David Eduardo wrote:
"D Peter Maus" wrote in message
...
Full of ****. Present tense.

Webster-Chicago model 181, $98, 1953.

Webster-Chicago model 80, $149, 1948.

Even Henry Ford wasn't selling cars for that.

Run back the thread... my original answer to the recording issue had to do
with tape, which is a format that endured. Wire had a short life and, in
retrospect, is nearly impossible to reproduce today. Most ETs of the
pre-60's period (and I was talking of the post WW II period) were 78's...
and the life of acetates is also limited.


Read back the thread, yourself. Although wire's commercial life was
short--in fact, it was obsolete before the Armour Foundation licensed it
for release and AEG Telefunken was already experimenting with iron oxide
on paper before wire went into use--wire was one of the more enduring
formats. As I said, I have 60 year old recordings, that if cared for,
play as new.



Wire also was very fine (something like 2000 feet on a 3 inch reel)

And again, you're incorrect, here. There was more than a mile of wire
on a 3 inch spool. I've measured.


and it
was next to impossible to edit.

Also incorrect. One simply tied a knot in it, and trimmed the ends
with a scissor.


The devices ran at very high foot per second
speeds


Average 30 ips on a 1 hour spool.


and the delay while rewinding (you rembember there was no removable
pickup reel at least on all I have seen)


Actually, late model Websters had a removable pick up spool.


makes, like the changing of an
acetate, the devices not quite appropriate for non-stop DXing.


No more cumbersome than tape. One hour and more on a spool meant less
time changing spools, and the rewind/rethread time was about 3 1/2
minutes. With a removable take up spool the down time was less than half
a minute.

A Realistic 808 took more than 5 minutes to rewind 3600 feet.

A Masterwork portable takes nearly 3 to rewind a 5" reel of .5 mil tape.

I used wire extensively in the 60's and 70's, before I could afford a
tape deck.



And you neglect (more later) the enormous cost of supplies.


And again: bull****. Wire was cheap. Cheaper than tape. And in many
cases far more plentiful. It was still sold at electronics shops as late
as 1972, when I bought my last 4 spools.

Olson used to have it by the box. In a variety of lengths.





My point is that the average DXer in the era could not afford a wire
recorder. Or a disk recorder. Keyword: average.

Keyword: Horse****. Recording gear was in the same cost range as the
receivers of the period.

I'll get to it later, but I spoke of cost, not just the purchase price of
home devices (the ones you mention would never have held up to the recording
requrements of a DXer devoted enough to want to record... 60 or 70 hours a
month or more.
Many receivers were far and away more expensive. Even Bill Halligan was
building rigs costing more than the cost of a top line wire recorder. We
won't even go where Oscar Hammarlund's prices were.

An lower range Hammarlund was in the $129 range. The cheapest Hallicrafters
was about $60. I had one of each. But that was a full 15 years after the
War.

S-38 was $47.50 in '46. S-25 was $100 in '45. Chuck Dachis has a
great book out on Hallicrafters. You may wish to read it.

The point is that, even if you were buying retail, the cost of a wire
recorder, or a disc recorder was on par with receiver costs. If you
could afford one, you could find away for the other. And most recording
technology was built with radio enthusiasts in mind.

The Meissner of which I spoke not only recorded and played discs, but
it had a receiver, a rather fine receiver built in. It was literally
made for airchecking.



Recording technology, until the early 60's, was not accessable by the
average DXer. The receivers of the post-War period that most people used
were much less costly, in fact. The supplies, maintenance and such were not
what the average DXer was into, either. Tape allowed recorded reception
reports (where you only heard a brief piece of a station, but hearing the DJ
could net a verie out of it).

Home recorders recorded to an acetate, sometimes vinyl (higher end
blanks which were available later) coating on an aluminum substrate.
Those were also not expensive.

If you don't recall one, your experience is lacking.
By 1959, when I started, the only place we saw disk recorders was as a
fading way of sending spots to stations. When I got to Ecuardor, all
agencies sent spots out on disk; we were the only one of nearly 300
stations that did not play the disks on the air, dubbing them instead to
cart.

I'm glad I never had to have the recorders in a station.

So, you admit you don't know what you're talking about. Thank God I
lived to see that.


You fail to recognize, and a horrible failure it is, that the "cost" of such
a device is not just the purchase price but also the other costs. In the
case of a disk recorder, a DXer would have to record at all times he was
listening. Let's say an average DXer listend 15 hours a week for DX... they
would spend something, at near minimum wage, all their salary on blanks in
the 40's or 50's. There were no "Acetate RW" blanks available. And then,
they would need a second recorder to dub the IDs to... not really practical
since recording was pretty much a continuous process.

As for expense...again, not VERY expensive. I have one by Meissner
that was less than $130 new.

As I said, plus the disks. I know in Ecuador, agencies charged us S/.250 for
broken disks, so the cost much have been substantial to them.

And $130 in 1946 was about, what, $1500 in today's money? Or if the year is
1950, $1200 in 2008 money.

That was when minimum wage was less than a buck. In other words, the home
recorder cost a mont's take home pay. That is not cheap.

Again, your experience is lacking. A good radio cost that, and more.
Recording toys were fairly common. Not free, by any means, but hardly out
of the price range of someone who wanted one.

Again, even the low end devices (which were delicate, temperamental, etc.,
just like early tape devices) required you run non-reusable media every time
you listened. The cost of that would make it prohibitive for all but very
rich people.



And yada, yada, yada....you ignore VERY important points. You're
assuming that all of the hobby was done at retail. Not even close.

But consider, that the very people who were into radio in those days
were the same ones who were moved to recording technology. The two went
hand in hand. Receivers had "Record Out" taps. Even some of the bottom
line Halli's did.

And DXers, along with other radio hobbycraft types were highly
motivated, so the equipment they wanted, they found a way to acquire.
And the business accomodated them.

For the Rich? It is to laugh.

My grandfather couldn't afford mercury rectifiers in his early days.
So, he built liquid state rectifiers using pickle jars filled with
solutions of 20 Mule Team Borax. About 20 of them in series. Not
elegant, but they got the job done. He built a power supply for his
receiver like this. The receiver required batteries. He couldn't afford
batteries. So, he found a way.

As with most radio hobbycraft practitioners, even up to today,
"finding a way" is stock-in-trade. The Radio Amateur's Handbook is based
on this thinking. Build your own. Modify what you don't built, but get
something and get it working.

Now, how did my grandfather acquire a receiver when he couldn't
afford batteries?

The same way tens of thousands of hams, DXers and SWL's acquired top
of the line hardware for pennies on the dollar: from the Military.

Receivers like BC-348 didn't become a staple of the amateur hobby
because they carried low price tags at Tipton Electric. They became a
staple of the hobby because after the war there were pallet loads of
them in crates sitting on docks waiting to ship. They went to Military
Surplus. For less than $20 hobbyists on budgets were buying top flight
gear and pressing it into hobby service.

And really budget conscious hobbyists would go through dumpsters at
the end of hamfests, Field Days, and DXpeditions...there were BC-348's
in the dumpsters for the taking. Dumped there just to get rid of them.

Hell, my own BC-794 came from the Signal Corps. As did my RME's.

Military surplus stores had everything. Tubes, radios of all kinds.
Blank discs, wire. Electronic components. And for only a handful of
greenbacks, a dedicated hobbyist could even walk out of an Army-Navy
surplus store with a brand new SX-73 ($975 at retail in '52).

Didn't you say you had an R-390 or 392? You buy that at SS Kresges?

And to the point, military surplus is also where recording hardware
went after the war. Disc recorders, wire recorders, even early tape.
With plenty of media, all were found at surplus.

Hobbyists were like pigs dipped in ****.

So, this notion that recording hardware was only for the rich is the
purest poppycock. Recording hardware, and recording supplies, were for
the dedicated. And affordably available. If someone REALLY wanted them,
they could be acquired regardless of budget.

In fact, the rise of recording hardware at retail was a direct result
of the proliferation of recording hardware from surplus. C'mon, get a clue.

What's so surprising, is that you don't know that. Having been an
engineer yourself, and having regaled us with your tales of building
transmitters, and radio studios in Ecuador, on shoestring budgets...are
you saying that you only bought from BSW, or BGS?

How is it you can tell us of scrounging for parts to keep your radio
stations on the air, while not being aware of the enormous resources
available in the US to hobbyists from the Military Surplus network?

Hmmmm...once again, underscoring many questions.