I am more inclined to think that it only tuned the few stations available. Notice that the article says ‘London’ as the location – don’t they only have BBC 1 – 3 or 4? heck, how many did they have then?

just my $.02

My car now does this. I push a button and say “Radio 90.7 FM” or “Radio 1610 AM” and it will use its own voice to announce what it heard me say, and then set the radio. The voice recognition can also do other things, like setting the climate control and operating the GPS.

But even with today’s technology, it doesn’t know how to tune to a station given the station’s name or call letters. I have to say the frequency. Granted, the name lookup wouldn’t be so hard in principle, but would require at least a database that would be impractical in 1930s technology.

Furthermore, I have to push a button before I speak to it. When I push the button, it mutes the radio’s speakers so it can hear me better. I have to speak clearly, and if others in the car are talking, it can get wildly confused. This article doesn’t mention any such issues. If radio station WABC happened to play music that activated the reeds used in WNBC, would the radio re-tune itself?

My modern computerized system has voice recognition that’s a LOT more sophisticated than a few vibrating reeds, yet its still only barely useful. While it can theoretically control a lot of the navigation, climate control, and audio systems, I find that, for most functions, the conventional old buttons are usually faster and less distracting to use while driving.

But tuning the radio to a specific frequency that’s not already on one of my presets (say, a station I notice on a road sign when I’m away from my home area) is one area where it actually is useful.

My car with voice recognition is a 2007 Honda Odyssey with navigation, BTW.

It’s even more likely that there’s a guy in the box tuning the radio then fading up the volume…

Though a series of vibrating reeds is a neat way to do a fourier transform in hardware!