Wow, that is one big ass speakerphone.

Phone Aids Free Hands

The busy executive can now carry on conversations over the telephone without even lifting a finger to hold it. With the Jordaphone (PSM, Oct. ’45, p. 96), a wartime development of the Jordanoff Corp., he need only transfer the phone from its regular cradle to the special one in the top of the instrument. Here the incoming voice is picked up directly from the phone’s earpiece and amplified through a loudspeaker, eliminating actual wire connections. An ordinary microphone, placed anywhere in the room, transmits the outgoing voice to the mouthpiece.
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Radio Robot Squirts Out 3 a Minute

A COMPLETE radio set every 20 seconds is the production goal of this new British automatic machine known as ECME (Electronic Circuit Making Equipment). Nearing completion at the research laboratories of Sargrove Electronics, Ltd., this automaton uses the sprayed-circuit technique to do the jobs of a double line of skilled workers. Wiring mistakes are eliminated, and the machine even makes its own tests, signaling the location of any defects in the circuit.

Plastic plates are fed into each end of the two parallel rows of electronic units shown in the photograph at the top of p. 160. As the plates move down the line, all the necessary inductances, capacitors, resistors, and potentiometer tracks are “built up.” After lacquering, other units automatically insert rivets, eyelets, and studs. When two plates are joined together at the end of the line, they form a complete radio receiver except for a few parts such as electrolytic condensers, tubes, and loudspeaker, which are added by hand. It is claimed that the sets will be both lighter and sturdier than those made with wired circuits.

REVOLUTIONARY NEW CONCEPT IN TELEPHONE ANSWERING EQUIPMENT

Perfection in Service Free Telephone Answering equipment at a Low-Low-Direct to Diners Club Members Price

NEW! NEW! NEW! MODULAR CIRCUIT CONSTRUCTION marvel in new electronic design

NEW! All electronic unit— complete with its own Cassette Tape Recorder . . . vastly superior to any phone answering device we sold before and the first time ever offered for sale direct to the public.
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I guess that’s one route to keypad dialing.

“Key Caller” Speeds Phone Service
MAKING telephone number connections three times faster than can be done with an ordinary dial device is the work accomplished by a recent London invention. The “key caller,” as machine is called, consists of an instrument resembling a small typewriter.

What’s New IN ELECTRONICS

BY WILLIAM J. HAWKINS

Game/teacher
Hook Intellivision to your color TV and its preprogrammed software lets you do everything from play games to learn a language. It has 60-by-92-line graphics in 16 colors. With keyboard, it’s $499. Maker: Mattel Electronics, 5150 Rosecrans Ave., Hawthorne, Calif. 90250.

The everything set
It’s a carry-along entertainment and information center—AM, FM, CB, public service, aircraft, and weather bands, three-inch TV, cassette tape—along with a built-in mike and sleep switch. Six D cells power it. It’s $249.95, from Sampo, 1050 Arthur Ave., Elk Grove Village, III. 60007.
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Music visualizations that beat WinAmp by about 70 years.

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The “Telecolor” Translates Music Into Light

COLOR has long been a favorite word to describe the quality and the mood of music; perhaps because some individuals inevitably associate a certain chord with a certain color. This is doubtless only an individual peculiarity; because all people do not match the same music with the same colors. However, a scientific means has been found to turn music into light; and thus make a radio program appeal to the eye (even without television), as well as the ear. The new invention, the “tele-color” shown here, differs from earlier color organs, such as the “clavilux,” in being automatic in its actions.
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Voice Silencer on Telephone Lets You Talk in Secret
Your telephone conversation can be made inaudible to others in the same room if the phone is equipped with a new mouthpiece that prevents sound from escaping. It is easily attached to any hand instrument and fits snugly around the speaker’s lips. There is no distortion of the voice. Part of the midget “telephone booth” telescopes to fit the standard cradle phone.

WORLDS YOUNGEST HAM is eight-year-old Elizabeth Deck, San Bruno, Cal., who has her novice license, call letters ENGMTQ.

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What Are the Facts About FM?

A few years ago, prominent radio engineers “proved” by mathematical and other means that the periodic banging and crackling of static in your loudspeaker could never really be eliminated. They were wrong. For the development of a system of radio broadcasting known as FM (frequency modulation) has not only conquered the static bugaboo, but has given birth to other innovations that may well cause a revolution in America’s $4,000,000,000 radio industry. What are the facts about FM? This article answers the questions most frequently asked.
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“Paddle Wheels” Form Television Aerial

No matter what you guessed to be the purpose of the windmill-shaped thing above, you’d probably be wrong. Actually, it’s the newest fashion in television transmitting antennas. Just completed for a broadcasting station at Los Angeles, Calif., the big aerial measures sixty feet long and will be mounted vertically.

This is so cool. I wish Les Paul would start a private radio station in my building!

Tenants Run Apartment Network
TO ENTERTAIN friends and neighbors in a New York apartment house, a group of professional radio performers operates a unique basement “broadcasting” station. Every Friday and Sunday evening, led by Les Paul and Earnie Newton, they go on the air from their homemade soundproof studio near the furnace room. Programs go to all the apartments through a two-wire ground and aerial system which had been built into the structure and previously never used. Read the rest of this entry »

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Radio Amateurs to the Rescue in Florida Hurricane

During disasters radio “hams” come to the rescue. They keep in touch with lonely outposts, with explorers, arid like sentinels in the night guard against death.

by Clinton B. De Soto

WHEN a roaring hurricane swept through Florida in September, unknown amateur radio operators became heroes in the midst of death and destruction. Through howling wind and pelting rain they tapped away on their low-power transmitters when telephone, telegraph, and powerful broadcasting stations failed.

Their dots and dashes—the language of the radio amateur—hurtling through the ether flashed to the rest of the world news of the disaster and set the great task of relief into motion.
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