Low Tech Meets Leading-Edge Tech

In an earlier post, I highlighted an interesting dichotomy that existed during the 1927 construction of a new building to house WLW's first 50,000-watt transmitter--which would make WLW the first station to broadcast at 50,000-watts. The dichotomy was the steam-powered digger (known then as a "steam shovel") used to excavate the building's foundation. The building stands today.

That was a direct link between the Steam Age and the Electric Age. The photo here connects two even more disparate technologies: animal power and radio. Near the bottom of the photo, to the right of the WSAI building, you can see the dark shape of two mules. (The new transmitter building is going up on the right)

Click on the photo to view a larger version. You'll see that the mules are hitched up to a wagon. A couple of laborers are in the picture, too. It looks as if the wagon had just been emptied of its load--perhaps lumber.

Video: Ruth Nichols Landing the Crosley Lockheed Vega!

The Lockheed Company's promotional film, Look to Lockheed (produced in 1940) contains footage of Ruth Lyons landing "The New Cincinnati," Powel Crosley's Lockheed Vega. Referred to as the Crosley Radioplane and the Crosley Airship, the Vega 5 was registered as NR496M.

Crosley bought the ship from Edward F. Schlee and William S. Brock in August, 1930, and had "CROSLEY" painted boldly on the fuselage and the engine clowing. (Schlee and Brock earlier set a transcontinental record with it, under a different registration.) Ruth Nichols charled women's endurance and speed records in the airplane, as well as overall records.
Here's the URL for the film:

http://www.archive.org/details/LooktoLo1940

Nichols had several accidents in Crosley's airplane, one of which aborted her attempt to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo (a distinction won by Amelia Earhart). The final accident was in 1932, when the aircraft (renamed the Akita) was largely consumed by a fire while still on the ground. Here are some details on the accident. The airplane's tail is on display at the International Women's Air & Space Museum at Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Ohio. (See http://www.iwasm.org/)

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

1939 New York World's Fair, Crosley Pavilion & Cars on Video

Anyone who's read Crosley or Dreams Can Come True knows that the Crosley Corporation had its own pavilion at the 1939/40 New York World's Fair. Just like RCA and General Electric, Crosley demonstrated television, though only RCA got the mainstream publicity.

Crosley partnered wth Du Mont, which was at that point manufacturing televisions. So a Crosley camera sent closed-circuit moving pictures to a Du Mont televison receiver.

You can view or download a video of the Crosley Pavilion and 1939 Crosley cars driving around the miniature parkway behind it by clicking here or on the image to the left. The Crosley Pavilion and cars are just past 12:45, following the Jewelry exhibit.

Along the way be sure to check out the Johns-Mandville "Mineral Man," dedicated to the miracle mineral, Asbestos!

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

Corrections to Crosley Book

In addenda to the Crosley Errata Sheet: As most folks know, Powel Crosley, Jr.'s entry into the world of radio began with a visit to Cincinnati's Precision Equipment Company. The electrical goods store was one of the few retailers of radios or parts in town, as well as being the home of Cincinnati's first radio station, WMH.

The book states, incorrectly, that Crosley visited the store with his son, Powel, III, on Monday, February 20, 1920. February 20 was, in fact, a Friday, and the 20th was not the day the pair made the journey to Precision, anyway.

As Powel clearly relates in several interviews and in personal writings, that visit took place on Monday, February 23--the day after Washington's Birthday. In those days--and in fact until 1971--Washington's Birthday was celebrated on February 22, Washington's actual Birthday. (Washington was born February 12, old-style, in 1732, which converts to February 22 with the Greogorian calendar, which we've been using since 1752.)

In addition, the book and the article in Cincinnati Magazine refer to stations such as KDKA being assigned a "frequency" or "band" of 360 meters. In the original version of the book I was careful to make the distinction between frequency and band; frequency is the number of times a signal oscillates per second, while band is a group or range of frequencies. All that aside, what KDKA and other stations were assigned was a literal radio wavelength of 350 meters. I was not given a look at the hacked-up version of the manuscript or the galleys before publication. Corrections I provided for early hackings were ignored. Hence, I do not accept any responsbility for the errors, but I will provide corrections as I discover errors, for the sake of getting the historic facts correct.

--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com/

New Crosley Videos - Cars, Radio

• For radio fans, here's a video about the Crosley Pup single-tube receiver from 1925.
• And here we have close-up video, inside and out, of a 1948 Crosley wagon.
• This video is a tour of a De Forest/Crosley Model 51 receiver, from 1924.
• A Crosley Special, labeled Joe Graves' Crosley, wrecked in 1959, back in action. It has a Cobra-like nose. The engine sounds great!
• Tour of a 1950 Crosley Hotshot, owned by Edgar & Edna Schumann.
• 1952 Crosley Super Sport, was for sale on eBay.
• Crosley Dash Gauges.

The True Origins of the Proximity Fuze - Part 1

Below: 1935 Shell with Proximity Fuze
Quite a bit has been written about the proximity fuze, over 20 million of which were produced in the Crosley Corporation's Cincinnati factory during World War II. However, there's more than a little of the fuze's history that has not been made available to the general public.

To complete the missing info in Crosley, this and ensuing installments will describe the origins and development of the fuze. This includes the details of experiments with the proximity fuze in pre-war England as a "bomb to bomb bombers."

The most-publicized information to date has had to do with the proximity fuze's applications in four different anti-aircraft shells in the Pacific, against Japanese aircraft. Lesser-known are the original aerial types of the proximity fuze, and the use made of it in place of ground-burst shells.

The first proximity fuzes grew out of a British Air Ministry "bomb the bomber" program in 1938, when it was discovered that the only way Britain's obsolescent biplane fighters could successfully attack fast monoplane bombers was to get above them and drop contact-fused bombs. This meant that drops had to made connect with with the target--a rare occurrence. It was decided then that it would be worthwhile to develop other kinds of detonators, able to set off bombs when they reached close-enough proximity to do damage to an aircraft.

Two kinds of proximity fuzes were initially developed: acoustic and photoelectric. The acoustic fuzes were engineered in both high-frequency and low-frequency models. The challenge of course was to create a fuze that would not detonate a bomb because of the ambient noise created by being dropped. Many trials and errors resulted in a bomb with a piezoelectric(PE) microphone in its nose. Sounds at a certain frequency--as created by a large monoplane--would activate the fuze, which would close a circuit to a relay and electrically detonate the bomb. Both high- and low-frequency models were built.

The acoustic fuzes were a bit sensitive to nearby (up to 2,000 feet) airbursts, as well as vibration from their own arming. So work was done on a photoelectric fuze that would detonate in response to a change in ambient light, nearly always the result of the presence of an aircraft.

The photoelectric proximity fuze been developed before the British Air Ministry began its fuze program. In 1935 a Swiss engineer developed and later patented a concept for an antiaircraft shell fuze that would be detonated by sensing the presence of an aerial target through a change in ambient light. Hence, the fuze was far from being an American invention, and was in fact in use in Britain before American authorities knew of it.
--To be continued in a later post--

How the Internet was Monetized: Excerpt from On the Way to the Web

We've talked here before about what sort of machine the Crosley Personal Computer (CPC) might have been. What about the Internet? What would Crosley have made of the Internet--or, more to the point, how would he have made money with it?

I think he would have gone about it the way Dialog and Bunker Ramo did, as detailed in On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders. If you want to see how it was done, or are just curious about Internet and online service history, read about it in this excerpt from On the Way to the Web, which also details the technology transfer from the government ARPAnet to commercial entitites.

Hosted by the DigiBarn Computer Museum, the chapter describes the earliest "monetizing" of the online world. It shows how the first real information superhighway was created (and named), and shows how entreprenuers built enormously profitable online businesses without investing in computers, software, or content. This excerpt also details the earliest commercial online content!