Old timey radios - stories for my grandchildren

If you are of a certain age, and that would certainly be older than my children and grandchildren, you may recognize that the item in the picture above is (part of) an old crystal radio. This particular radio was made by my father when he was a boy. I'm estimating that this set is more than 90 years old. I'm not sure where it has been all this time, but it turned up out at the Lake Cabin and I claimed it, since I am a sucker for nostalgic memorabilia. I really feel sorry for my children, but that's a different blog story.

Crystal radios were just about the only kind of radio available during the era that this set was made. You could make them out of a cardboard tube (oatmeal boxes were favorites), some wire and a crystal diode. Actually, you didn't even need the diode; my father showed me how to make a similar radio using a razor blade and the lead out of a pencil as the detector! Attach the set to an antenna stretched from the house to a nearby tree and with careful manipulation of the "cat's whisker" contact on the galena crystal, you were assured of picking up a strong station or two in the headphones!Certainly, this set tuned in WFAA and KRLD when it was first used.

My immediate response when I saw this radio was to restore it to working condition. There are some parts missing - the crystal and the cat whisker, and the contact that slid across the coil of wire to tune the station(s). In the good old days, you ordered a galena crystal from the Johnson Smith and Company catalog, at a very low cost. Interestingly, Johnson Smith and Company is still in business, but alas, they don't sell crystals anymore. I did find a company that sells the entire component - crystal and cat whisker - for $25.00 plus shipping and handling. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

 

In this picture, the crystal is in the little round "pot" on the left. The cat whisker is the tiny wire touching it.

Crystal radio kits are still popular, and plans for making the sets used to be published in Scout Manuals. Perhaps they still are. But the "modern" crystal radio uses a little glass-enclosed diode that requires no adjustment. Sort of takes the fun out of it.