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The Crosley Radio Gallery

MUSEUM OF YESTERDAY



 
PRESERVING THE WRITTEN AND RECORDED HISTORY OF RADIO
-THE MUSEUM OF YESTERDAY'S RESEARCH LIBRARY-
 

The Museum Of Yesterday houses a complete library of historic recordings and documents including books, program schedules, photographs, as well as several thousand early performance and "golden age" radio broadcasts on steel wire, slate disks, Edison cylinders, vinyl disks, magnetic tape and digital media. Our collection now includes several thousand slate and vinyl phonograph recordings of historical performances, including over 200 Edison cylinder recordings, thousands of original radio show broadcast recordings, and many specialty recordings of the Victor Talking Machine era. In addition, we house a large printed and electronic media based library of antique reference and radio history books. Among the items in the collection are a complete series of QST Magazines dating from 1915 to present, ARRL Handbooks dating as far back as 1926, and a complete collection Sams PhotoFacts, Ryder's and Beitman's service manuals, "The Radio Boys" stories, and literally thousands of technical books, schematics and equipment instruction and maintenance manuals and catalogs.

While the museum is currently a limited access private collection, we are happy to answer research questions as time and staff limitations permit.

 

Allied Radio Corporation of Chicago, Ill, published their first major radio and electronics supply catalog in 1929. For fifty-seven years, the Allied catalog was a standard reference for the electronics designer, engineer, ham operator and consumer electronics client.

Allied's catalogs provide a comprehensive view of the progress that was made in the electronics field in the years between 1929 and 1981. As the pages unfold, Electronics development ranges from the very earliest home radio sets, to the height of the space age and the beginning years of our modern computerized world.

1980 saw the last printing of the Allied Catalog under the original company ownership as Allied was taken over by Spartan Manufacturing Company. The 1981 catalog was published with Allied appearing as a subsidiary of Spartan, thus ending the existence of an icon in the radio supply industry.

You can browse the complete collection of Allied Radio catalogs, ranging from 1929 through 1981 by clicking the photo at left.

,

A personal recollection from museum founder and chairman, John DeMajo:

Shown here is an Allied Radio Corporation of Chicago catalog from 1957. This was the year that my interest in electronics and radio peaked. As a young boy, I spent hours studying these electronic supply catalogs. My grandfather occasionally purchased Knight Kits from Allied to aid in my informal education to electronics. Exposure to radio construction, in those early years, is what set the path in life for me to become an engineer. In our collection of wireless memorabilia, we presently have a large assortment of Allied Radio catalogs, as well as those from Walter Ash Company, Lafayette Radio, and Fair Radio Sales, spanning the years from the 1930's to the 1970's. .

 
Much like Allied Radio Corporation, Radio Shack had its humble beginnings in the years preceding World War II. The museum library contains many annual issues of the Boston based company's mail order electronics catalogs.
 
A small portion of the museum's QST collection. Our library houses copies of all issues of QST, the ARRL's official journal of Ham Radio, ranging from 1915 through 1985.
 
When it comes to the servicing or restoration of antique and vintage electronics, we have available entire sets of Gernsback, M. N. Beitman Supreme, SAMS Photofact and RYDER's service manuals and bulletins going back to the radio service industry's beginning years in the mid-1920s. Our collection provides access to schematics and service and alignment information on practically any tube radio, phonograph or recording device ever made.
 

Some of the "Radio Boys" series by Allen Chapman
We have provided this link to download an example of the "Radio Boys" series. Click the photo above to download.

 

The museum library houses a rare full set of the Hugo Gernsback Electronics Library of "How-to" radio and television books. These books have provided guidance and peaked the interest of radio hobbyists since they were first published in the 1930s. Now believed to be in the public domain, they have been made available on various web sites. In an effort to present the entire series in one location, we offer the following downloads for educational and historic preservation purposes. Click on the buttons provided to download each volume.

Volume 1- HOW TO BUILD DOERLE SHORT WAVE SETS
Volume 2 - MOST POPULAR ONE AND TWO TUBE RECEIVERS .
Volume 3 - ALTERNATING CURRENT .
Volume 4 - ALL ABOUT AERIALS .
Volume 5 - BEGINNER'S RADIO DICTIONARY .
Volume 6- FUN WITH RADIO .
Volume 7- HOW TO READ RADIO DIAGRAMS .
Volume 8 -RADIO FOR BEGINNERS .
Volume 9 - SIMPLE ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTS .
Volume 10 - TELEVISION (early edition) .
 
Here in our library, there are many editions of the ARRL Handbook including rare 1926 and 1929 editions. This is just a small sample of the total collection illustrating the various decades that are spanned.
 
The museum library also houses thousands of interesting pieces of broadcast memorabilia including both historical visual and audio artifacts pertaining to old radio programs and stations. One such item in our collection is this historic 1942 photo album of the long running Don McNeil Breakfast Club program from the World-War II era.
 
The museum's vinyl and slate disk recording collection contains many children's records that were popular in the era following the end of World War II. These recordings were often sold along with easy-to-operate acoustic and electronic phonographs that children could operate by themselves.
 
AND NOW A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS
Above: A display featuring a few of the products made by the companies that sponsored programs during Radio's "Golden Age." Without the support of manufacturers of such things as tobacco products, laxatives, cereal, and laundry soap, many of the great shows that we hold so dear, would never have made it to our radios and into our homes.
 

HINT: Click product above to hear original radio commercial

Radio as we knew it, would not have happened without sponsorship by the great companies that made up the American advertising landscape in the Twentieth-Century.

Cigarette companies, makers of soap products, and many other giants of the Madison Avenue landscape, sponsored many of Radio's network programs of old. The Camel Caravan, The Lucky Strike Hit Parade, The Philip Morris Playhouse and Chesterfield's Dragnet were only a few of the many shows that were funded by cigarette advertising.

While cigarette advertising was big in radio, other product associations were notable. Sloan's Liniment, for example, had a long association with "Gangbusters," and soap products such as New Rinso with Solium. Ivory Soap, Duz Tide and All were associated with radio's daily line-up of fifteen-minute drama serial shows known as "Soap Operas."
 

One of Radio's advertising giants was Philip Morris Tobacco. Based in our home town of Richmond, Virginia, the Philip Morris Tobacco Company took full advantage of radio and early television to advertise its products. Johnny Roventini, a 4 foot bell captain from a New York hotel, found his way into the Radio advertising business through the ingenuity of advertising executive Milton Biow. To read Johnny's story, click this link:

. You can also hear Johnny's famous "Call for Philip Morris" by clicking his photo above.
 

Octagon, Oxydol laundry soap, and Bon Ami Cleanser were also big sponsors of radio "Soap Operas" and other programs as well. Like the programs they sponsored, most of these products have faded into history. All of the original product packages shown on this site are from the Museum Of Yesterday's special collection of products manufactured by companies that sponsored radio programs.
 
Captain Midnight star (Richard Webb) and his faithful assistant Ichabod Mudd (Sid Melton) shown with the Captain Midnight Secret Squadron arm patch which was available from the makers of Ovaltine.
Comic book adventure series programs were extremely popular in the late 1930s and the War Years. These programs were regularly presented by products that marketed to children such as cereal products, milk flavorings, and candy. During this era such programs as "Superman," "Terry and The Pirates," "The Air Adventures Of Jimmy Allen," "I Love A Mystery," "Tom Mix" and other such shows geared to young listeners, came of age. One such program, WGN/Mutual Network's "Captain Midnight," included a club that young listeners could join, which entitled them to toy premiums that were made available by the sponsor, Ovaltine milk supplement. Shown here are two toys from the "Captain Midnight Secret Squadron" including an arm patch and a secret decoder badge. At the end of each show, Captain Midnight would give out a code that would reveal the contents of the next show. The decoder badge could be used to turn that code into the show title or description.
 
Many of the radio adventure show characters and themes became almost cults during the War years, as young Americans shared in the universal wish to overthrow America's enemies. The Captain Midnight Official Secret Squadron Handbook is one example of how sponsors and show producers promoted this. Even prior to the War, juvenile programs were a successful advertising medium for the makers of products of interest to children. By the nid-30s, Ovaltine was sponsoring a highly successful program based on the comic strip "Little Orphan Annie." Like Captain Midnight, the Annie show offered children an opportunity to decode a secret message with a mail-in trinket decoder that children could obtain by sending in parts of the Ovaltine package labeling.
 
In 1937 this Orphan Annie Secret Decoder was available to good boys and girls who were Annie's loyal followers and drank Ovaltine.

The makers of Ovaltine also distributed complementary copies of the theme song from the "Little Orphan Annie Show " a children's serial based on the Harold Gray newspaper comic strip of the same name, and sponsored by Ovaltine. The show debuted on the Blue Network in 1931. This original sheet music copy of the 1931 composition is in the historic sheet music collection of the Museum of Yesterday.

To hear the original lead-in to the show, featuring the show's announcer Pierre Andre' singing and accompanied on the theatre pipe organ by the show's organist Leonard Salvo, click the music above,

 
Give-away premims were not limited to children's programs. Mary Lee Taylor, (pseudonym for, and a character created by Pet Milk advertising executive Erma Proetz) played the role of a home economist, and hosted a Saturday morning program on NBC during which she presented weekly soap opera like skits depicting a fictional young married couple's adventures and problems. Later in the program, Mary Lee described her featured recipe of the week, based on the use of the sponsor's product Pet Milk. A much sought after miniature cook book of her recipes was available to listeners who sent in a request by mail, as was a bracelet charm that resembled a can of Pet Milk You can hear an example of the program by clicking this link. Examples of both the Pet Milk cookbook and the bracelet charm are in the "Word From Our Sponsor" exhibit which is part of the Museum Of Yesterday's radio and communications collection.

 

As part of the program's running story, the couple went through a pregnancy and added a baby girl to their family. In celebration, Pet Milk produced and offered a free 52 page book, with baby care advice. Of course the book recommended that parents feed their babies Pet Milk products. A rare copy of the Pet Milk Baby Book is housed in the museum's "A Word From Our Sponsor"collection.

 
 
Many "Golden Era radio programs were closely identified with their sponsors. One such show, "Mr. Keene- Tracer Of Lost Persons," starring Bennett Kilpak as Mr. Keene, was sponsored by Kolynos Dental Care products.

A 1940s vintage original and unopened can of Kolynos tooth powder (shown above) is housed in the Museum Of Yesterday radio sponsors' collection. Click on the Kolynos container above to hear the lead-in to "Mr. Keen Tracer Of Lost Persons."
 

Dr. Paul Christian, the character portrayed by screen actor Jean Hersholt, shown here with Rosemary DeCamp who played his faithful nurse-assistant Judy Price, had a long running sponsorship of the Chesebrough-Ponds Company, makers of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly. The program, which was broadcast over the CBS Radio Network, was known as "The Vaseline Program; the show where the audience writes the script," and over the years, awards were given to many non-professional writers who submitted scripts to the Dr. Christian Script Writing Contest. Among the winners were many virtually unknown-at-the-time writers including Rod Sterling and Earl Hamner. Like Hamner and Sterling, a number of the winners of the Dr. Christian Script competitions went on to become famous in their own right.

The unopened bottle of Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, shown above, resides in the "radio sponsors" gallery of the Museum Of Yesterday. Click the photo of the Vaseline container above to hear the Vaseline commercial lead-in from this show.

 

Comedian Fred Allen and wife Portland Hoffa
Bristol-Myers "Sal Hapatica" product sponsored several successful shows on Radio including Fred Allen's "Allen's Alley," "Mr. District Attorney" and the "Eddie Cantor Show."
 

Like Bristol-Myers and other drug companies, Rexall Drugs was also a major sponsor of several radio programs. Rexall Drug Company was formed as a co-op which allowed local pharmacists to obtain over-the-counter products at prices comparable with the country's growing drug chains such as Walgreen Pharmacies. The independent pharmacies took on the appearance of a chain store by displaying a nationally known trademark for their stores and products. Rexall's sponsorships on radio included such programs as the Phil Harris Show, Richard Diamond-Private Eye and several other major network shows.
 
Even prime time comedy and variety shows resulted in the production of games and other show-related memorabilia. This 1930's Fibber McGee board game licensed by NBC, and based on the characters from the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show, was sold by the Milton Bradley Company.
 
 
 
MEMORIES OF
NEW ORLEANS BROADCASTING
 
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Because of its position as both the city in which Jazz was born, and as one of the major players in the 1950s development and acceptance of music performed by early Rock-N-Roll and African-American "Rhythm and Blues" performers, New Orleans underwent many changes in the ownership, management, and frequency allocations of the radio stations that served the city throughout that period.

Of course the pioneering stations WWL and WSMB have carved out their niche in history, but many smaller independent stations played important roles in the history and culture of the Crescent City. Below, you will see a chart indicating the various stations that were on the air in the formative 1950s, their respective operating frequencies, and formats.

CALL LETTERS
FREQUENCY
OWNERSHIP AND FORMAT
WWL 800 / 870 KC
Owned by Loyola University of the South. Format was CBS affil with pioneering local live productions. Although Loyola owned the station license, the actual management of the station fell to a corporation of business leaders who were hand-picked by the Jesuit university. This was done to get around a Vatican directive that Catholic priests could not own for profit businesses. Money generated by the station went to an endowment to fund the university.
WSMB 1350 KC
Saenger Theatre and Maison Blanche Dept. Store. (Format was NBC and later switched to ABC networks, along with live studio productions from 13th floor of Maison Blanche Building on Canal St.)
WTPS 1450 > 940 KC Owned by the Times-Picayune-States newspapers (News and independent local productions)
WTIX 1450 >690 KC Storz Broadcast Group (Classical at first, but switched to Rock-n-Roll featuring recordings by some black artists as well as popular R&R in the 50s)
WNOE 1060 KC
Former La governor James Noe was owner. (Station was the original top 40s Rock N Roll station in New Orleans. WNOE was also the Mutual network affiliate)
WJBW

1230 KC

 
Local DJ and studio productions. Featured Italian culture and religious programs such as the nightly Rosary broadcast in cooperation with local Catholic Holy Name societies, and the Sunday Italian Hour which was an all Italian language news and commentary program for the Italian community hosted by French Quarter grocer Biaggio Montalbano. This station also hosted Mid-Day Serenade, the first DJ type program in New Orleans.
WWEZ 690 KC
Top 40s Station also featured legendary DJ Jack "Jack The Cat" Elliot.)
WJMR 990 KC
Jorge Mayorial owner. (Station featured White DJs posing as blacks and playing R&B music. Poppa Stoppa and Okey Dokey were notable in this period, and New Orleans first black radio personality, Vernon Winslow, a Dillard University professor who was previously hired to coach the white DJs to sound black, but was prevented from on-air broadcasting himself, eventually broke the race barrier and appeared on-air as Dr. Daddy-O once the Civil Rights Era had cleared the way.) WJMR also owned the first UHF TV station in New Orleans
WDSU 1280 KC
Station was founded by New Orleans radio pioneer Joseph Uhalt, and had studios in the DeSoto Hotel. "DS" stood for DeSoto and the "U" was for Uhalt. After WW-II, the station license was purchased by the Edgar Stern family, and the studio was moved to 520 Royal St. where they also constructed New Orleans' first television station WDSU-TV. WDSU Radio was the local NBC affiliate after WSMB switched to ABC, and they also presented local programming.

 
 
RCA BN-2A remote broadcast console from WDSU radio in New Orleans.
 
The clock shown above is typical of the clocks used in radio studios in the 1930s through the end of the Golden Radio era. The clocks were synchronized via an electric solenoid that received time and system impulses, via Western Union's telegraph system, from the U.S. Naval Observatory in Boulder, Colorado. Hint: If you click the clock with your mouse, you can hear a station break announcement typical of the late 1940s when these clocks set the time at radio stations all across the nation.
 
Studio building of WTPS Radio (Owned by the Times Picayune - States Newspaper)
 
 
WWL AND WSMB - NEW ORLEANS "PIONEER" BROADCASTERS

WWL, one of two early broadcast pioneers in the United States that had their origin in New Orleans, began life as a physics experiment in the laboratory of Loyola University of the South. WWL began as a meager 5 watt transmitter on the campus. Later, as the station's power was increased and it became a commercial station, the studios were moved to the famous Roosevelt Hotel on Barrone St. At that point, the transmitter power exceeded what could be accommodated in downtown New Orleans, and in 1932, a transmitter plant was built to the west of the city proper on the grounds of the Trudeau plantation along the banks of the Mississippi River near the St. Charles Parish line.

The logic in locating the plant on the river was that the signal would readily travel up river to markets in the Mid-West. It was, however, an unsuccessful experiment, and in 1938, as WWL became affiliated with CBS, a new plant was constructed on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain in Kenner (land that is now occupied by the Pontchartrain Center). With the 1938 move, WWL was granted "clear channel" status by the FCC, and the station's power was increased to 50,000 watts.

Shown below are photos of the River Road building and 10,000 watt transmitters, along with the later photos from the Kenner location. We also included an early photo of one of the live production studios from the second floor of the Roosevelt Hotel.

Above and below: Photos of the 1932 10KW WWL transmitter plant which was located on the grounds of the old Trudeau Plantation along the banks of the Mississippi River. Prior to that move, the transmitter was located in Bobet Hall on the St. Charles Avenue campus. (Photos courtesy of LOUIS Digital Library and Loyola University Archives)
Photos below are of the 1938 vintage Kenner transmitter plant of WWL Radio.
 
The WWL Kenner transmitter building which was constructed on the Kenner shore of Lake Pontchartrain in 1938
 
The 50KW RCA Model 50-D transmitter installed in the Kenner site in 1938
 
Later, the 50D was replaced with this Model H RCA Ampliphase transmitter, along with a 10 KW backup RCA transmitter. During that same period, a second backup transmitter, which was capable of 1KW, was installed at the Roosevelt Hotel studios, with a "long wire" antenna on the roof of the hotel.
Above: Aerial view of the Kenner transmitter site. Below, a second view of the transmitter building with directional 400 foot towers in the background.
The three photos above are of the 50,000 Watt RCA transmitter plant of WWL-AM at the Kenner site ca:1939. The plant operated until the late 1980's when it was moved to the site of the WWL TV transmitter in Marrero, Louisiana in order to make way for the new Pontchartrain Center in Kenner. My father's first job, after graduating from Tulane University in 1938 as an electrical engineer, was as supervisor of the Louisiana Power & Light Company crew that provided electrical service to this transmitter site. The plant was located at the end of Williams Boulevard, in a cow pasture along the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in rural Kenner, Louisiana. On a clear night,, the aircraft beacons on the two 400 foot towers could be seen from as far away as Slidell.
the Louisiana Power And Light engineering supervisor (wearing suit in photo) is the father of the museum's founder. He is shown here supervising a Louisiana Power And Light Company construction crew in the installation of the sub-station transformers that were installed to power the 1938 WWL transmitter building in Kenner, LA.
 

An early view of the WWL radio studio in the Roosevelt Hotel

The WWL Radio studios remained in the Roosevelt into the 1970s after which they were incorporated into the WWL television facilities in the French Quarter. Some years later, the Jesuit priests sold both the radio and television stations in order to raise money to support the university's endowment.

 
A view of the Maison Blanche Building in New Orleans, which housed the
studios and transmitter for WSMB Radio
A late 1920's view of Canal Street in New Orleans showing the WSMB radio station antenna towers atop the Maison Blanche Building. WSMB was another pioneer radio station that was a joint venture of the Maison Blanche Department Store and the Saenger Amusements Company which ran numerous theatres throughout the south including the famous flag-ship New Orleans Saenger Theatre on historic Canal Street. The station's studios were on the 13th floor of the Maison Blanche Building. WSMB and WWL were two of the oldest radio stations in the United States, and are revered in broadcast history as being true pioneers of broadcasting. . In the years that followed, the WSMB transmitter was moved across the river from New Orleans to what was then a remote area in Algiers.
 
The old WSMB transmitter building located on Behrman Highway, Algiers, LA.
 
In the 1950s, New Orleans radio station WDSU took remote broadcasting to a new level with this mobile radio studio. The trailer was dropped off at locations around town where there was high traffic, and personalities would conduct their shows, with live audience participation drawn from crowds or passers-by who were invited inside.
 

You have reached the end of the Communications Gallery tour. Thanks for visiting our communications collection. We hope that you met an old friend or two along the way.

STAY TUNED!!! ......MY DADDY IS ALWAYS WORKING TO BRING YOU MORE GREAT EXHIBITS.
73's
 
 
 
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