New Refrigerator Has Built-in Radio Receiver

A REFRIGERATOR equipped with a built-in radio has been placed on the market. So popular was the first model that the manufacturer has made available a choice of several models in different sizes equipped with radio. This has been accomplished by having the radio mounted in the top of the refrigerator, and having the refrigerator constructed so that a top equipped with radio may be substituted for one without.
Read the rest of this entry »

Radio and Electronics Today

A—Designed to send and receive radio messages in trucks, taxis, fire trucks, police cars and civil-defense passenger cars, this lightweight unit can be installed quickly by plugging it into a cigarette-lighter outlet to obtain the necessary six volts for operation. It is available in either a variable or fixed-frequency model and may be operated on various wavelengths. It has a power output of about four watts and -a range of approximately 20 miles. It also may be used on a standard 115-volt 60-cycle a.c. line
Read the rest of this entry »

view additional pages

Blind Spots in Radio Mystify Science

WHAT is the mysterious force that makes certain spots on the earth’s surface apparently impervious to radio messages? Although about fifty of these “dead” gaps have been charted in North America, and its coastwise waters, no one has found the cause for the “blind” pockets. One of the largest dead gaps is just south of Hudson bay in Canada; another is over the ocean off Atlantic City, while a third is supposed to be in the vicinity of Camden, N. J. Neither does Mexico offer an entirely uninterrupted path to the wireless waves, for somewhere south of that country’s capital a blind spot has been found in the air, and further north, on the border of Texas, there is a gap that defies passage of the wireless.
Read the rest of this entry »

Will Power Operates Gramaphone

YOU can take this story as seriously as you want to. It came to us as perfectly legitimate stuff and here it is:

Major Raymond Phillips, O.M.E., late member of the Inter-Allied Commission of Control, claims to have evolved apparatus which will cause a gramaphone or kettle to function entirely by will power.

Major Phillips explains that the human body acts as an earth and the constant capacity is maintained within three yards of the apparatus. A momentary pause in the flow to earth through the body—produced entirely by mind concentration—is followed by an upward surge of sufficient intensity to cause a series of relays to operate.
That’s the story. You can take it or leave it. We have a sneaking suspicion that somebody is being kidded.

WRIST RADIO

DICK TRACY, the famed comic-strip detective character created by cartoonist Chester Gould, has been using a wrist radio for years in his fight against crime. Now the wrist radio is becoming a reality and Sylvania Products, Inc., has proved it by developing the tiny transmitter shown here. But it can’t receive signals such as Mr. Tracy’s. A separate, larger unit is used. This little radio has been made possible by the transistor, a tiny crystal device, which promises to expand greatly the field of electronics by making possible the manufacture of tiny electronic sets.

The Radio War

Not with bombs, bullets or blood-shed is the present World War raging Instead the nations of the world are disseminating propaganda by radio

France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, England and even the United States are intensifying their radio campaigns. Each nation objects to the direct verbal assaults issued against it by the other nations partaking in this feud. The newspaper clipping at the right is only one of hundreds found in the daily press.
Read the rest of this entry »

Oldest Radio Station Celebrates Its Sixteenth Anniversary

Only sixteen years ago the first regular entertainment program by wireless was broadcast. Program broadcasting originated with Station WWJ of the Detroit News in 1920, and at a sixteenth anniversary program in August one of the speakers was Dr. Lee De Forest, pioneer inventor of the industry, who talked over the original transmitting equipment he had devised.

Radio Bonnet is a new style in Germany for ladies who require entertainment while their permanents are getting permanent. It has a built-in speaker which may be tuned in by the wearer. The small switch the Fraulein holds does the trick.

Stereophonic Chair
Grandfather’s chair, “ears” and all, has been hauled down from the attic, dusted off, and given a new lease on life by Stereo Products Co., Severna Park, Md. By sticking loudspeakers into each of its side-”ears” and hooking them up to a stereo tape player, this company has come up with a new model of the old wing chair that provides an effect akin to listening with binaural earphones. Low volume assures semi-private listening.

If they have a battery that powers the radio for eight months why would the solar cells be necessary?

Sun-Powered Receiver
An experimental pocket-sized radio receiver, powered by energy from the sun, weighs only 10 ounces and will work more than eight months in total darkness without recharging. Developed by General Electric, the set uses a miniature storage battery, four transistors, and seven solar cells. During the day, light rays hit the solar cells which convert the sun’s energy to electrical current. This current powers the transistors and, at the same time, charges the storage battery which takes over at night. Artificial light, such as an ordinary 100-watt bulb, may be substituted for sunlight.

view additional pages

The Man Who Made Radio Talk

And Gave the Movies a Voice—The Dramatic Story of Lee De Forest, Inventor of the Audion Tube

By FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE

THE story of Lee De Forest, and of his long and bitter court struggle for possession of the basic patents on the audion tube, runs parallel to the history of radio. Like most great inventors, he has been maligned, ridiculed, baffled—and all but beaten. Today he emerges victorious, vindicated in his. claim to be called the father of radio broadcasting. Here Mr. Stockbridge writes the drama of the timid, unsociable youth who set his face toward a goal and learned how to fight to win it. —The Editor.
Read the rest of this entry »

Music While Walking With Radio

A BERLIN engineer has invented a new radio hat set which may be worn without inconvenience to the wearer. With this set, shown at the right, one may listen to the Sunday sermon while motoring or playing golf, get the stock market returns at the ball game, or get the benefit of the daily dozen while on the way to work by merely tuning in.