Behind the Front Panel: The Design & Development of 1920's Radios - Softcover

Rutland, David

9781885391001: Behind the Front Panel: The Design & Development of 1920's Radios

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1885391005 ISBN 13: 9781885391001

Publisher: Wren Pub, 1994

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Behind the Front Panel by David Rutland, an electronics engineer with over 25 years of experience in the design of vacuum tube circuits, explores the whys and wherefores of the components and circuits of the first broadcast radios. By using simplified descriptions and illustrations, supplemented by 25 photographs of actual radio component parts, he provides a readable explanation of what goes on inside the old battery radios. His story begins with the invention of the radio tube at the turn of the last century and concentrates on the engineering design and development through the 1920’s. Design examples are taken from over 45 actual radios manufactured in the decade that saw broadcast radio start as a national pastime and end as a national necessity. This book is a classic in radio history. This edition is carefully re-mastered from the original and published by the California Historical Radio Society.

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Reviews

The family radio of the 1920s was more than a disposable, noise-making appliance. It was a solid piece of furniture, the focal point of many families' living rooms. Conduits of popular entertainment, old radios were housed in formidable wooden cabinets that often featured decorative carving and grillwork. The machinery behind the facade was formidable, too: tubes, coils, wires, and other components were put together in a virtual labyrinth. There are many paeans to old radios. Most focus on what came out of them or the attractive cases that housed them, but Rutland's is about their guts. The emphasis is on radio technology--the development of the circuitry, the invention of the triode and other devices--and the work of De Forest, Marconi, and a raft of other inventors. Although parts of it are rather technical, the book on the whole is an interesting and informative social history reference. Mike Tribby

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