Broadcasts Game as He Plays

A PLAY-BY-PLAY account of a basketball game, broadcast by one of the actual players during the contest, recently went on the air at Cleveland, Ohio. For the radio stunt, the player-announcer carried a short-wave transmitter that required no trailing wires, and the central radio studio picked up and rebroadcast his exciting description of his own plays and those of his team mates and opponents. The picture shows him in action.

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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.

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

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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Do Wild Radio Waves Cause Air Disasters?

Millions of horsepower of high-frequency electric energy, running “wild” in the air, may be the cause of mysterious disasters to aircraft, such as the loss of the Akron, the dirigible R-101, Knute Rockne’s airplane, and scores of others. How these amazing currents affect not only airplanes but your body, your home, and any objects that fail in tune with them, is explained in this unusual article on the unseen menace from the sky.

by BURTON MANFRED

THE radio experts of the United States Navy have recently completed a series of astounding experiments, experiments that prove far beyond the shadow of human error that there is a new menace in the sky. Hour after hour, day after day countless thousands of horsepower of high-frequency electric energy is being pumped into the air by great radio stations and other high-frequency machinery which has become a part of our civilization.

Only an infinitesimal speck of this prodigious output of energy is consumed by the radio receivers of the world. What happens to the rest? Does it become a wild and roving source of death and destruction or does it rush into the frigid voids of space never to return to the earth?
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Portable Two-Way Radio Weighs Five Pounds
Suspended from the shoulders and strapped around the waist, a compact radio transmitting and receiving set, battery-operated and weighing only five pounds, is now being tried out by New York City police officials. A microphone is attached to the vest.

Drawing Pictures Over the Radio Broadcast Is Latest Fad
THOUSANDS of radio listeners are joining in on the fun of the latest broadcast novelty—drawing pictures over the radio. The artist in the studio sketches his model in front of the microphone, making the drawing on a chart ruled off into many squares. Radio listeners provide themselves with a similar chart, and when the artist announces that the line he is drawing passes through a certain numbered square, his audience duplicates the line on its own charts. The result is somewhat similar to the drawings subdivided into tiny squares which are printed in the How-to-Build-it section of Modern Me-chanix and Inventions for home craftsmen to copy.

You know an ad is designed to appeal to geeks when it refers to a “fightin’ ham”. Not to mention people who know, or care, what a hemidemisemiquaver is.

Home on a Hemidemisemiquaver*

*Your quick interpretation —a 64th note, or for instance, a “dot” in Code ..

Wings shot-up… motor conking… radio half gone —yet a hemidemisemiquaver signal conies through to guide our fightin’ ham home.
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Did you think all those Wi-Fi hackers had invented the cantenna? This has them beat by a good 45-50 years.

• Airmen’s “Can-Tenna”

  At the Altus Air Force Base in Oklahoma there’s a short-wave antenna that proves you should never throw away anything! It is the antenna for a Globe King transmitter and is made of 84 beverage cans that have been soldered together, end to end. Its height is 27 feet, 10 inches, about a quarter wave length of the 40-meter band.

• Color Converter for Black-and-White TV

  Black-and-white TV sets are converted to full color by an adapter that costs about $150 plus installation. The adapter includes an electronic circuit to reduce the
  black-and-white picture to 12-inch size. A rotating filter, electronically synchronized, stands in front of the set to add full color to the picture.

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Dog’s Tail Forms Radio Receiver
A DOG’S tail serves as a radio receiver for Frank G. Kerk, Los Angeles experimenter. Kerk attaches an aerial to the collar of his Great Dane and hooks an ear phone to the animal’s tail. The canine radio is then complete and all that is necessary is to place the phone to the ear and listen.

This is a bizzare article about people and household objects that suddenly become radio receivers. It reminds me a lot of the the movie Real Genius, where poor Kent has his braces turned into a radio antenna.

My question is: Does this really happen? Can my bathtub suddenly start singing to me?

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Spooks on the Airways

By Irv Leiberman
Illustrations By Chic Stone

THE lady sat down in her luxurious bubble bath and soaked contentedly. “I’m forever blowing bubbles,” crooned a soothing voice from underneath. She screamed and hopped out of the tub but the voice had stopped. Imagining herself the victim of her own delusions, she climbed back into the bathtub only to be startled by the same voice again. As it reached the end of the number, this time another voice boomed out with a commercial for a cigarette manufacturer.
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