Page 35 - The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design

We Used to Get Burned a Lot, and We Liked It

My radio, which sat next to my bed so that I could run it quietly with-
out waking the parents, was a humble GE table model. It was built in the
rnjd-50s, so it was made of cheap pine with ash (or maple?) veneer. Typ-
ical of the times, it had sweeping rounded corners between the top and
front, and inlaid edging. They never did figure out how to make a. true
accurate corner with cheap wood processes. This radio was B-grade,
though; it had a magic-eye tube and included the "MW" band-low MHz
AM reception. Allegedly, you could hear ships and commercial service on
MW, but in Las Vegas all I heard were ham radio 1.8MHz "rag chewer"
conversations. At length.
Radios were magic then. TV wasn't nearly as entrancing as now, being
black-and white in most homes and generally inane (the good adult stuff
was on too late for me to see). On radio you heard world news, pretty
much the only up-to-the-minute news. You heard radio stations that didn't
know from anything but variety in music. They didn't go for demograph-
ics or intense advertising; they just tried to be amusing. When I was that
young, the people who called into the talk shows were trying to be intelli-
gent. Shows what an old fart I am.
The electronic product market of the time was mostly TV and radios.
Interestingly, the quality living-room TV of that time cost around $600,
just like now. Then you also got a big console, radio, speakers, and

Figure 3-1.
A lovely TRF radio from the 1920s and '30s. This was before superheterodyne reception; you had to tune all
three dials to get your station. More or less gain was dialed in with the rheostats in series with the input tubes'
filaments. A lot of farm as well as city dwellers used these. The coils were hand-wound, and every component
was available for scrutiny. This set will be usable after a nuclear attack. From the John Eckland Collection, Palo
Alto, California. Photo by Caleb Brown.

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