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Trade and Mark
It wasn't in all their advertisements but it was on most of them. It was more of a layout or design error than anything. Smith brothers cough drops were first made by their father, James Smith in...
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NADIN
NADIN is an acronym that stands for National Airspace Data Interchange Network. It was used by the airlines to input flight plans into the National Airspace System (NAS). These flight plans are routed...
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Transcription Mystery Disc #217
"We are all visiting Atlantic City for the evening." That's the opening sentence on this 6.5-Inch paper-core, Voice-O-Graph disc. The recording is unlabeled, save for some crayon markings scribbled...
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Modem (Part 1)
Older readers might associate the word "modem" with the dial-up noise. That noise is the sound of the modem, communicating with another modem. The first tones set a speed they can communicate at. Then...
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The Modem (Part 2)
Let's discuss SYN-ACK. I really breezed past it yesterday and it was actually important to understanding how the modem came to be. Below is a simplified summary of the TCP 3-way handshake: (SYN,...
View ArticleSimplex and Phantom Circuts
Here is a War Department video about balanced circuits used in telegraph circuits. It relates to come of the modem history I covered over the last two days. THEORY OF SIMPLEX AND PHANTOM CIRCUITS -...
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The Reed Switch
The reed switch is an electrical switch operated by an applied magnetic field. It was invented at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1936 by Walter B. Ellwood. The patent was granted in 1938 (US2289830 )....
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Transcription Mystery Disc #218
This is a 7-Inch, metal-core Silvertone brand home acetate recording. It's clearly been played a few times but the greater problem is that they also dropped the needle a few times leaving some...
View ArticleDIY Singing Tesla Coil!
I wish I had noticed this earlier. I'd own one now if I had. On the other hand if I could input midi into a Tesla coil and watch it output audio and 2-foot sparks I'd probably burn my eyebrows off....
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Korean Radio Propaganda Extravaganza
Too little hay is made of radio propaganda outside wartime. Some consider the rhetorical bluster of the increasingly marginalized Rush Limbaugh "propaganda." I'm not interested in that tonight. I...
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Acoustic Wave Filters: SAW & BAW
A electronic filter is a device or combination of devices that are engineered to block signals in specific and (hopefully) controlled frequency ranges.The simplest filters are common board components....
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AUTOVON not Autobahn
The warning on the Autovon directory was "DO NOT DISCUSS CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ON NONSECURE TELEPHONES. OFFICIAL DOD TELEPHONES ARE SUBJECT TO MONITORING FOR COMMUNICATIONS SECURITY PURPOSES AT ALL...
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Transcription Mystery Disc #219
This is a metal-core, 8-Inch Duo disc. It's from that mysterious batch that seems to be connected to WIP-AM. The recording is very good again but is also clearly live and in a studio-setting with no...
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The Bottomless Pit
Marshall Crenshaw is an American musician, singer and songwriter whose biggest hit was a cover. The song "Someday, Someway" hit in 1982— it was very Buddy Holly. The Eighties were a rough decade with...
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The Screwtape Fascimilie Broadcasts
Note the variation on the Quick Brown Fox line above. That exact sentence was the first message sent on the Moscow–Washington hotline in 1963. It was sent by "secure" fax over land line, two decades...
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Freedom Theater on WSM
I've noted before that integration was slow coming in broadcasting. It's interesting that one of the earliest integrated programs was a theater program in Nashville, TN. The book Don't Touch That Dial...
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The Crazy World Of Stuart Maconie
I read recently that Arthur Brown of infamous 1970s must-own LP "The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown" once presented a radio program the BBC. I really wanted to know who'd let him do that. The man just...
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Transcription Mystery Disc #220
This is a paper-core Wilcox-Gay Recordio. As instantaneous home recording discs go... these are about as common as they come. This is a two-sided dist but only one side was used. At first it appeared...
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The Lightning Bridge
Mr. Samuel Alfred Varley was born in London in 1832. He wrote some of the very first treatise on submarine cables, including one page-tuner in 1858 titled "On the Electrical Qualifications requisite...
View ArticleJim Creek Naval Radio Station
This newsreel shows the Navy opening the worlds largest radio transmitter back in 1953. Operating at 1 million watts the VLF station operates on 24.8 kHz. It was known as Jim Creek Naval Radio...
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