VOLUME 14               MAY  1997                NUMBER  5

EDITOR'S COMMENTS

From Antique Radio Classified for May 1997
(Copyright 1996-7 by John V. Terrey - For personal use only.)

What could have been the event of the century for the radio community is now history. On March 25, A.R.C. received word that the controversial Marconi Auction had been cancelled and that GEC-Marconi will donate its archives to the British Science Museum. In Part 3 of this continuing saga, A.R.C.'s Managing Editor Dorothy Schecter reports on the details of the negotiations described in a Science Museum press release and gathered from other sources. Watch for more observations about this event, as well as information on the upcoming Marconi Centenary celebration to be held in July.

De Forest too was an early radio pioneer, although, of course, Marconi takes first place. In our lead article this month, Wally Worth describes his good fortune on acquiring four rare pre-World War I De Forest items. We appreciate being able to share photos and information on these early detectors and tuners with our readers. Information obtained from your editor's collection augments Wally's article.

Doug Houston writes this month about two interesting radio trends during the 1930s -- radios designed to be placed beside your favorite armchair and radios with remote controls. As Doug points out, collectors of these large sets have to be really creative about space management.

An estate auction in Connecticut and the Antique Wireless Association (AWA) Spring Meet in North Carolina remind us that the auction-meet season is revving up. Ray Chase reports on the Frank Pagano estate auction in Connecticut, where, among other things, numerous lots of early radio magazines sold well. Ron Lawrence reports on the AWA/Carolinas Chapter meet, which over 350 collectors and family members attended. A wide range of equipment showed up at the very successful flea market.

Repairing cracked Bakelite cabinets is the topic covered in Doyle Robert's restoration article. Using automobile Bondo Repair, Doyle gets radio casualties back on the road -- shelf, that is.

Radio Miscellanea includes several Photo Review identifications and a comment on the Ken-Rad tube codes. An especially unusual Atwater Kent advertising display appears in Photo Review. Because they were available only to dealers, such displays are more rare than radios. Also shown is a rare Kennedy Horn.

Ray Bintliff reviews a new edition of Shortwave Receivers Past & Present. This is a complete revamp of what some of us remember as a stapled book of photocopy quality with a yellow cover, published about ten years ago. In contrast, this new, professionally done edition provides a fine reference for the collector interested in recent shortwave receivers, as well as those dating back to 1945.

Transistor radio collectors will be interested in a videotape on the subject, reviewed by Wally Worth. Roger Handy and Eric Wrobbel have teamed up as co-hosts to produce this nearly 2-hour video reference, which Wally judges to be valuable to both beginners and seasoned collectors.

New Books. Back in print and updated with new prices is the second edition of Classic TVs, edited by Scott Wood. Also available again is the Catalin collector's "bible," John Sideli's Classic Plastic Radios of the 1930s and 1940s. Floyd Paul, the horn speaker aficionado, has made available the second edition of The Magnetic Cone Speaker Notebook. And Jonathan Hill has expanded Radio! Radio! to a 3rd edition with 75 new pages covering additional early radios in England, as well as the more recent era of transistor radios.

Coming Radio Events. Over 50 collector events are on the calendar for May, including the first group of big ones! The month begins with the 26th Annual Spring Meet held in Indianapolis, as well as the Houston club's annual convention in Texas. Mid-May finds Radio Daze '97 near Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the 3-day Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio. This latter event is not an old radio show. However, with over 30,000 radio amateurs converging for their largest U.S. event and more than 1,000 outside flea market spaces, some vintage equipment can always be ferreted out. Antique Radio Classified will be inside at Booth #207, and New Wireless Pioneers will be right next to us. If you make it to the Hamvention, be sure to stop by and say "hi."

Happy collecting!

John V. Terrey, Editor

ON THE COVER

Our cover shows the De Forest Wireless System logo taken from the cover of Bulletin B 16, entitled De Forest Receiving Equipment for Radio and High-frequency Work. This bulletin, from your editor's collection, contains 16 pages of photos and information about Audion detectors and amplifiers of the World War I era. Bulletins like these are a boon to anyone who, not knowing how it looked originally, is nevertheless trying to restore this equipment. The first appearance of the logo on equipment was in the form of a metal tag in the early 1920s.