Wireless music for home entertainments

ENTERTAIN your friends with radio concerts, enjoy the fascination of radio as a hobby, make wireless a profitable part of your business, get news and market reports before they are published, take public speeches off the air. With a simple receiving set and a Radio MAGNAVOX you can do all this, and more, too, in your own home or office. The front cover of this magazine shows how easy it is, with a Radio MAGNAVOX.

Practically every variety of vocal and instrumental music from jazz to grand opera, news reports in plain English, and many other special features are radio broadcasted daily, free to anyone with the simple equipment to receive and reproduce them. Read the article in this issue.
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World’s Greatest Radio Listening Post

RADIO fans take pride in the number of stations they can “log” and verify, especially if these are at a great distance. Contests for the most successful listening are as popular, now that one may hear Australia or South America, as they were in the days when people sat up in the hope of hearing Pittsburgh or Schenectady. However, the prize for the world’s most systematic listening should go to Mdlle. Marianne (the personification of the French Republic, as Uncle Sam is that of the United States). She has erected the world’s most elaborate receiving station for the purpose of listening to and recording broadcasts, as illustrated here.
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RADIO IDEAS

TABLE-LAMP RADIO. Built Into the bakelite base of this attractive table lamp is a five-tube radio receiver with a dynamic speaker. A knob controls the on-off switch, and tuning is accomplished by turning the revolving dial in the base with the tips of the fingers.

CABINET TOUCH-UP KIT. Six different shades of high-grade lacquer are supplied in a handy kit for touching up plastic and colored cabinets. The colors are walnut, ivory, black, red, blue, and green. Bottles holding the enamel have plastic tops with attached brushes for applying it to cabinets.
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Radio Milks Cows, Runs Street Cars

THERE seems to be no end to the versatility of radio in these days of electrical and mechanical miracles—not even cows and street cars are immune to the influences of its radiations. As a curtain raiser at the annual radio show held recently in St. Louis, a street car was operated from a distance by a mere man with a radio transmitter in his hand, and a Holstein cow was made to dispense her milk by the medium of radio waves, whether she liked it or not.
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The NATION Sits in on National Conventions

Politics becomes mechanically minded in 1936, and both Republicans and Democrats are providing the machinery which will permit the nation to listen in to the proceedings.

by BOB GORDON

THE political machinery for nominating the presidential candidates of the two major parties remains as old as the parties, but in June this year the entire nation will be given ringside seats at the National Conventions at Philadelphia and Cleveland, with both parties taking advantage of every latest scientific wrinkle to bring the conventions to your home or local movie.
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Radio Calls Movie Star to Work

HERBERT MUNDIN, movie star, recently had to work in four different pictures at the same time. Finding it rather difficult to keep track of his working day schedule, and to know just where he was wanted next, he had to use a portable radio set.

With radio communication the directors had but to step up to the microphone to call their “much-in-demand” actor.

The tiny radio set and batteries are supported by a slingstrap. Headphones are used for reception, with a tiny loop aerial attached to them. No ground wire is needed since transmitter is close.

Latest equipment for the English bobby is a miniature radio receiving set with which he picks up instructions from police headquarters while on duty. The set is so small that the policeman carries the complete outfit in his pocket.

New Device Converts Flame Into Electricity to Run Radio

A DEVICE which converts the heat of gasoline or kerosene directly into electric current has been invented by Dr. Otto Herman, of St. Louis, Mo., who claims that it is the first practical application of the phenomena of thermo-electricity to the commercial field of radio.
The “Thermotron,” as the inventor calls it, is built at present to operate any standard radio receiving set, using the new two-volt variety of tubes, for a period of 160 hours on a gallon of fuel.
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This article is an exploration of the changes that will be brought on by the rise of solid-state electronics. The author does a very good job extrapolating what will be possible, with very few of the flights of fancy such as flying cars and domed cities that are common to articles of this genre. Almost every product he discusses is available now.

People do have video crib monitors, solar panels are available, but are not quite efficient enough to power a house, as he predicted. Video phones are only now really practical because of the bandwidth limitations spelled out in the article. We don’t have ultrasonic washing machines in our houses, but ultrasonics are used in a number of areas for cleaning. We do (did) rent movies for our color VCRs, and there are megahertz range computers managing very complicated factory production with very little human intervention. Not to mention touch tone phones and microwave ovens. Plus, if you showed that picture of a flat screen tv on the first page to someone without any context they’d probably guess that someone had hacked an LCD monitor to look all “retro”. By the way, if you’re interested in flat screen TVs, you should check out this one from 1958.

I’ve actually been wanting to post this article for a few years. When I was posting this piece about a pocket transistor radio, I noticed that the author used the word “stereatronics”, which I’d never heard. I googled it and found the complete text of this article, with no pictures, here. After reading it I learned that stereatronics was a word created for this article, which they hoped would catch on. It didn’t. I thought it would be perfect to post to the site, so I tracked down a copy. Then when I got it I realized that Colliers magazine was 11×14″ and I couldn’t fit it on my scanner. However, I recently bought an 11×17″ scanner for the site, and so here it is.

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Stereatronics – A New Science that Will Change Your Way of Life

Tiny solids are turning the electronics industry upside down. Some vibrate, others change light to energy or energy to light, or direct current to alternating. Together, they spell revolution

A NEW science, stereatronics, has been creeping up on us in the last few years and has started to make major changes in the way we live. Few of us have noticed any difference; the changes have come so quietly that even many of the people who are closest to the new science are surprised at what it has been doing. Yet the evidences have been all about us.

—Television sets are a great deal less expensive now than they were a relatively few months ago.

—More and more tape recorders are being sold. Five years back, they were too costly for most people. Ten years ago, they weren’t to be had at any price.
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Huge Wireless Station Receives Messages of Zeppelin on World Tour

All the latest devices of radio-land are in service in this huge wireless station at Nauen, Germany. Radio messages sent from the Graf Zeppelin on its epochal flight around the world passed through the receiving apparatus shown in the photo above. The Nauen station acted as clearing-house for the correspondents aboard the dirigible.

Radio Grill Displays Picture

THE grill, or speaker opening, of many radio sets provides a unique and artistic frame in which to display some nice photograph. Portraits are especially suitable for this purpose, and all that is required to adapt them for this purpose is to trim them down sufficiently to fit snugly in the grill opening. The edges may be slipped slightly behind the supporting strips.

The paper has no effect on the sound of the radio, but care should be taken to see that the paper will not vibrate against the wood when the radio is playing, or it may rattle. The picture provides the effect of a television set.

Efficient Antenna for Auto Radio

A MANUFACTURER of radio equipment has designed a novel antenna for auto radios. As shown below, the antenna is attached to the underside of the running board where it is out of the way.