January 23rd, 2004 - History of VOA, Crystal Radios
Notes Posted By Pete Norloff on January 25th, 2004
Crystal radios, the latest rage.
A recent contest at the TJ amateur radio club sparked interest in the ancient art form of crystal radios.Jim Richey sponsored the VWS version of the contest. So he got to be the first to discuss his work, He picked up a crystal radio kit at a garage sale for 15 cents. Although not all of the pieces were there, Jim managed to rebuild the radio which had zero selectivity, receiving only one station, no matter how it was tuned.
Ray Albers brought in two crystal radios. The first had two parallel-connected tuning capacitors and a coil of wire wound around the edge of a cigar box to feed the diode and a high impedance hearing aid earphone connected to the diode. Two stations were logged by Ray. The second radio was of Australian origin and called a “magic radio” . Ray used the same kind of earphone on it and got 5 or 6 stations.
Tom Azlin bought a 1923 British BTH commercially-made crystal set. This radio featured two cats-whisker detectors covering 300-600M, a band-changing switch adding a second capacitor to pick up the BBC stations, and a variometer type of coil for tuning. He also included a headset of similar vintage.
Although others had participated in the contest, they didn't bring their entries to show. However, there were many crystal radio stories from past experiences. Read 'em and weep (or laugh).
Tom Azlin added that contests were once held to see how far away one could receive stations. Some even added a second crystal receiver to try to cancel the effects of strong local stations so that DX could be heard.
Bill Kamm built a crystal set in 1952 after successfully building a one-tube radio. For the coil, he used cotton-covered wire wound on a flat wooden coil form and shellac-coated it for better insulation. Tuning was accomplished by moving a brass pointer across the coil. No stations were received.
Mike Steussy described his attempts using a cats whisker type of crystal. He also has a 1956 reprint of a 1932 crystal radio handbook of anyone is interested.
Steve Floyd said he built a crystal radio inside of a ball point pen so he could listen to pop music in class. His mother found out about it and broke the radio in half and wouldn’t give him the pieces either.
Alan Bosch said his crystal set doubled as a police scanner. When he operated it without a ground, he picked up the Cincinnati police department station.
Corky Searls remembers getting crystal radio kit for his birthday in 1952.
Charles Savich built an beat frequency oscillator and was testing it with no success. When he took off the headset, the crystal radio across the room made a noise. Jarring the military headset connected to the oscillator apparently modulated the oscillator and transmitted the signal to the crystal set.
Kerry Kingham said he and two friends built a crystal set using a cats whisker crystal and a loopstick tuning coil. Later they replaced the cats whisker with a diode. They also used the military headset. Still later, they bought a small transistor amplifier and hooked that to the crystal set. All three eventually became hams.
Ray Albers commented that since the selectivity of his radio was not affected by the coil, he eliminated it entirely and just connected the diode to the headset and added an antenna wire.
Mike Doherty recalled his 8th grade experiments using a sewing needle and a Gillette Blue razor blade as the cats whisker crystal.
Dan Sullivan said his mother told him how her brother learned to build crystal radios in WWI and built some for use at home. He and Dan’s mother, while wearing headsets would communicate by yelling at each other since normal conversation with headsets on was impossible.
Jim Richey, seconding Ray’s simplification, soldered the diode across the headphone jack contacts.
Voice of America history
Program Chair Mike Steussy introduced former Voice of America employee Al Brown, KZ3AB, who then introduced his colleague at VOA and tonight’s speaker, Alan Heil. Al then operated the slide presentation for Alan. Alan, the author of a book on the history of the VOA, told the history in a series of stories about the VOA and some of its personnel, supplemented with video slides and tapes of actual broadcasts.
Alan started off telling about one of the earliest stations used by VOA at Westchester Ohio that he had recently visited. The station was known as Bethany Relay Station. Wondering where “Bethany” was in Ohio, he found out that the name “Bethany” came from the local telephone exchange rather than geographic location. The station power was 300kW, enough for local relatives to hear the broadcasts in their dental fillings and wire fences. In fact, he told of one young girl who moved into a near-by house and heard strange voices in foreign languages coming from the basement. Upon investigating, she found that her furnace was “receiving” the VOA broadcasts.
International broadcasting from America had been planned before WWII but did not get on the air until after the attack at Pearl Harbor. The first broadcast aired in February 1942 and was made in German. The two announcers had been attending theater in New York City when they were told they had to report for duty. They arrived at the studio still dressed in their evening clothes and their producer from the BBC quipped that he didn’t know it was a formal occasion. Shortly after that, broadcasts were made in several other languages. Scheduling was really a rat race, 15 minute programs with a minute in between. Two weeks later, they found out that someone had actually heard their broadcasts when they received a letter from a listener in France.
Today programming is done in 55 languages and includes TV and Internet programming as well as radio, reaching about 90 million listeners, second only to the BBC’s 150 million.
VOA has about 20 foreign correspondents, covering news wherever it occurs in the world. One example, the capture of Saddam Hussein, was reported by the South Africa bureau chief , Chellis, McDonough, who was visiting Iraq when the event happened. She broadcast the response of Iraqis to the news.
Willis Conover, a broadcaster for 41 years, headed a program of jazz music for VOA. He had a standard opening that he used every week. He was scheduled to appear at a theater in the USSR and as he walked on stage he was greeted by silence until his theme, Take the “A” Train, was played and he started into his opening. The crowd recognized who they had in front of them, even though VOA broadcasts were banned there, and gave him a 10-minute standing ovation. What power! Someone even called him a modern-day Joshua because he probably had some effect on bringing the Iron Curtain walls down with jazz instead of trumpets.
A woman hosting a country music show on VOA held a contest with a week in Nashville as first prize. It was won by a Mainland Chinese man. Although there were visa problems, the man was finally allowed to visit but he had to bring a government agent along to watch him. He explained the situation to his host and said that the agent knew nothing about country music. By the end of the week, the host noted that the agent was enjoying the music too.
A program aimed at Laos used an ancient form of Laotian music and poetry to aid in the broadcast. The special music provided with musicians and singers from Bangkok was alternated on a weekly basis with information about American culture.
Leonell Desauret, a Haitian broadcaster, said that the script was too boring and wouldn’t get them many listeners. He reworked the script so that it sounded like rap music-Haitian Creole style.
One huge achievement by the VOA was the creation of a language, “Special English”, a watered-down version with a limited vocabulary of about 1500 words using simple sentence structure and spoken very slowly. It is immensely successful at getting the message through to those for whom English is, at best, a second language and is used in foreign schools and in the Peace Corps.
One of the people in the Special English office retired. As a way of reminding him of his previous work, his friends made a tape of a baseball broadcast in Special English. Although Special English sounds weird to most of us, it really is helpful to foreigners. Dan Henry, a VOA bureaucrat, was on a flight to Hong Kong and was seated next to a Chinese professor. He noticed that the professor was reading an English language document and started a conversation with him. During the conversation, Dan mentioned he was a VOA employee. The professor said that VOA had literally saved his life, enabling him to learn enough to pass the entrance exam for the Chinese university and become a professor of linguistics.
After concluding his presentation, Alan answered a few questions. In response to a question regarding the ease of funding after 9-11, he noted that while funding is generally easier in the post 9-11 times, it is harder to get funding for radio because the money-giving bureaucrats don’t realize that many people still listen to short wave radio. So new delivery types and new formats are better funded than the old fashioned radio. Alan was adamant that we really need to continue news and culture programming via radio and urged everyone to write their Congressional representatives to that effect.
For example, in Poland around 1980, the five labor unions of Solidarity were very small. Lech Walensa decided that the minutes of his labor union should be publicized and he did so by giving a copy to the AP Wire Service. In a short time, the information got to the international broadcasters and received worldwide attention. In short order, the unions increased in size and became the key factor in overthrowing Communism in Poland.
Another question asked about the differences between VOA and Radio Liberty. Alan said that whereas Radio Liberty reported only the events in the country to which the program was directed, VOA explains American culture and events to the world. It was noted that both VOA and Radio Liberty broadcasts in Russian were jammed by the Russians but VOA broadcasts in English were not jammed.
A question was raised about the difficulty of finding a VOA broadcast in foreign countries. Alan said BBC has a bigger presence and a bigger audience and are easier to find on a radio. However, they do not carry American programming, and while CNN does, its sound byte format is not conducive to foreign understanding of America. VOA is definitely needed.
Alan was asked if the Ohio site of the Bethany Relay Station was still in operation. Alan said that it wasn’t and listed the stations presently in operation around the world. In the U.S., the west coast relay station is at Delano, CA and the east coast station at Greenville, SC.
Alan closed with a note that VOA tours of their Washington facility are available at 10 AM and 1:340 and 2:30 PM.
Our thanks once again to our club secretary, Bill Kamm, KC4VXH, for creating these meeting notes.
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