On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 23:10:26 -0700, -exray
wrote:

tommyknocker wrote:

While we're on the subject of radio in totalitarian dictatorships, I
seem to remember somebody telling me that the Volksradios
(Volkempfanger?) made in Nazi Germany were primarily set up for a
connection similar to cable TV today, except with only 2 or 3 choices.
IN fact, I once saw one of these little radios with a very simple three
tube circuit and a connector for the cable. But the Volkempfangers had
tuners.

No, that's not quite accurate. The VE radios were built as cheap as
dirt so as to get one in everybody's hands because radio in that era was
still a bit of luxury. The American Equivalent was a "chicken in every
pot".
Being a cheapo radio it wasn't apt to be used to receive FOREIGN
propaganda, only the national version and that made it a very valuable
tool. It probably took Hitler's goons all of 10 minutes to
'nationalize' all the broadcasters in Germany in the 30s. They
nationalized all the radio manufacturers and as a result you can find
VEs bearing every brand name that was extant in the era.
Of course any skilled radio nutt could string up enough wire to hear BBC
Droitwich, etc should he have chosen to do so in spite of the VE being
your basic one-tube + rectifier set.
They cured this foreign reception problem with a penalty of death for
listening to foreign broadcasts...first in the overrun countries like
Poland and Czechoslovakia...but didn't institute this death mandate in
Germany until something like 1943.
This was spelled out without vagarity on a simple knob-hanger label or a
label on the back panel of the set .
Cabled radio was a different scenario. The UK had this as did much of
Europe and the USSR. Even Barbados in the West Indies had cable radio
up until the early 70s. I hear Red China still uses it. Basically a
speaker box with maybe an audio amp fed by telco/cable lines. Not a
'radio' at all but still a tool available to some Central Control for
tax revenue collection or dissemination of the official word.
VEs are common little radios and carry a great dose of 20th century
history. In radio terms they are a POS although the basic design shows
the ultimate in cost-cutting tradeoffs with the best of engineering
available at the time. The cardboard speaker frames still ring true,
for example. Interesting little sets, in the US we have no equivalent
to such a thing.

The only other thing remotely comparable was the UK Utility Set
programme. Domestic wireless makers all worked under state control
during the war and mostly produced a variety of military gear, but
civilians needed radios too. Two designs were created, one battery
powered and one mains. I don't know much about the portable set, but
the mains ones were very robust four valve superhets, designed to work
with a wide variety of valves, and with production farmed out among
the makers. Of course, there were no restrictions on what broadcasts
you could listen to so the Utility Sets were fully tunable - but they
were medium wave only, mostly because wave change switches were in
particularly short supply. They also had a solid-state detector - an
early metal-oxide diode, I think - that didn't work very well.

I've seen a couple of these sets quite recently, still in service. Not
bad for sets made under difficult conditions sixty years ago.

There's a pic of one - and a bit more info - here

http://www.thorneyhill.freeserve.co.uk/othersets.html


-Bill M

R