view additional pages

What the Sputniks Said

Russian scientists disclose how radio waves travel from their satellites to earth

By A. J. Steiger

Radio LISTENERS who tracked the earth-circling travels of Sputnik I have reported new discoveries in short-wave propagation, including a round-the-world echo, according to preliminary findings published in a recent issue of Radio, a Russian popular electronics journal.

What the Sputniks discovered about prospects for using solar power to operate space vehicle instruments is also discussed in the Moscow journal. These reports on Russia’s pioneer space vehicles’ discoveries, the first to be published, are translated here.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Take Your Radio on Your Motor Camping Trip

Edited by CHARLES MAGEE ADAMS

WITH the advent of summer, the thoughts of many are turning eagerly vacation-ward. For a goodly proportion of car owners this means anticipation of a long interesting motor trip, with the added pleasure of camping en route. To the radio contingent the attractive prospect of such an expedition may be tinged with regret at leaving behind the trusty receiver and the programs it brings nightly. But that need not be the case. Read the rest of this entry »

RADIO LINKS SINGER AND ORCHESTRA
Convalescing from injuries received in an automobile accident, a radio performer recently sang to her audience from a room in a Philadelphia hospital, while she listened through headphones to an accompaniment played by a dance orchestra in a plane flying 5,000 feet overhead. A dual hook-up enabled listeners-in to hear the voice of the star perfectly blended with the music.

Now “Flying Stenographers” span the sea!

You are familiar with teleprinter service which delivers a typed message, by wire, at high speed. Now this useful service takes to the air on a person-to-person basis, and is spanning the Atlantic Ocean by radio!

This new achievement, called TEX, was developed by RCA engineers and European experts. Its heart is an amazing machine that thinks in code, detects errors which may have come from fading or static —and automatically insists on a correction!
Read the rest of this entry »

HERE IT IS
THE AMAZING NEW Man-From-Mars RADIO HAT

COMPLETE 2-TUBE RADIO BUILT INTO A HAT

Here’s the famous two-tube topper you’ve read about in LIFE. TIME, POPULAR SCIENCE, BUSINESS WEEK, and many other magazines and newspapers, coast-to-coast. Now, you too can own this wonderful “dream-come-true” radio hat. A perfect gift idea! Study these amazing features…. Read the rest of this entry »

Radio Store Provides Free Clubroom for Wireless Amateurs

IN the back of a retail electrical store located in the skyscraper section of New York City, there is a unique club-room for radio amateurs. A full set of radio receiving equipment has been installed with an aerial on the roof. Apparatus can be tested out in actual practice, and the visiting amateur is given the privilege of taking any piece of apparatus from stock to connect up and use as he sees fit. Read the rest of this entry »

Meanwhile, in more modern times, the iPhone in my pocket has a six-axis gyroscope that is smaller than a grain of rice.

view additional pages

What’s What in Radio Today

by Jay Earle Miller

What is the screen grid tube? What does it do? What are the advantages of the condenser speaker? These are a few of the questions that occur to folk trying to keep abreast of developments. Mr. Miller, who attended the Chicago radio shows, here gives the answers.

I WENT to a furniture show the other day and saw some clever new adaptations of radio to home decorating.

And then I went to a radio show and saw the finest furniture exhibit in Chicago. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Eight Ring Radio Circus

TO AM and FM a new kind of broadcasting has been added—PTM, pulse time modulation. By transmitting eight or more different programs at one time on one frequency, it may help solve the traffic problem in the radio spectrum.

PTM was developed to meet the need for crowding more broadcasts into the ultra-high-frequency range between 300 and 3,000 megacycles. These microwaves are relatively immune to fading and static, but travel only along a line of sight, limiting reception to the horizon of the transmitter. Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Home Newspapers by Radio

Your Home a Silent “Press Room” . . . Automatic Facsimile Reproduction . . . Latest News by Breakfast Time . . . Bulletins Are Now Being Broadcast

A PRIVATE newspaper with any spot in your home as the press room, the world’s best editors and reporters on your staff, is available today to anyone in the United States possessing an ordinary radio receiving set. No thundering press will deafen you while your newspaper is being printed; instead, equipment contained in a small attractive box will silently print your “latest edition” while you sleep, completing it in time for reading at breakfast.
Read the rest of this entry »

I love it when writers with expertise in one area just throw in huge advances in other technologies as a possible result of another. Eg: What does a 3-D virtual conference room have to do with satellites? Would it not work with wires?

view additional pages

What the New Domestic COMMUNICATIONS SATELLITES Will Do for You

Canada’s pioneering Aniks, and U.S. successors, are introducing the revolutionary innovation of overland telephone-and-TV relays in the sky. They promise bargain rates for long-distance phone calls, picture phones that everyone can afford—and better television programs, by way of novel kinds of TV networks

By WERNHER von BRAUN
PS Consulting Editor, Space

On Jan. 11, 1973, Rudy Pudluk, community manager of Resolute on a Canadian island above the Arctic Circle, made a long-distance phone call to Ottawa. The English-speaking Eskimo chatted with Gerard Pelletier, Minister of Communications, and with David Golden, president of Telesat Canada, whose system carried his voice across the frozen North.
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

How Ingenious Sound Producing Devices Fool Radio Microphone

You can’t always believe what you hear over the radio—the picture above proves it. Sound producing machinery of a large chain broadcasting company is shown. Thirty-three separate sound effects arc produced by the cabinet before which the operator is sitting, but in addition to this a large number of individual devices are employed, including numerous bells of various tones, a cigar box with a pulley and piece of string to simulate the sound of a curtain being drawn in a theater, oar locks used in acts calling for a rowboat, and a pillow to be struck with slats to produce the thudding effect of a prize fight blow against human flesh. Read the rest of this entry »

PLANES’ RADIO MESSAGES “CANNED” FOR DISASTER RECORD

RADIO communications between plane pilots and airport dispatchers are now permanently recorded on wax cylinders by an electrical machine recently installed by the U. S. Bureau of Air Commerce at a California landing field. Reports made by pilots and orders given by dispatchers, kept on file in record form, are thus available to examiners investigating the causes of any accident to a plane.