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Tuesday morning, I tuned my WWII era BC-348-Q to Global 24 on 9395 kHz. The signal, via WRMI’s transmitter, was quite strong.
The company rehearses Treasure Island, the second program in The Mercury Theatre on the Air series, presented July 18, 1938 (Source: Wikipedia)
At 2:00 UTC, I heard an announcement that The Mercury Theatre on the Air radio play of A Tale of Two Cities was about to begin.
Not wanting to miss an opportunity to record this timeless Dicken’s classic, I quickly switched over to the Elad FDM-S2 SDR to record the broadcast live. Fortunately, I captured the full broadcast and the fidelity is almost as good as a local station.
For your listening pleasure this New Year’s Day, please enjoy A Tale of Two Cities by The Mercury Theatre on the Air courtesy of Global 24:
Last week, Jonathan Marks posted his own tribute to Gerry Wells on Critical Distance. Jonathan’s post includes two half-hour interviews with Mr. Wells from 1986/1987.
Jonathan has kindly allowed me to embed an excerpt from his post, below, along with his interviews.
Jonathan writes:
“Sad to note that the Curator of the British Vintage Wireless & Television Museum, Gerald Wells, passed away on December 22 2014.
At the end of the 1960’s Gerry gave up his job as an electrical contractor. He could see wireless sets being discarded and felt there was a need for a “Vintage Wireless Museum”. The Museum for Vintage Wireless came into existence in 1974 and was later expanded to include Television.
I made a couple of half hour documentaries with Gerry in 1986/1987, hearing the stories of how radios were built and got their names. Other documentaries focused on his life as a lifelong radio engineer.
I remember visiting the UK’s Vintage Radio Wireless Museum in Dulwich, South London as though it were yesterday. It’s just an ordinary terraced house from the outside, but inside its a celebration of the tube (Valve) radio, especially in the era 1920-1950. What’s more, Gerald Wells, was one of the world’s experts on valves – and had a flood of stories about the famous names I heard second-hand as a child. Did you know that Vidor Batteries were named after the manufacturers two daughters? And what were the better brands of radios.
Enthusiasts in the UK have since made a DVD about Gerald which I can recommend. Part Two of this programme was made in Dulwich one year later is also here on this blogpost. I am sure you could visit Gerald 1000 times and still take away new and different stories about this era of broadcasting. Anyone restoring early iPods? Thought not.”
I encourage you to check out Jonathan’s full post on Critical Distance. I’m always amazed at the number of topics Jonathan has covered in his radio career and, especially, his tenure at Media Networks. You’ll find hundreds of recordings like the ones above at the Media Network Vintage Vault.
Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Jarno, who shares a link to AmericanRadioHistory.com where you’ll find hundreds of issues of popular radio magazines from the 20th century. All of the issues are downloadable PDFs, thus can be viewed on any computer, smart phone, or tablet PC.
I find it amazing that many, if not all, of the magazines are even searchable. I could (and probably will) spend hours looking through and downloading these issues; I’ve been reading through the 1930s-era Short Wave Radio magazine this morning, and enjoying it thoroughly.
Below you’ll find a short video of my 1945 Scott Marine Radio Model SLR-M playing Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra’s jazz-infused version of “March of the Toys” from Victor Herbert’s holiday classic “Babes in Toyland.”
It’s a little holiday time-travel I cooked up for you on this great vintage rig. I’m actually playing the song via an SStran Model AMT3000 AM transmitter I built from a kit (more on that in a future post). The transmitter has been set to 1410 kHz, to which the SLR-M is tuned.
Though the microphone on my Flip Video camera makes the sound in this little recording tinny (you’ll have to trust me that, live, it’s remarkably warm and rich), it does feel a bit like radio time-travel to hear a 1940s-era song played on a 1940s era-radio. This is just how WWII servicemen might have heard this music.
The Curator of the British Vintage Wireless & Television Museum, Gerald Wells, passed away on December 22
At the end of the 1960’s Gerry gave up his job as an electrical contractor. He could see wireless sets being discarded and felt there was a need for a “Vintage Wireless Museum”.
The Museum for Vintage Wireless came into existence in 1974 and was later expanded to include Television.
For your listening pleasure: beHAVior Night, a shortwave radio show which showcases music from the first four decades of the 20th Century.
This show was recorded on Friday, November 28, 2014. While beHAVior Night is broadcast all year long via WBCQ, I’m not able to hear them easily at my home during Daylight Savings Time (DST) as the propagation path is not yet open to the south. During the winter months, however, the signal is quite strong as you will hear.
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US, my favorite holiday of the year. This day gives us a chance to pause, give thanks, and feel gratitude–for our friends, family, and life. Despite congested roads and airports as folks make the homeward journey, Thanksgiving is a peaceful day, unencumbered by all the commercial baggage that comes along with so many other holidays.
When I mention to non-radio-geek friends and family that I run a website devoted to shortwave radio, they often respond by asking somewhat skeptically, “So, do you have many readers?” Indeed, last night, as I talked with my family, a family member kindly inquired again how many visitors now come to my website. And again I hesitated to answer, as it’s been many months since I’ve opened the full spectrum of web analytics.
For the first time in several months, I took a look at our web statistics…and was amazed.
I remember, a few years ago, when I was surprised and honored when I had over 200 daily pageviews on my site. It was amazing to think that, in a 24 hour period of time, 200 pages of content had been read; thus, how many SWLers must be aspiring to, or enjoying, the hobby–! Over the past few years, that number has grown by leaps and bounds: last night, I found that this site now averages about 172,000 pageviews per month, or 5,700 per day…Wow.
Along with these increased numbers has come increased interactivity–your comments, messages, and guest posts give this site remarkable depth and broaden the scope far beyond my blog posts and reviews. In other words, it’s your participation that makes this site what it is. Our 39,441 users give the SWLing Post a real sense of community. I’ve met so many friends through this site, and this adds a dimension to what could otherwise be a rather solitary hobby. Radio listeners, you’re quite a club.
Thanks!
So I’d like to thank each and every one of you, personally, for being a part of this shortwave radio community. I’d like to wish my best to those of you celebrating Thanksgiving today. And if you’re not celebrating Thanksgiving, let’s still raise a glass together anyway, okay? Cheers!
To set the mood, here is a little nostalgia: a Thanksgiving recording from 70 years ago: an old time radio recording of Command Performance broadcast on Thanksgiving Day, 1944. This is the sort of thing I turn to on Thanksgiving. Enjoy:
Tuesday morning, I tuned my WWII era BC-348-Q to Global 24 on 9395 kHz. The signal, via WRMI’s transmitter, was quite strong.
