In article , says...
tommyknocker wrote:

While we're on the subject of radio in totalitarian dictatorships, I
seem to remember somebody telling me that the Volksradios
(Volkempfanger?) made in Nazi Germany were primarily set up for a
connection similar to cable TV today, except with only 2 or 3 choices.
IN fact, I once saw one of these little radios with a very simple three
tube circuit and a connector for the cable. But the Volkempfangers had
tuners.

No, that's not quite accurate. The VE radios were built as cheap as
dirt so as to get one in everybody's hands because radio in that era was
still a bit of luxury. The American Equivalent was a "chicken in every
pot".
Being a cheapo radio it wasn't apt to be used to receive FOREIGN
propaganda, only the national version and that made it a very valuable
tool. It probably took Hitler's goons all of 10 minutes to
'nationalize' all the broadcasters in Germany in the 30s. They
nationalized all the radio manufacturers and as a result you can find
VEs bearing every brand name that was extant in the era.
Of course any skilled radio nutt could string up enough wire to hear BBC
Droitwich, etc should he have chosen to do so in spite of the VE being
your basic one-tube + rectifier set.
They cured this foreign reception problem with a penalty of death for
listening to foreign broadcasts...first in the overrun countries like
Poland and Czechoslovakia...but didn't institute this death mandate in
Germany until something like 1943.
This was spelled out without vagarity on a simple knob-hanger label or a
label on the back panel of the set .
Cabled radio was a different scenario. The UK had this as did much of
Europe and the USSR. Even Barbados in the West Indies had cable radio
up until the early 70s. I hear Red China still uses it. Basically a
speaker box with maybe an audio amp fed by telco/cable lines. Not a
'radio' at all but still a tool available to some Central Control for
tax revenue collection or dissemination of the official word.
VEs are common little radios and carry a great dose of 20th century
history. In radio terms they are a POS although the basic design shows
the ultimate in cost-cutting tradeoffs with the best of engineering
available at the time. The cardboard speaker frames still ring true,
for example. Interesting little sets, in the US we have no equivalent
to such a thing.

-Bill M

For some pictures both inside and out, and a bit of an explanation on
these radios, goto: http://www.usmbooks.com/volksradio.htm

For some pictures both inside and out, and a bit of an explanation on
these radios, goto: http://www.usmbooks.com/volksradio.htm

correction goto http://www.usmbooks.com/volksradio.html {forgot the"l"}

-exray wrote in message ...
tommyknocker wrote:

While we're on the subject of radio in totalitarian dictatorships, I
seem to remember somebody telling me that the Volksradios
(Volkempfanger?) made in Nazi Germany were primarily set up for a
connection similar to cable TV today, except with only 2 or 3 choices.
IN fact, I once saw one of these little radios with a very simple three
tube circuit and a connector for the cable. But the Volkempfangers had
tuners.

No, that's not quite accurate. The VE radios were built as cheap as
dirt so as to get one in everybody's hands because radio in that era was
still a bit of luxury. The American Equivalent was a "chicken in every
pot".
An average German laborer's annual salary was about 1470 Reich Mark
(RM) or about $588 in 1935 dollars ($8200 in 2004 dollars). The
numbers are most likely misleading since the exchange rate was
artificially fixed and German state provided essentially all social
services at no cost. Anyway. A cheap 2+1 regeneration receiver cost
about 150 RM (5.3 weeks of work), a 4+1 superheterodyne 300 RM (11
weeks of work), and a top of the line 11+1 Telefunken 7000 cost 600 RM
(21 weeks of work). The first VE301 cost 65 to 76 RM (2.3 to 2.7 week
of work) and the price of the cheapest Volksempfänger DKE38 was
eventually slashed to 36 RM (1.3 week of work).

Being a cheapo radio it wasn't apt to be used to receive FOREIGN
propaganda, only the national version and that made it a very valuable
tool. It probably took Hitler's goons all of 10 minutes to
'nationalize' all the broadcasters in Germany in the 30s.
German broadcast network was always nationalized under the Ministry of
Post since the onset of broadcasting. Nazis upgraded the network to I
believe 22 BC Telefunken transmitters, 872 kW each, located in a
fashion that essentially no place in Germany, Alsace, and Lorraine was
not more than 80 miles from a transmitter. Alsace and Lorraine are
French territories along the Rhine river that were lost to Germany in
1871and returned to France in 1918. There were also two high power LW
transmitters.

They
nationalized all the radio manufacturers and as a result you can find
VEs bearing every brand name that was extant in the era.
Not true. Nazis gained power in January 1933 and the newly
established "Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda "
(information and propaganda) under Joseph Goebels commenced
immediately a panel with 28 radio industry panel manufacturers with
the objective to manufacture a cheap receiver, with fixed wiring,
fixed components, fixed design, and fixed retail price. The
manufacturers were not nationalized and made profit on the difference
between their manufacturing cost and retail. The manufacturer was
identified only by the tag on the chassis and on the back panel. The
production of the first Volksempfänger 301 (Peoples Radio 301) VE301
started in summer 1933. Notice how symbols matter – 301 is in
European dating 30. January, the day Nazis won the general elections.
Hence the completely different radio VE301dyn retained the 301 code.

Of course any skilled radio nutt could string up enough wire to hear BBC
Droitwich, etc should he have chosen to do so in spite of the VE being
your basic one-tube + rectifier set.
My DKE38 with tired tubes can receive at night stations 450 miles
using a 6 ft. wire antenna. It may have been capable receiving strong
foreign stations at night.

They cured this foreign reception problem with a penalty of death for
listening to foreign broadcasts...first in the overrun countries like
Poland and Czechoslovakia...but didn't institute this death mandate in
Germany until something like 1943. This was spelled out without vagarity on a simple knob-hanger label or a label on the back panel of the set .
Not true. WW2 started on September 1, 1939 and the law prohibiting
listening to foreign broadcast was issues on September 7, 1939. The
tag that was mandatory on German radios did not explicitly mention
death penalty. The entire text was: "Denke Daran. Das Abhören
ausländischer Sender ist ein Verbrechen gegen die nationale Sicherheit
unseres Volkes. Es wird auf Befehl der Führers mit schweren
Zuchthausstrafen geahndet." (Beware. Listening to foreign broadcast
is a crime against the national security of our people. By order of
the Führer it is punished by severe imprisonment.) So there is no
mention of death penalty here. The tags mandated on radios in
occupied countries had apparently different text – the Czech version
text states explicitly "imprisonment or death".

Cabled radio was a different scenario. The UK had this as did much of
Europe and the USSR. Even Barbados in the West Indies had cable radio
up until the early 70s. I hear Red China still uses it. Basically a
speaker box with maybe an audio amp fed by telco/cable lines. Not a
'radio' at all but still a tool available to some Central Control for
tax revenue collection or dissemination of the official word.
The simplest, one channel cable radio is a box with a line transformer
with multiple secondary taps that control the volume. It is usually
fed by 35 to 70 V signal. The "dissemination of the official word" is
nonsense. I encountered this claim several times here in US and it
was made by people who never lived in countries where the cable radio
was common but, at the same time, apparently also never got out of the
spell of cold war propaganda. Cable radio was popular in dense
populated cities before the penetration of FM broadcast since the AM
signal suffered from interference. A single vacuum cleaner or food
processor could interfere with reception in the entire apartment
house. Cable radio was an early, pre-FM HiFi regardless the political
divide. The propaganda argument listed at some sites is about as
idiotic like claiming that AA5's were without SW band because Truman
did not want workers listen to Radio Moscow.

One more rant. The German law prohibiting receiving of foreign
broadcast became kind of standard for after WW2 Europe. Even the
cheap 4-tube designs like Philips Philetta, Tesla Talisman, or Soviet
equivalents had SW band although some governments I suspect would
prefer not to. Just the idea of being compared to Nazis for SW band
removed was enough. Notice that Nazis even issued manual on how to
disable SW reception on each particular radio model when this became
mandatory in at least occupied Europe in 1943. No choice was left to
a technician unlike here in US where apparently Joe's Radio and Vacuum
Cleaner Repair or whatever could disable SW band of radios belonging
to Japanese Americans arbitrarily.

VEs are common little radios and carry a great dose of 20th century
history. In radio terms they are a POS although the basic design shows
the ultimate in cost-cutting tradeoffs with the best of engineering
available at the time. The cardboard speaker frames still ring true,
for example. Interesting little sets, in the US we have no equivalent
to such a thing.
There is a little similarity however. The Volksempfänger radios were
made using closely controlled components that could not be diverted
for other purpose. To achieve that all those components were stamped
with swastikas – speakers, capacitors, tubes, etc. A kind of analogy
of "MR" components used in US during WW2.

Jiri Placek
Boyertown, PA

On Sat, 20 Nov 2004 23:10:26 -0700, -exray
wrote:

tommyknocker wrote:

While we're on the subject of radio in totalitarian dictatorships, I
seem to remember somebody telling me that the Volksradios
(Volkempfanger?) made in Nazi Germany were primarily set up for a
connection similar to cable TV today, except with only 2 or 3 choices.
IN fact, I once saw one of these little radios with a very simple three
tube circuit and a connector for the cable. But the Volkempfangers had
tuners.

No, that's not quite accurate. The VE radios were built as cheap as
dirt so as to get one in everybody's hands because radio in that era was
still a bit of luxury. The American Equivalent was a "chicken in every
pot".
Being a cheapo radio it wasn't apt to be used to receive FOREIGN
propaganda, only the national version and that made it a very valuable
tool. It probably took Hitler's goons all of 10 minutes to
'nationalize' all the broadcasters in Germany in the 30s. They
nationalized all the radio manufacturers and as a result you can find
VEs bearing every brand name that was extant in the era.
Of course any skilled radio nutt could string up enough wire to hear BBC
Droitwich, etc should he have chosen to do so in spite of the VE being
your basic one-tube + rectifier set.
They cured this foreign reception problem with a penalty of death for
listening to foreign broadcasts...first in the overrun countries like
Poland and Czechoslovakia...but didn't institute this death mandate in
Germany until something like 1943.
This was spelled out without vagarity on a simple knob-hanger label or a
label on the back panel of the set .
Cabled radio was a different scenario. The UK had this as did much of
Europe and the USSR. Even Barbados in the West Indies had cable radio
up until the early 70s. I hear Red China still uses it. Basically a
speaker box with maybe an audio amp fed by telco/cable lines. Not a
'radio' at all but still a tool available to some Central Control for
tax revenue collection or dissemination of the official word.
VEs are common little radios and carry a great dose of 20th century
history. In radio terms they are a POS although the basic design shows
the ultimate in cost-cutting tradeoffs with the best of engineering
available at the time. The cardboard speaker frames still ring true,
for example. Interesting little sets, in the US we have no equivalent
to such a thing.

The only other thing remotely comparable was the UK Utility Set
programme. Domestic wireless makers all worked under state control
during the war and mostly produced a variety of military gear, but
civilians needed radios too. Two designs were created, one battery
powered and one mains. I don't know much about the portable set, but
the mains ones were very robust four valve superhets, designed to work
with a wide variety of valves, and with production farmed out among
the makers. Of course, there were no restrictions on what broadcasts
you could listen to so the Utility Sets were fully tunable - but they
were medium wave only, mostly because wave change switches were in
particularly short supply. They also had a solid-state detector - an
early metal-oxide diode, I think - that didn't work very well.

I've seen a couple of these sets quite recently, still in service. Not
bad for sets made under difficult conditions sixty years ago.

There's a pic of one - and a bit more info - here

http://www.thorneyhill.freeserve.co.uk/othersets.html


-Bill M

R

In article ,
-exray wrote:
Cabled radio was a different scenario. The UK had this as did much of
Europe and the USSR. Even Barbados in the West Indies had cable radio
up until the early 70s. I hear Red China still uses it. Basically a
speaker box with maybe an audio amp fed by telco/cable lines. Not a
'radio' at all but still a tool available to some Central Control for
tax revenue collection or dissemination of the official word.

It was common in the US during WW II, as radio station DJ's were not
allowed to accept requests in case it was a spy sending a message.
Wired "radio" systems were set up (in areas that had enough cheap
entertainment venues) with a live DJ and a telephone at each site to
contact the DJ to play requests.

Mark Zenier Washington State resident

http://english.ohmynews.com/down/ima...rnews_197456_1[256966].jpg

is a shortcut to the picture itself

On Sun, 21 Nov 2004 01:42:40 GMT, "Jim Murphy"
wrote:

I couldn't find it. I guess I am blind. Jim

"Beloved Leader" wrote in message
. com...
There's a neat link at RadioIntel today.
http://www.radiointel.com/

"North Korea: Journalism In The Service Of Kim Jong-il"
http://english.ohmynews.com/articlev...97456&rel_no=1

Scroll about 40% of the way down the page to see a picture of a NK
receiver. Typically, it is set to receive only one station.

I cross-posted this, because 1) it's shortwave, and 2), it's a tube
receiver. I can't tell you anything about the vintage of the radio.

On 20 Nov 2004 17:10:08 -0800, (Beloved
Leader) wrote:

I cross-posted this, because 1) it's shortwave, and 2), it's a tube
receiver. I can't tell you anything about the vintage of the radio.

No worries, it looks like you did fine Thanks for the post.

JuLiE Dxer wrote in message . ..

On 20 Nov 2004 17:10:08 -0800, (Beloved
Leader) wrote:

I cross-posted this, because 1) it's shortwave, and 2), it's a tube
receiver. I can't tell you anything about the vintage of the radio.

No worries, it looks like you did fine


Maybe not. I found my 1996 _World Radio TV Handbook_. As of back then,
while DPRK's foreign services were all shortwave, the domestic
broadcasting was a mix of SW, MW and FM (88-108 MHz). The radio shown
in the link might well not receive SW frequencies.

Gee, I hope I don't get expelled from RRS for starting a thread that
isn't about SW.

Best wishes.

"Frank Dresser" wrote in message ...

... I'd guess that the few radios
available are imported from China or made with Chinese electronics.

Frank Dresser


They're probably made by the same companies that provide the radios
sold at Wal*Mart.