"Brian Hill" wrote in message
...



I wounder how many met their maker with these death trap sets?



The curtain burner cord sets must have been, by far, the most dangerous.
Smoke and fire are a far bigger threat to groups of people than accidental
contact with electricty. There were a couple of safety improvements in
AC/DC radios and transformerless TVs over the years. First, the true hot
chassis was eliminated. Then protruding metal shafts were eliminated.
Either the plastic knobs had their own hollow shaft to reach down to a metal
control shaft or the controls had plastic shafts.

The last reference I have to a curtain burner cord is in the 1947
Hallicrafters sales flyer. They say they could supply a resistor cord so
the S-38 could be operated on 220 volts. This cord would have been required
to dissapate considerably more power than the usual 1930s curtain burner.

I like to rewire AC/DC sets so the switch opens up the hot wire rather than
the neutral, I install a polarized or three wire cord and I put in a fuse.
I didn't rewire the switch on my Hallicrafters TW 1000 battery set, however.
The radio uses the same switch to switch the line power and the battery
power, and I didn't bother trying to figure out how to make it work right.
I do use it on AC but I don't have it plugged in when I'm not around.

Frank Dresser