'Tickling The Cat's Whiskers'
The radio collection has approximately 250 vintage radios and a substantial amount of radio equipment. The radio collection spans from the early 1920's to the late 1980's and includes early valve and transistor radios.
Marconi And The Discovery Of Radio
Early Broadcasting
Early Radio And Crystal Sets
Early Radio Cabinet Design
Marconi And The Discovery Of Radio
Although credited with inventing wireless (radio) Guglielmo Marconi, a 21 year-old Italian who came to England in 1896, did not in fact invent any new device. He adapted and improved upon the discoveries of other men such as Hertz, Lodge, Branly and Raghi and combined them into the first practical wireless communication system. By improving these important discoveries he gained a dominant position in this field of research which far exceeded his competitors.
In December 1901 at the old Military Barracks, Signal Hill, St John's, Newfoundland, Marconi received the first wireless signals ever to be transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean. These were a series of S's (or dot, dot, dot) sent by morse code from Dr Ambrose Flemming at the New Marconi station, Poldhu, Cornwall. To attain height for his aerials he used large kites and helium filled balloons, this gave better transmission of the signal.
Top^ Early Broadcasting
On Tuesday 14 th February 1922 at 7pm an experimental wireless station at Writtle in Essex operated by the Marconi subsidiary, Marconi Scientific Instruments Co Ltd, began to transmit a short weekly broadcast of wireless telephony and morse calibration signals. For the first time the ever-growing numbers of amateur wireless experimenters had a regular broadcast on which their interest could be temporarily sated. The Writtle station finally ceased broadcasting on January 17 th 1923 after almost one year of successful and popular broadcasting. This established the idea that radio could be exploited for the purpose of entertainment.
The British Broadcasting Company was formed on 18 th October 1922 and made it's first broadcast on 14 th November of the same year from a studio on the top floor of Marconi House in London. By 1923 the BBC was broadcasting to 500,000 listeners via one relay and eight stations located at London, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Cardiff, Bournemouth, Glasgow and Aberdeen. The company was an amalgamation of three hundred British wireless manufacturers and dealers. As is the case today, to legally tune into BBC broadcasts, a listener had to own a license. In order to protect the infant British wireless industry, all equipment which was used to receive BBC broadcasts had to be of British origin and as such had to bear the BBC/PMG (Post Master General) stamp. The broadcast license cost 10s.0d and was available to those using a factory-built radio; the same fee was charged for the experimenter's license for those building their own sets. The latter license gave the holder the legal right to build receivers using non-BBC/PMG parts, an option which was a vastly cheaper alternative to buying factory-made sets. This resulted in thousands of applications for the experimenter's license and deprived the BBC of royalties from the sale of BBC/PMG stamped sets as well as the loss of their 50% share of the less popular broadcast license fee. Inevitably the BBC took steps to ensure that fewer experimenter's licenses were applied for and more BBC stamped sets or parts were bought. Eventually on 4 th October 1923, when an estimated 200,000 people were receiving BBC broadcasts illegally, two new licenses were introduced; the constructors license which at 15s.0d. allowed enthusiasts to construct home-made sets using British components, and the interim license, sold at the same price and for enthusiasts who were already receiving broadcasts on home-made sets built with non-British components and for sets not bearing the BBC/PMG stamp. Finally, on 1 st January 1925, a new license was introduced which revoked all others. This license which had an annual fee of 10s.0d. laid down no stipulation on country of origin of set or components. The license problem was finally solved.
Top^ Early Radio And Crystal Sets
Crystal sets became very popular in the 1920's because of their cheapness, simplicity and ease of use. They also did not require a battery, simply relying on the power of the radio signal. This was the cheap end of technology and many home enthusiasts built their own set. Although the Museum does not have a crystal set in the collection, the BBC/PMG stamped,1-valve set in the exhibition section is roughly the same size and works in a similar way (with the exception that the 1-valve set uses a battery and has a valve). A long aerial would have been strung from the radio set in the house along the length of the garden to a nearby tree. A copper pipe would be driven into the ground to make a good 'earth', this was wired to the set. The earth magnified the radio signal through the ground at the same time as the signal was sent out through the air, with the earth being improved upon by wetting it. The signal was so weak that it could not be amplified through speakers, instead headphones had to be used.
If you have often wondered how you can pick up one radio station and not every station broadcasting at that time, consider the following simple experiment. If a stone is thrown into water, the ripples or wave forms move out and pass through each other. In exactly the same way, the information carried by radio waves is carried through every other radio wave so that it is possible to tune to one particular station and exclude all others. Some people may remember the old glass batteries that were used in 'portable' wireless sets. These were lead acid accumulators also known as (low-tension) storage or wet batteries. In fact the museum has two of these batteries in the collection. They were very heavy and needed frequent recharging (the charge lasting from two to three weeks) and most battery set users had to have their batteries charged at the local garage or wireless shop. In the 1920's this cost about 6d per charge.
Top^ Early Radio Cabinet Design
The 1930's saw the increased popularity in compact table sets, housed in cabinets constructed from highly-polished walnut, mahogany or oak, with built-in speakers behind a fret-work grill. The emphasis on appearance made the 1930's wireless a fashionable addition to the home and as such moved from the back-room to the parlour. This transition into the domestic domain inevitably demanded that wireless should be capable of integration into the home in an aesthetically pleasing manner to ensure that, as one female radio enthusiast Evelyn Spilsbury put it, ' the untidy home of the wireless enthusiast has no longer any justification' (The Wireless and Gramaphone Trader c.1930).
Early radio cabinets were made as a piece of furniture with aesthetic as well as technological principles incorporated in the design. Take for example the two Ferranti radios in the exhibition, both utilise a distinctive Art Deco style from the 1930's, one is made in bakelite and the other made in wood. Bakelite was popular until the 1950's and 1960's for use in radio cabinets. Bakelite, named after Bakeland, it's Belgian inventor, was available in many different grades and has been described as one of the most tactile materials ever made. It was hard and glossy yet was capable of being molded into very fine detail. When new it carried a lustrous sheen, no wonder it was so popular with the radio industry and public alike.
Of course, many radio cabinets like the Ferranti Arcadia were made of wood and although there would have been a production line element to early radio, many parts were hand-made. Skilled cabinet-makers would have built up the basic cabinet in ply-wood and applied veneers using hide (animal) glue. They made and fitted wooden moldings and sometimes used chrome or bakelite trim. A few radios were french-polished but from the mid-1930's onwards most were coated with cellulose lacquer or varnish. By contrast, more recent radio sets used thermoplastic which could be mass-produced, such as Perspex, ABS, Styrene and Diakon. Incidentally, one of the major innovations at the start of the 1930's was to have the full-range of station names printed on the dial, this did away with the haphazard process of turning the dial until a station was hit-upon. From 1929 on, as the national grid scheme began to progress, mains operated receivers became ever more popular although battery-powered portable radios never lost prominence. The 1920's were also the golden age for loudspeakers as separate units and many different designs were popular up until the 1930's when they were superceded by built-in speakers.
An early pioneer in wireless cabinet design was architect and designer Wells Coates who was commissioned by EKCo Radio Ltd to create a new concept in cabinet design. His circular radios were moulded in Bakelite rather than wood and were innovative both in their appearance and in the fact that, for the first time the plastic properties of Bakelite which allowed it to be molded were exploited. The AD65, made in 1934 was EKCO'c first circular design radio and remains the most popular radio cabinet ever made.
By the end of the 1930's, wireless relays had become very popular and one of the biggest companies was Rediffusion Ltd. In subscribing to one of the exchange companies there were several advantages for those listeners who did not want the fuss and bother of running and maintaining there own wireless sets. Firstly there was only a loud-speaker to contend with and with just a switch for on and off, volume and station control, operations were kept to a minimum. On a local note, just such a relay existed in Portadown during the 1930's and 1940's, known as Hazeltons Relay. It cost one shilling a week and involved one radio in Hazeltons shop, which was then linked by wires to each house that subscribed. Each of these houses had a speaker and everyone was limited to what they heard, it all depended on what Hazelton was tuned into! The name Hazelton can still be seen showing through the flaking paint of his old shop on Mandeville Street. Anyone in Portadown who could afford this service got it because a radio at that time cost about fifteen to twenty guineas (£10.10s.) whilst the average wage was less than £1 a week.
Radio was a much more social technology in the past than it is today, with friends and neighbours gathering into one home to listen to the wireless for major news announcements etc. Such was their impact on social culture that when they were first invented, radios would have been comparable to today's internet. The power of radio as a tool of mass communication came at 11.15am on 3 rd September 1939 when families and neighbours gathered around radio sets to hear Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Later, Churchill's speeches were broadcast to the nation, bringing solace and hope to many thousands of listeners. At the beginning of the war, the BBC suspended television broadcasting and introduced a single national radio programme on medium wave. The 'Home Service' as it was known, broadcast only announcements and organ recitals but following public complaints that the broadcasts were boring, the programming was expanded to include a number of programs such as 'It's That Man Again' with Tommy Handley, 'Sincerely Yours' with Vera Lynn and 'War Report' with Richard Dimbleby, which each attracted an average 16 million listeners. In December 1939 the BBC introduced another service called the 'Forces programme'. This was intended to improve the morale of allied troops abroad by providing entertainment and news from home as well as news of how the war was progressing. This programme became very popular with people at home as the shows were considered to be much more entertaining than those offered by the Home Service.
In addition to providing entertainment and news to home listeners and servicemen, radio also provided a source of propaganda from both the British and the Germans.
The advent of World War 2 saw a great shortage in radio sets, valves, parts and repairmen. During this time many old receivers were salvaged from attics and sheds around the country and put to good use. Wartime receiver design changed as materials became unavailable or too expensive, chassis became simpler and woods such as mahogany were no longer used for cabinets, bakelite became more widely used during this period.
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