Category Archives: Nostalgia

California Historical Radio Society has acquired one of 8 original NBC chime machines

(Photo source: The CRHS Newsletter)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Richards (AA7EE), who writes:

Thomas – I know you’ve posted before about the NBC chimes, so I thought you might be interested to know that CHRS, the California Historical Radio Society, has acquired one of 8 original NBC chime machines. They don’t think that more than a dozen were ever made. CHRS have their own building on the island of Alameda, CA, and are putting a huge amount of time and work into amassing an impressive collection of vintage radio gear. [I]f you scroll about 1/3 way down this page, you’ll see the news, along with a brief history of an NBC chime machine, and pictures of the one they now have in their collection. It is a rare find indeed!

Click here to read the new on the CHRS newsletter.

Very cool! Thank you for sharing this, Dave! I’m very happy to hear that these chimes have proper custodians.

Review of “A Quiet Place” in The Economist

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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Kevin Turinsky, who writes:

Just spotted a curious radio stack in an upcoming movie reviewed by The Economist:

Take a look:

“A Quiet Place” is high-concept horror at its best

John Krasinski transforms a B-movie conceit into a smart, nerve-shredding film

IN MOST cinemas, films are preceded by a polite request that patrons switch off their mobile phones. Wherever “A Quiet Place” is shown, that request should be upgraded to a legal requirement and transgressors should be frogmarched from the building. There is so little dialogue in this nerve-shredding post-apocalyptic survival chiller that it almost counts as a silent movie, and yet sound has rarely been more crucial to a story. The ingenious high-concept is that bloodthirsty, presumably alien, monsters have butchered most of humanity, but these near-indestructible crab-creatures are sightless so track their quarry using their super-sensitive ears. Silence, therefore, is more than golden. If somebody drops a cup or sneezes, they might well be punished with a foot-long claw through the belly, so any viewer who breaks the spell by letting their phone ring deserves a similar, if not so extreme, punishment.[…]

Click here to read the full review at The Economist online.

Thanks for the tip, Kevin! That screen shot at the top of the post contains so many radio sets–including a lovely Zenith Transoceanic!

William first reported this film a couple weeks ago here on the Post. I watched the trailer and it does seem to be rather suspenseful. Perhaps a new take on the zombie genre. I imagine there are no small number of radios to be spotted in A Quiet Place…

Thanks again, Kevin!

Have any readers watched the film yet? Please comment!

WUNC on Jazz: “America’s Coolest Weapon During The Cold War”

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(Source: WUNC’s The State of Things via Kim Elliott)

During the Cold War, the U.S. Department of State sent jazz musicians around the world to sell the American way of life. This initiative took place in the 1950s, during segregation and the beginning of the civil rights movement. Jazz was gaining popularity on the international stage partly because of a Voice of America program hosted by Willis Conover, and partly because jazz musicians, like Louis Armstrong, played international tours.

The U.S. government took note of this popularity and decided to send musicians as representatives of the country, even as those representatives didn’t have the full benefits of the freedom they were touting. Many of these multi-racial, multi-gender groups were not allowed to perform within the boundaries of the United States due to Jim Crow.

Host Frank Stasio talks to Hugo Berkeley, director of the new documentary “The Jazz Ambassadors: The Untold Story of America’s Coolest Weapon in the Cold War.” Historian Adriane Lentz-Smith joins the conversation to put the story of the jazz ambassadors into context. Lentz-Smith is a professor of history at Duke University who served as an advisor to the documentary. She’s also the author of “Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I” (Harvard University Press/2011). “The Jazz Ambassadors” screens at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham on Sunday, April 8.[…]

Click here to read interview highlights and listen to the full interview on WUNC.

RSGB and WWII Voluntary Interceptors

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(Source: Southgate ARC)

WWII role of the RSGB and Voluntary Interceptors

A new RSGB web page highlights the role of Voluntary Interceptors in the Second World War and the crucial involvement of the Society

At the outbreak of WWII in 1939 MI5 established a unit known as the Radio Security Service (RSS) to detect and monitor enemy radio transmissions. The RSGB were approached to help pick and recruit radio amateurs with advanced Morse skills. These volunteers became known as the Voluntary Interceptors.

Read the RSGB story at
http://rsgb.org/main/about-us/national-radio-centre-gb3rs/the-role-of-the-rsgb-and-voluntary-interceptors/

The former President of the Chelmsford Amateur Radio Society, Harry Heap G5HF (SK), was a Voluntary Interceptor, further information at
http://g0mwt.org.uk/society/g5hf-sk/g5hf.htm

Click here to read at the Southgate ARC.

RadioWorld: “Radio Caroline Returns to Its Roots”

Ever Ready Model N attache case radio spotted in charity shop

Wading River: WWII FBI covert radio station listed on the National Register of Historic Places

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(Photo: Camp De Wolfe)

(Source: Riverhead Local via Mike Hansgen)

A house on the bluffs at Camp DeWolfe in Wading River, covertly used as an FBI radio transmission station during World War II to gather military intelligence, has been added to the state and national registers of historic places.

FBI radio operators impersonating German agents used the Wading River Radio Station to communicate with the German intelligence service, according to the site’s registration form with the National Register of Historic Places.

Information covertly gathered by agents at the radio station was critical to inspiring the United States’ development of an atomic bomb.

The station was also involved in the Operation “Bodyguard,” which used counterintelligence to confuse and mislead the Nazi government about the upcoming Allied invasion of Europe.

The radio station operated from 1942 to 1945.

[…]In January 1942, FBI engineers installed radio equipment in the house, hid a large antenna in the woods, and built a diesel-powered generator using an automobile engine to avoid local suspicion about electricity consumption at the house, which was far greater than what was then the norm due to the radio operations. An FBI agent assigned to manage the operation moved in with his family — and two or three radio operators. The first floor was maintained as the agent’s family home, while the second and third floors were used for the FBI operation, according to the national register registration narrative. They remained there for the duration of the war.

[…]The FBI had been looking for a spot to locate the transmission station for the spying operation and were attracted by the home’s cliffside location and the site’s remoteness. According to the national register registration document:

“By January 1942 [an FBI radio engineer] had stumbled upon the Owen House located in the tiny fishing and farming hamlet of Wading River, New York. Located eighty miles east of New York on Long Island’s North Fork the spacious three story building sat on a cliff bordered on one side by Long Island Sound and acres of dense trees on the other three sides, and the only approach to the station was a bumpy, rutted quarter mile path. Even by today’s standards the house is not easy to find. In 1942 it would have been nearly impossible.”

An FBI agent’s inquiry took the Owen family by surprise. They were sworn to secrecy.[…]

Click here to read the full article at the Riverhead Local.