Early memories (Radio)

[ukcol]

I bought an HMV 1507 table radiogram a few years ago because it reminded me of the one we had at home when I was a child.

The original was bought new by my grandfather (who lived with us) and used to sit in the corner of our kitchen in Drapers Road in Enfield Middlesex (the radio not my grandfather ). I remember asking my father if the radio stations came down "that wire" (the mains lead) and were sorted out by the radio for listening. Although my idea of how broadcast radio worked was obviously wrong it was not an unintelligent question. I have no recollection whatsoever of my father's reply so I cannot say if his reply inspired my interest in radio or if the very question indicated an embryonic interest. By the time I was eight I had built a crystal set from junk box components, was regularly buying Practical Wireless magazine and buying old radios from jumble sales.

Some years later my mother bought me a Dansette Junior record player. When the initial novelty of owning a record player had worn off I used it as a spark transmitter. I disconnected the loudspeaker, wound up the volume and connected an aerial to the anode of the output valve. I don't know if the spark was in the valve base or the output transformer but remarkably the Dansette was not damaged. I listened to the transmission on the HMV where it appeared at regular intervals all over the short wave band. The music was very distorted of course but the record being played could be easily identified.

The 1507 I currently own, and have restored last year, is shown in the picture below along with its 3 wire mains/signal lead.

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by ukcol

The original was bought new by my grandfather (who lived with us) and used to sit in the corner of our kitchen in Drapers Road in Enfield Middlesex (the radio not my grandfather ).

Brilliant! That last bit had me rolling on the floor laughing!

However, at an early age, my introduction to 'radio' was much the same as yours; a Philips TG170A was my father's pride and joy. But I didn't do the 'transmitting' bit. Now my mother was very house-proud and regularly she used to remove the back of that radio to remove the dust within. On one occasion, watching that non-too-delicate operation taking place, I asked her

"Where's the little man inside that we listen to?"

Can't recall the answer now, but I expect that I was looked in a funny way!

But isn't your tale and mine how so many of us started in 'radio & electronics'? The sheer fascination, mystery and intrigue of "How does that work, then?" And that then launches a lifetime's journey trying to answer that Q - and all the new, additional and ever-expanding ones that subsequently arise. And, of course, albeit most of the time, it's fun!

Al.

[PaulR]

In the two alcoves of our dining room when I was a child we had an English Electric television and a McMichael 135 radio. The radio was bought by my grandmother for my grandfather when he retired in 1938 (old stock at the radio shop?). My mother proudly used to say it had only ever been repaired once when a new valve was needed under guarantee. She also said she had seen the radiogram version in the shop but my grandmother, being rather Victorian, didn't approve of all the modern records. There were the usual stories about listening to the announcement of World War II on it.

I remember being fascinated by big gold tuning scale and all the foreign stations listed on it. For some reason "Hilversum" seemed very exotic! Daftly my mother used to put ornaments on top of it, only to have them slide down the back when I pushed up the lid.

Children's Favourites is the programme I remember best and I thought that the records they played each week were the only ones they had. We wrote in to request The Laughing Policeman which was duly played by Uncle Mac but not dedicated to me.

I also remember the excitement of Radio Caroline starting transmitting from somewhere off the Isle of Man. The presenters sounded so much less stuffy than the BBC ones - even those on the Light Programme.

We moved to a more modern house in 1965 and the old set didn't really fit in so it was relegated to a spare bedroom which meant I could secretly take the back off it to investigate. Eventually I got a shock off it and told my mum about it. It immediately went out for the bin men one of whom asked whether he could have it to keep, which he did. I hope he enjoyed it and kept it for a while.

I now have two of them and the 365 radiogram version in memory - only one set of legs for the 135s though!

[ukcol]

Originally Posted by Skywave

The sheer fascination, mystery and intrigue of "How does that work, then?"

Yes and it's sad how that fascination for how things work seems to have largely gone from children now.

Originally Posted by PaulR

Children's Favourites is the programme I remember best........

Those were the days, excellent children's programs, the comedy programs at Sunday lunch times and radio plays like "Journey Into Space".

Radio plays I particularly enjoyed because one had to use one's imagination to picture the scenes and the characters.

[camtechman]

Although my early experience was mainly radios, it was also about the embarrassment that I suffered from, due to our family 'television' !

In fact, I never knew what a "normal" television looked like.

The reason for this 'problem' was that Dad was a self taught TV engineer starting in the early 1950's and the proximity of our 2nd floor maisonette to the Liverpool Street to Cambridge main train line, which run next to it.

At first, the closeness of the railway line caused our light bulbs to fail with alarming regularity but soon affected the stability of customer's repaired TVs which were on soak test before handing over.

To solve the bone shaking affect to "On Test" TVs Dad built a custom test frame out of Dexion and was adjustable to accommodate all sizes of TVs but they were always fitted into the frame in chassis form (without cases to allow easy adjustment) and suspended in the frame by several industrial strength, thick black rubber bands to reduce the level of bone shaking rumble from passing steam trains.

As business grew, more & more TV's passed through our household and all underwent time in the Special Anti Shake test frame.

During this period we never had our own TV, as there was always a customer's TV to watch but the day eventually came when I was struck down by Cupid's Arrow and my future wife and her parents were due to visit our place for my parents approval.

Mum, as all mum's are, was concerned about making a good impression and I begged her to "'ave a word with dad" about shifting out the stack of TV's as even Steptoe & Son's parlour was better looking than ours.

Dad did as he was told and moved about 12 sets to the garage but he refused to banish the one TV we used for watching (including the special frame unit) but, with only a few minutes to spare, he came up with "a great idea" which was using one of Mum's highly patterned table cloths to cover the eyesore.

As we all sat down to a formal tea and conversation between my family and my girlfriend's got under way, my future Mother-In-Law commented on how pretty the "parrot's cage cover was" !!!!!!!

As soon as we had finished our nosh, Dad came to the rescue yet again and suggested we all popped down the local pub for a celebration drink and all grabbed their coats and the 'parrot' was soon forgotten-------

[camtechman]

radio plays like "Journey Into Space".

My top programme and I have the 13 part CD Set of "Operation Luna" c1958 (originally called "Journey To The Moon)

[camtechman]

Skywave:

Drapers Road in Enfield Middlesex

Small World.......We used to live in Hadley Road !

The sudden realisation that "Light" on the dial wasn't the dial light. I was very young!

[unitaudio]

I always thought that about the dial lights! I always thought it strange as usually the inner workings of a radio or radiogram are to be hidden as best they can be, not have attention drawn to them. Then Dad put me right...

Regards,
Paul

[ukcol]

Originally Posted by camtechman

Small World.......We used to live in Hadley Road !

A VERY small world, Drapers Road and Hadley Road are only half a mile apart. I lived in Drapers Road from 1954 to 1969, did that overlap with your time in Hadley Road?

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by Skywave

The sheer fascination, mystery and intrigue of "How does that work, then?"

Originally Posted by ukcol

Yes and it's sad how that fascination for how things work seems to have largely gone from children now.

Exactly - and I do believe that that is down to the types of toys that youngsters are given these days. As a child, I spent many, many hours with Meccano, Bayko and building 'trucks' out of bits of salvaged wood and old pram wheels. And finding old, dumped radios behind the backs of garages, on waste land and in derelict buildings. (This was mid-1950s, so there was still a lot of wrecked buildings and factories around from WW2). I firmly believe that it is the exploration and the thrill of such discoveries that, for a young child, stimulates the imagination and that can easily lead to a way of thinking which asks "What's this then? What does it do? How does it work? Can I make one?", all of which constitutes an early introduction to Engineering - something that today, in the U.K., doesn't get the recognition nor the encouragement that it used to. The disappearance of so many 'radio names' - which were so prolific in the 1960s / 1970s - is an illustration of that. It's very sad, but today's youngsters just don't seem to get stuck in and get their hands dirty.

Just my viewpoint - and I do realise that it is a bit contentious.

Al.

[Boater Sam]

Bells, batteries and bulbs, as most of us started I suppose. Then the Meccano electric motors on a transformer wound by an uncle with no earthed screen, had a few tingles off that.
Then at 9 or 10 the relatives cast off radios and the jumble sales left overs for 10p culminating in a Cossor 480K console which was probably the best working set I had come across, and a huge projection TV which got gutted as the transformer had gone up in smoke.
By this time the lamp limiter was installed on the wall in the box room and it became a workshop.
Through secondary school I progressed to a decent TMK 500 meter, Adcola iron, signal injector and tracer (home built) etc. Fixed a few radios and TVs, stripped many for bits, never bought any parts but a few ex gov bits of gear for spares. Rewired a few houses too.
Then got serious. An older school friend opened a shop flogging old TVs, he had an 'in' with one of the big rental firms for part ex TVs and radios. He needed someone to fix the ones that didn't work, which was many.
He had deliveries by the pantechnicon load. We did a few 3 day no sleep sessions on the bench when they came!
Sex drink and rock and roll took over eventually and at 17 I dropped out of school, which I hated, and started an apprenticeship at Ferranti, the rest is ancient history. But I remember that Cossor well, would love another for old times sake.

[Skywave]

Ah, Yes! The Adcola soldering iron: I had one of those. In it's day, it was one of the best irons available, IMHO.

Originally Posted by Boater Sam

Re-wired a few houses too. Then got serious . . . .

Well, O.K., each to his own, etc., but for me, re-wiring a house is actually 'serious' stuff!

Al.

[The Philpott]

I notice that the front cover of Ladybird's 'Magnets Bulbs and Batteries' is considered sufficiently retro-chic (ugh) that it is now available as a postcard or a fridge magnet! If you want the book it must be bought second hand of course- no white coats, new money, neoprene gloves or goggles so it has become 'historical'.

I mention it because this was my first involvement with anything of this sort. I still remember my disappointment on learning from Dad that Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia was so out of date that it's recommendation to make fireworks by buying explosives over the counter from the local chemist was no longer possible. Truly Crestfallen!

My father demonstrated that there was a mic on the roof of the marconi works 20 miles away by tuning into the appropriate transmitting frequency- with headphones i could hear the traffic going past. Now quite what a mic was doing on the roof is anybody's guess..

[Andrew2]

Like many here, I started with batteries, bulbs and magnets. But I quickly developed a liking for radios and by the mid 60's I was an avid listener to Eddy Startz on Radio Nederland. I think that was what really got me started.

Upon occasion I re-read my copy of 'Magnets Bulbs and Batteries' it is very good. I wonder if Ladybird would consider a kit of parts complete with the book? Updated for currently (oh a pun) available parts, the 800 battery being one you can't get these days.

[G6Tanuki]

One memory I can date quite accurately is late summer 1965 when the movie "What's New Pussycat" was released - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_New_Pussycat%3F - I was sitting in the back of my mother's Hillman Super-Minx on the trip to the cottage down in Lyme Regis.
The Super-Minx didn't have a radio [at the time you still needed a separate licence for a radio in a car] but I had a Philips L2G21T (blue case) on which to listen and they played the What's New Pussycat theme tune (sung by Tom Jones) and talked about the movie (which is amusing, in a Woody-Allen-esque sense).

In-car reception with a portable was not good - but better than nothing. My father's Humber Snipe had a proper Radiomobile radio!

[emeritus]

My first memory of a radio programme was listening to episodes of "Journey into Space", in particular one where they were in an underground tunnel on Mars which had then-futuristic (but now used in a local hospital) sensors that only illuminated the part where someone was present. I also remember hearing the episode of "The Archers" that was broadcast on the first day of ITV broadcasting where Grace was killed in a barn fire. Dad didn't get a Band III converter until later, but I remember seeing them at the annual Radio Show at Olympia that Dad always took me to. As ITV transmissions had not started then, a (presumably wired) Band III signal was provided from an underwater camera in a fish tank, probably a Pye camera of the type that had then recently been used in the Mediterranean to find the wreckage of a crashed Comet airliner. I remember thinking that there didn't seem to be much point in getting a new TV to show black-and-white pictures of fish in a tank, as our fish tank gave you the same thing in colour!

I also remember playing in the shed with some of dad's relics from his pre-war DIY radio construction: a cat's whisker, several Bakelite coils of the type shown in Scott-Taggart's "Manual of Modern Radio" that I used to browse though, and various switches and valves. Most of the relics got dumped in a house move in the late 1960's, but I still have the book. I still have my first Transistor Radio, a Bush TR104. It stopped working some time ago: from what I have learned from this forum, probably due to tin whisker.