Don't Touch That Dial---I'm Perfectly Well Adjusted!

Today I give a shout out to the lovely and talented Ms. Tattered and Lost---the woman who launched me as yet another Babe in Blogland.  On the 15th of January her blog Tattered and Lost EPHEMERA featured a vintage magazine ad with Shirley Temple extolling the virtues of a 1936 Grunow Teledial console radio.  The idea, of course, was that the Teledial was so easy to use even a child could tune a station in perfectly---the unintended irony being that Miss Temple was perhaps the most precocious child of her era.

This posting led to an email conversation between Ms. Tattered and Lost and myself about my collection of vintage California radios with the station call letters printed directly on the dial.  I sent her some dial images and gave her some historical evolution of the stations listed, as well as the passing phenomenon of the 'Stationized' dial.  She was strangely fascinated and asked if she could use my ramble as a post---and so, after some tweaking, the rest is---uh, history:


When Herb Bell’s mother complained that she couldn’t read the typically tiny dials found on early 1930s radios, he set out to do something about it. After all, he could---being co-founder of California’s own Packard Bell radios. He picked up on the latest 1935 trend of the full view round ‘airplane’ type dial but enlarged the size so he could print the station call letters above the frequency numbers. Their trademarked ‘Stationized’ dials were soon mimicked by many other California radio manufacturers.

The first image is from a late 1936 Packard Bell.  You'll see some of the stations are in a larger font than the others, which indicates higher powered stations like KFI Los Angeles.  KPO San Francisco would become KNBR (NBc Radio) in the 1950s.  At 1560kc, W6AXI Bakersfield was above the commercial broadcast band at the time (550-1550kc) and therefore was stuck with an amateur’s call letters despite having a wide and eager audience for their high fidelity signal. Back in 1933, W6AXI was the audio source for the first regularly scheduled mechanical television broadcasts on the West Coast. A high school student sat before a broiling bank of lights and read the news from the evening paper.

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  The second image is of a 1936 Tiffany Tone dial, which incorporates a few stations from farther east, such as WFAA Dallas and Crosley Radio’s 500,000 watt superstation WLW Cincinnati. The lower short wave portion of the dial shows the principal cities and countries where short wave broadcasts originated.

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The third image is of a 1937 Gilfillan 'Radio Log Dial'. This dial omits W6AXI, perhaps because of its experimental status.  The dial does favor KGU Honolulu, however—so it’s likely Gilfillan had a distributor in Hawaii. Water greatly increases the range of AM broadcasts, so Hawaiians could take advantage of dials marked with KFI, KNX and KPO. I've also discovered that Gilfillan actually had different call letter dials for different markets on their little late 1930s Plastikon radios—such as one for the Salt Lake region, one for Seattle, etc.  It's interesting they'd made the effort---and they must have advertised the fact, as it would be a good gimmick for a cheap plastic radio.

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The fourth image is of a circa 1938 Tiffany Tone dial, showing the call letter change from experimental W6AXI to commercial KPMC (Pioneer Mercantile Company) when the broadcast band was increased up to 1600kc.



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The fifth image is of a circa 1940 Remler. While most California radio manufacturers were based in Los Angeles, Remler was based in San Francisco, so it isn’t surprising their station list is mostly concerned with the Bay Area. Note the position of KQW San Jose on the dial.

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Lastly, a Paramount dial, circa 1946.  I believe this a rebranding of Remler, as once again the station list favors Northern California.  KQW San Jose has been moved down to 740kc—its first step in becoming a high powered station, completed with its rebranding as KCBS about ten years later.

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When civilian electronics production resumed after World War II, the majority of California radio manufacturers continued profiting from their military contracts due to the nascent Cold War. Within five years most ceased their consumer operations, unable or unwilling to compete on a nationwide scale. Only Packard Bell stuck with their trademark ‘Stationized’ dials into the early 1950s before vying for a share of the national market.