When did tuning dials change from Metres to kHz?

[barrymagrec]

Originally Posted by Phil G4SPZ

I can remember Practical Wireless announcing formally that its policy would be to adopt the Hertz, which must have been in the very late 60s or early 70s but I can't be sure.

These things tend to go in cycles.

[Andrew2]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

There was a gradual shift from the mid 60s to the early 80s. The change seems to have been initiated by the import of Japanese and Hong Kong sets designed for a global market.

Indeed. I recall the little transistor radios that were popular in my youth being marked in mysterious numbers that meant nothing to me. Turned out to be kHz/10.

[Phil G4SPZ]

Originally Posted by Andrew2

Turned out to be kHz/10.

kHz x 100, surely, or maybe MHz/10...!

[Station X]

Just checked a pocket portable. MW is marked 16, 10, 8, 6 and 54, so a mixture of units. LW is marked 235, 200, 170 and 155, so all kHz.

[Alvin]

I've told this tale on the forum before but it won't hertz anyone to mention it again - several years ago I was manning Master Control at LBC when the sales team brought a group of clients in for the 'Cooks Tour' as we used to call it and one of them strolled along the racks then stopped suddenly and pointing at the sig gen exclaimed somewhat disgustedly that it said Hertz on the dial.........it transpired that the clients were from Avis, a rival car hire company!

[Herald1360]

Originally Posted by Station X

Just checked a pocket portable. MW is marked 16, 10, 8, 6 and 54, so a mixture of units. LW is marked 235, 200, 170 and 155, so all kHz.

Is the "54" not marked as "54?

[Station X]

No. No decimal points either.

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by Herald1360

Is the "54" not marked as "54?

Yes, that seems to be the usual convention. Looking at the first few pocket sets that came to hand here,

Poni: 16, 10, 75, 6, 53
Inscol: 16, 10, 75, 6, 53 (i.e. the same, but failure to reduce the size of the 5 after the 7. Someone must have been in a hurry.)
Aero: 16, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5.

Paul

[G6Tanuki]

I certainly remember little MW-only Hong Kong portables having dials labelled 54 through 16; I guess when you're churning them out by the million for the global market you calibrate the dials with what the majority of your customers will understand.

[I've never seen an "AA5" type radio with a broadcast-band scale markd in anything other than KHz]

Personally I like Hertz. KHz or MHz requires fewer keystrokes than Kc/s or Mc/s ! And talking about Gigacycles-per-second just sounds silly!

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

[I've never seen an "AA5" type radio with a broadcast-band scale markd in anything other than KHz]

Not sure if I have, but I'd be surprised if there weren't a few imports. These two TRF midgets in catalin may both be from 1938-9, a Fada and a Commander, both provided with wavelength-calibrated dials for the British market and a wavechange switch to give the necessary LW option.

Paul

[railwayman3]

Not sure that it's really relevant, but I remember being taught at school in the 70's that Imperial measurements were traditionally practical quantities for trade, etc., being based on everyday dimensions. Metric, being decimal, was better for scientific use and particularly for complex calculations and measurements on all scales from microscopic to very large.
OTOH, a lot of measurements and names of units seem to have changed and renamed since my days in Physics class........

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by railwayman3

OTOH, a lot of measurements and names of units seem to have changed and renamed since my days in Physics class........

I was 'doing science' about the time when O-levels - including our textbooks and the old Cambridge-board exam-papers we were given for 'mocks - were switching from c.g.s. (centimetre/gram/second) to m.k.s. (Metre/Kilogram/Second).

It was rather confusing. Though a part of me rather likes some of the older units-of-measurement: Ergs, Dynes etc.

I still think in terms of miles-per-gallon and pounds-per-square-inch when I'm at the garage, but am thankful I no longer have to use Post-Office-Work-Units, Jars, Mics, Fahrenheit, or British Thermal Units.

[One of my friends, after receiving a mains shock, took to talking of the National Grid as providing power at "50 Hurtses"]

[Radio Wrangler]

Originally Posted by Paul_RK

a Fada

That has to be a spectacularly poor choice of brand name for a radio.

Someone I know has a horse named Wieser after the river of that name. properly pronounced with the Vee sound at the beginning, but nobody does that. Most people think the poor thing is named Wheezer!

David

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

That has to be a spectacularly poor choice of brand name for a radio.

Yes, arguably not the happiest: though I don't know the preferred pronunciation, so perhaps it's as in "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah". Fallible memory tells me the company's founder was one Frank Angelo d'Andrea, so a close analogy there with our own Eric Kirkham Cole. Names that would beget still worse outcomes than Fada may easily be imagined...

Paul

[ekjdm14]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

...I've never seen an "AA5" type radio with a broadcast-band scale markd in anything other than KHz...

I know it's not exactly an AA5 (more a TRF4) but the early Automatic (model 240?) recently on shango066's channel has it's scale in Kilocycles AND metres, not a rental truck in sight...

[Richard_FM]

I've seem some MW only radios with a double ended pointer, with one side of the dial in meters and the other in KHz.

[ekjdm14]

That's exactly what this one was like, double ended pointer. Even had the poor guy trying to find how to get onto LW with it for a moment before the penny dropped!

[M0TGX Terry]

It seems there's no 'standard' way of calibrating dials, and it probably really doesn't matter so long as the user is aware of what units are being used. You soon get used to whatever the dial says. However, after several years of owning my current car, I still have trouble with the fuel consumption read-out being in litres per hundred miles, so it appears the lack of standardization isn't restricted to radio dials.

[TonyDuell]

I'll bet that a great majority of listeners didn't know what their dial was calibrated in, or what it meant. They just knew where to put the pointer for the station they liked. People have a very poor understanding of units, even those who should know better. I am fed up with the medical profession asking for 'your weight in kilograms', something that I point out is impossible (they can have my mass in kilograms or my weight in newtons).

Incidentally, going back to a point in an earlier reply, some joker proposed that the 'avis' should be the unit of angular frequency (2*pi*f, 1 avis = 1 radian/second)

[AC/HL]

Going back again, to the subject of this thread in fact, were the two radios in question both made in the same country? We've had in the past two electric kitchen aids, both apparently identical, but one was British made, and one Chinese. Both failed in the same way (gear problems)