mycollection2

AT LEFT - The little baby blue phone is an Ideal Novelty &Toy Co. one tube radio of early 50's vintage. Interesting in that the 'B' battery is permanently wired in as if they did not expect the child to use the radio enough to wear out the battery before the unit broke or they got tired of playing with it...

AT RIGHT - 1 = McMurdo Silver Masterpiece III receiver of 1934 vintage. Chrome plated receiver box with matching speaker cabinet containing the amplifier chassis and 15" Jensen speaker. Interesting in that the speaker cabinet does not have a baffle board behind the grill cloth.

2 = JVC Videosphere TV from the early 1970's.

3 = I built a ONE transistor, self-contained radio that drives a loudspeaker just fine. It is in a cabinet I designed to look like a Philco Model 90 but only 3" deep.

4 = A great 1938 RCA Victor 15 tube console with motorized tuning.

5 = A Pacemaker brand set made in New Zeland circa 1955. It has a unique bakelite chassis that avoids the problems that doomed the 1940 Zenith chassis design.

6 = A Westrex brand ( made by TEFI ) combination endless-loop microgrove record cassette & AM/FM transistor radio of 1961 vintage.

AT LEFT - I have about 20 speakers in this room hooked into an audio system so that I can demonstrate the quality of reproduction possible with various designs.

1 = This small display case shows the progress of receiving tubes from 1910 to 1927.

2 = A neat advertising sign for URECO tubes. It is embossed to look like an oil painting.

3 = An odd celluloid horn made by Milo in N.J.

AT RIGHT - 1 = OK, you got to 'trus me' on this one.... It is a Super-regenerative BC set made in 1923/24 ( a home-brew). In the US this circuit was rarely used in a BC set but found favor with radio amateurs for early VHF work.

2 = A set made for Radio Rentals; engineered for rapid servicing. In the UK renting radios in the 30's to 50's was fairly common practice and almost never done here...

3 = A good assortment of 50's portables both tube & transistor... Regency TR-1, Sony TR-63, Philips, Crosley, Olympic, Emerson, etc.

4 = Brand unknown... But it is an aluminum cylinder containing a frame carrying a zig-zag layout of fabric covered antenna wire... The idea was that this antenna was shielded from electrostatic fields. It probably was near useless...

5 = Air King TV of 1947 vintage.... RCA licensed a number of manufacturers to build sets identical to the RCA 630. The idea being to get enough TV's into use to get advertisers to begin supporting TV networks.for which RCA made the equipment.

6 = An Emerson 7" TV of 1949 vintage with an after-market magnifier lense placed in front... The blue color was supposed to reduce eye strain...

7 = Zenith did not sell TV's until the 1948 model year... This is their first set, the 10" Mayflower"

AT RIGHT is the Victor Model 7-3 of 1925. It features a battery powered Radiola 20 TRF receiver and the first version of the Victor Orthophonic acoustic record player. There is an air valve to switch from the recordplayer sound box to the radio horn speaker driver unit. All the metal parts are gold plated....

This is the first US made radio/phono combination to be built in significant numbers ( 800 claims one source ) It cost about the same as a Model T Ford.