 978-0-9890350-2-6 Cover images: Beginning in 1938, Arvin metal cabinet sets were produced in various colors. The series ended in the mid-1950s. Article begins on page 89. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy- ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Book design and layout by Fiona Raven, Vancouver, BC, Canada Printed in Canada by Friesens, Altona, MB Contents ■ Volume 28, 2015 FOREWORD .................................................... iv EVOLUTION OF THE AM DIAL P. A. Kinzie ................................................. 1 RADIO ARCHEOLOGY, THE MT. TAM WIRELESS AND A CALL TO ACTION Bart Lee .................................................... 25 EDWARD WESTON: THE MAN AND THE METERS Mike Molnar ................................................ 57 THE FIRST BROADCAST FM AUTO RADIO—MOTOROLA FM-900 Ray Schulenberg and Olin Shuler ................................ 73 ARVIN METAL CABINET RADIOS Dan Howard ................................................ 89 RESTORATION OF A TRANSMITTER FOR WHEATSTONE MAGNETO- ELECTRIC DIAL TELEGRAPHY (A LETTER TO THE EDITOR) Franz Pichler . 117 LETTER TO THE EDITOR John B. Doolittle ............................................. 121 RADIO IN 1922: WHAT THE BOYS AND GIRLS KNEW Mike Adams................................................. 123 OLIVER LODGE’S FANCIFUL HISTORY OF THE COHERER PRINCIPLE Eric P. Wenaas............................................... 163 90 YEARS OF PRE-ELECTRONIC VLF-TRANSMISSION Bengt Svensson............................................... 221 THE HEATHKIT DF-1 TRANSISTOR RADIO DIRECTION FINDER AND THE DF-2 AND DF-3 MODELS Erich E. Brueschke............................................ 233 WHA MADISON—IS IT REALLY THE NATION’S OLDEST STATION? Dan Clark .................................................. 243 Foreword My first introduction to the AWA Conference was in the days when it was held at the Canandaigua Inn. I arrived by bus from Rochester Airport. Everything about the conference was a delight to me. One session I particularly remember was a presentation by Bob Morris, one of the founders of The AWA Review. He was showing the waveforms at various points in an operating spark transmitter, using a modern oscilloscope. I was very much impressed that here was an individual who spanned the time between spark transmission technology and contemporary (at that time) technology. In this year’s AWA Review we have a few similar examples. We have the designers of the first FM car radio. We have an individual who was in on the ground floor of one of the first broadcast stations in America, still in operation as the PBS station in Madison, WI. This volume is again brought to you by a generous donor and AWA member who believes in the dissemination of information as a core principle of our hobby. Again we owe him a heartfelt thanks. The AWA Review is the AWA’s peer reviewed journal. The articles presented here are verified as to their factual content by one or more reviewers whose identity is not revealed to the authors. This process gives The AWA Review some extra credibility as a source of historical information. This volume exhibits a great deal of dedication and energy on the part of its authors. The result is a number of fine efforts: ■ Philip Kinzie has had a lifelong career as an instrumentation engineer on civil and military aircraft. He also had a lifelong interest in radio which began when he was in elementary school. He has written some books and many articles, and his reflections about the components that were available at various points in time became the focus of this article. ■ Bart Lee stretches our imaginations this year with an unconventional topic. He investigates the wireless achievements of about a century ago by using anthropological methods. He offers us an anthropology of radio. He and oth- ers search the physical remains of transmitting stations, usually the traces of transmitter building foundations and aerials. From these sources he is able to complement the published accounts of the time and deliver a more complete account of early events. If you feel your mind expanded by Bart’s offerings, so it should be. ■ Mike Molnar pays attention to those inventors who played an important role in the history of electricity and radio, but about whom not a lot is known. Edward Weston is one such individual. He emigrated from England at a young age, iv The AWA Review and in America had a string of accomplishments, of which electrical meters are the best known. Molnar’s account does him proud. ■ Ray Schulenberg and Orin Shuler were heavily involved in the design and production of FM car radios at Motorola. This was 56 years ago, when it was realized that FM radios were relatively free of interference caused by envi- ronmental sources. They recount their experiences in the first person, and they have a prototype specimen of the original set! How fortunate we are that they are here to tell their story. ■ Dan Howard remembers when he first joined a radio club, there was a lot of interest in three-dialer sets of the 1920’s and cathedral sets of the 1930’s. Folks paid little attention to the varied and attractive metal sets, also of the 1930’s, and they were inexpensive to collect. He began to acquire these, and now has almost a complete set of miniature metal cabinet sets by the Arvin Manufacturing Company. He presents them here, along with data on their colors, designs, and distribution. ■ Mike Adams is known for his widely distributed writings on early broadcasting, his articles, books and video presentations. Mike is also Professor Emeritus at the San Jose State University department of radio, television, and film, and Board Chair of the California Radio Historical Radio Society. Could he be better qualified to write about radio history? Not likely. Here he describes what girls and boys knew about early broadcasting (and by implication their parents didn’t know) by commenting on the contents of girls and boys radio books. This is a creative way to approach the subject, and Mike doesn’t disappoint us. ■ Eric Wenaas, in a series of historical accounts of great inventors, has contem- plated apparent inconsistencies in early written reports. In the case of Oliver Lodge, Eric doubted his claim as the original inventor of the filings coherer. Lodge, for example, claimed the invention after Edouard Branly had already published it. He was in France, mind you, so I guess that doesn’t count. Eric examined all the related reports he could uncover. He even went to the extent of building a replica of Lodge’s early apparatus. The results don’t favor Lodge. ■ Bengt Svensson is a Swedish electrical engineer with a keen interest in communications history. He is a member of several international wireless societ- ies, including the AWA. He has travelled widely to meet collectors and to see examples of early wireless equipment. Closer to his home, he is prominent among those preserving station SAQ in Grimeton, Sweden. This station is based on the alternator of Ernst Alexanderson, also a Swede, and is the last Volume 28, 2015 v surviving example of a high powered very low frequency transmitter, still in operation since 1924. He describes it here. ■ Erich Bruesche, as in most recent years, describes in painstaking detail some apparatus of which he has acquired a representative sample. This year he reports on an early ancestor of GPS navigation. That is, the series of radio direction finders produced by Heathkit. He describes how they work, the early improvements from one model to the next, and how to repair them. I doubt that folks would want to find their way at sea using one of these nowadays, but if they choose to, they can. ■ Dan Clark, as a young engineering student, worked part time at the brand new radio broadcast station at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Because funds were a problem, he helped make transmitting tubes, one at a time, by hand. Some of these early tubes still survive. Dan stayed with the station WHA, from 1952 to 1956. It ultimately became the Madison location of the Public Broadcasting System. After graduation, Dan joined the Motorola corporation in Chicago as a Receiver Design Engineer. Again this year our sincere thanks go to these authors for their fine work. A smoothly finished article often obscures the work that went into writing it, not to mention the time involved. We continue to use the services of experts in the field as peer reviewers. We believe that this process raises the overall quality of The AWA Review. Some of our reviewers have served in this role for a number of years now and deserve our special thanks. The reviewers for this issue are: Steve Auyer, Graeme Bartram, Brian Belanger, Erich Brueschke, Neil Fried- man, John Hughes, Gerry O’Hara, Russ Kleinman, Joe Knight, Robert Lozier, Crawford MacKeand, Franz Pichler, Ludwell Sibley, Glenn Trischen, Eric Wenaas, Anders Widell and David Willenborg.

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