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Sunday, April 25, 2004
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 Sunday, April 25, 2004
started 4/25/2004; 9:08:48 AM - last post 4/25/2004; 3:39:50 PM
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Doc Searls - Sunday, April 25, 2004 
4/25/2004; 1:08:48 PM (reads: 3736, responses: 5)
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The more things stay the same 
| |  My father, pictured to the left there, was born in 1908, and was a teenager when radio took off, much like the Net did in the late 1990s, complete with the speculative boom. I remember Pop telling me about listening with a crystal radio receiver, which involved a coil made by wrapping wire around a cylindrical quaker oats container. (Good Lord, there's an entire society dedicated to crystal set radios.) The antenna was a long wire that went out a window. You tuned the thing by moving a wire called a "cat's whisker." Everything involved — coil, crystal, antenna, oat box — cost almost nothing. The one thing that cost serious money was the headphones. That's what we have here: |
| | These are the headphones my father used. My father's younger sister, Grace Apgar, found these in her house recently and mailed them out to me. They're in remarkable shape, considering. I put together a gallery of photos of the things. Most of the following links point there. |
| | On the back of each headphone, in raised lettering, is the legend "NATHANIEL BALDWIN / SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH / PAT. MAY 10, 1910 / SEP. 14, 1915 / TYPE C". So I looked up Mr. Baldwin and his headphones, and found his was quite a story. A pioneer farmboy who went to BYU and Stanford before returning to Salt Lake City to a life of invention, entrepreneurship and polygamy. These headphones were his most successful invention, and his legacy. |
| | The phono plug, now covered with copper oxide, is a Stromberg-Carlson that served as an adapter for the Baldwin's two pins. It must be nearly as old. |
| | Anyway, much appreciation to Aunt Grace for sending me these. I think when I get back from Europe I'll make a crystal radio with the kid and see how well these things still work. Betcha they're fine. |
| | [Later...] Grace just added this by email: |
| | The radio had, on the lower left side, a little crystal.( in a round metal holder about a quarter of an inch wide) The crystal looked like a small-rough- textured piece of black coal. Attached at that point, there was a ( 4"or so) short piece of platinum wire that would be placed in various crevices in the crystal's surface - bringing in the different radio stations. I don't remember an antenna wire. |
| | This was in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which is right across the river from Manhattan. The signals would have been pretty good. Here's a list of stations from 1925. |
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Dave Polaschek - Re: Sunday, April 25, 2004
4/25/2004; 2:34:50 PM (reads: 486, responses: 1)
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Doc,
A crystal radio is rewarding, but you may also want to hit the rummage sales in your area for an old tube-powered AM/Shortwave radio. I bought a dozen or so of those as a kid and spent weekends replacing shot tubes, fixing broken or bridged traces and restoring them to working condition. They're great projects for a kid (of any age) who's interested in old-school electronics, and you may be able to find some real gems.
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Doc Searls - Re: Sunday, April 25, 2004
4/25/2004; 3:23:32 PM (reads: 564, responses: 0)
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I need to get my Hammarlund HQ-129X out of storage in North Carolina and transported out here (to Santa Barbara) for exactly that reason. Thanks!
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wilson e. allen - Re: Sunday, April 25, 2004
4/25/2004; 3:46:09 PM (reads: 493, responses: 1)
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that is a phonE plug (short for telephone)... phono plugs aka RCA pin plugs came later - maybe in the 1930s.
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lou josephs - Headphones
4/25/2004; 7:39:50 PM (reads: 500, responses: 0)
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Those are priceless. I have a pair of senheishers that I am using right now to listen to an x=radio moscow jock.
http://www.strelnikov.ru/radio/
Sundays only starting at 1930 UTC..mp 3 stream..
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Doc Searls - Re: Sunday, April 25, 2004
4/26/2004; 10:09:31 AM (reads: 573, responses: 0)
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Right. Thanks. The pins I referred to were the ones you see on the ends of the cable here. These were designed so they could be attached easily to a circuit.
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