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 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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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.
I'm so thrilled you cam along and educated me about the dials. I had no idea they once were so special. Now I have a stereo system that has black letters on a black surface that I can never figure out. Thus I do not use it to listen to the radio. I use an old tube radio that my maternal grandmother had sitting in her kitchen.
ReplyDeleteThrilled you found your corner of the universe!
Thrilled that you helped me find it! The truth is that I listen to the radio only in the car now---there isn't a station near our Rancho Notorious that engages me enough as I work around the house. I do try to listen online to KBRD out of Olympia WA (http://www.apikai.com/kbrd/), but it isn't the same experience as listening over the air, even if it's a 'real' AM broadcasting station---ah, more fodder for another post... KBRD is a largely enjoyable 'jukebox from hell' of the first half of the twentieth century.
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