"WShoots1" wrote in message
...
Many thanks for the radio history sites, Frank D. I had a lot of
friends in the
BC business back when I was a teen and young adult. In the late 1950s,
I was CE
for a couple years at a 1 stick, 1 kW day AM station in Arkansas.

Here's another one about Hi Fi AM, this time on the broadcast band:

http://users.rcn.com/jbyrns/HiFi.html

But I always marveled at the older stuff. I'd had the pleasure of
working on
some antique radios, TV, and radars. The radios were the most fun. One
time I
even got to key a rotary spark gap transmitter.

I like to think about the "first timers", that a radio or TV which was
the first radio or TV that people saw. Another collector showed me his
Westinghouse crystal radio from the early 20s. He also had a hybrid
tube crystal radio which used the tube as an RF amp and a galena crystal
as a detector. He said radios like that were made for only a couple of
years. Then came the common three dialers.

I had the chance to work with an old mirror lid TV while I was still in
high school. I couldn't fix it, but I'm sure it would be easy enough
for me today as long as the CRT was good. The CRT screen was about 8
inches across and it was about 30 inches long! I was offered the set if
I could haul it out, but I didn't have a good place to put it. I saw a
similiar one in working condition sell on e-bay for about $10,000.


Back when I belonged to the QCWA, I attended a national convention
held in a
Houston hotel. When I keyed the rotary that was on display, I noticed
it got
into the PA system. So I sent a welcome to the out-of-towners -- and I
got a
round of applause. G

The requirement, clear up until when CW was no longer required, that
shipboard
transmitters have the capability to modulate their signals with 500
Hertz, when
on 500 kHz, was an artifact of when it was needed:

1 - When phasing over from spark gap and not every vessel yet had a
receiver
with regen or BFO.

2 - So, during WWII, folks at home could copy an SOS on their home
receivers.
(I assume but don't recall that the low end of the receiver's BC band
went down
to include 500 KC -- uh -- kHz.)

I haven't seen a radio which extended the standard broadcast band down
to 500 kc. But several of the radios of that era did go to 1700kc, in
order to tune in the old "calling all cars" police band. They're now
ready for the newer AM broadcast extended band!


But that MCW did punch through static!

It just might punch through to a wide 455 kc IF, too!


For what it's worth. The movie camera and projector I had forty years
ago was
not made by Packard-Bell, as I had written before. They were made by
Bell &
Howell (Bellow & Howl G).

73,
Bill, K5BY