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Let's dispel one myth before we go any further. Gernsback may
have been a wild enthusiast for new technologies with a
14-year old's imagination that never
deserted him, but his magazines weren't all raving nut-fests of odd
gadgets. His evangelism for radio had a strong practical side
and he was well aware that his readers had a very strong nuts & bolts
interest in radios as radios. You were as likely to see
this sort of thing on the cover of a Gernsback radio magazine
as the death-ray stuff.
This was the meat
and potatoes of Gernsback's radio magazines: page after page of
schematics of radio circuits or "hook ups."
Radio was so new in the early decades of the last century that for
many enthusiasts the only way to listen in was to build their own
sets. Finding the best circuits soon became a minor mania.
It was a bit like the chaps today who are really into building their
own PCs, only instead of hard drives and motherboards, they argued
about valves and condensers.
I remember in my younger days
working on circuits not very different than this and repairing old
valve radios. Seeing a schematic like this and then comparing it
to a modern computer chip is a very sobering experience.
Of course, you can't fix a chip
with a soldering iron. |
