Radio House Books

This is more obscure than it probably should be. I found a book on the imprint "Radio House Books." It's publisher was George W. Stewart, Inc. His operated from at least 1936 and 1951. The earliest book I found was The Stewart Simplified Method of Mimicry and Parlor Amusement. I suspect that's a different Stewart. The other works are all primarily from the 1940s and also primarily non-fiction: history, criticism, economics, sociology and a little bit of English drama. The address in the book plate is 67 W. 44th Street, New York, NY. Note on disambiguation: there was a well-published professor at the University of Iowa by that name, a few notable military men, and a newspaperman. These are all different George Stewarts.

But then there is our George W. Stewart. He was the author of "I Have a book" published in 1940. I found a copy of the Who What Why Is radio text scanned on line. [SOURCE] It refers to the Jerome Still book as "Still in preparation."  

 

In the introduction of The Radio Station, Jerome Still thanks Robert J. Landry which is an interesting connection. Landry even writes the introduction to the book. Landry himself is a mystery. In 1963 - 1979 the editor of Variety was a Robert J. Landry. He also wrote a book This Fascinating Radio Business, published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1946. Back in the 1940s he was the Director of Program writing at CBS.  The 2004 Encyclopedia of Radio confirms they are one and the same. Jerome Sill also thanks Sherman Marshall at WOLF, Nathan Lord of WAVE, and Joseph Creamer of WOR, all unknown radio men today.

Title	Author	Year	link
Who, What, Why Is Radio?	Robert J. Landry	1942	LINK
All Children Listen	Dorothy Gordon	1942	N/A
The Radio Station: Management, Function, Future	Jerome Sill	1946	LINK
Time For Reason About Radio	Lyman Bryson	1948	LINK

The three books are all rare, but none more so than the Dorothy Gordon text. She was the moderator of The New York Times Youth Forum, a weekly radio and television program on WQXR. It aired from 1943 to 1960. In 1960 it was picked up by WNBC-TV and aired until her death in 1970. The program brought together a panel of high school AND/or college students and an adult guest in discussion. Gordon won a McCalls Golden Mike award in 1952 [SOURCE] and a Peabody award in 1963 [SOURCE]. In 1942 the book some classroom discussion guides mention Gordon's book. All together she wrote at least 7 books.

• Sing It Yourself - 1928
• Around The World In Song - 1930
• Dorothy Gordon's Treasure Bag Of Game Song 1939
• Come To France 1940
• Knowing The Netherlands - 1940
• All Children Listen 1942
• You And Democracy - 1951

The Jerome Sill book is easier to find, and will cost half as much as the Gordon text. I saw one with the dust jacket on eBay. This appears to be his only book, thought it's widely quoted in other radio station management texts. A similar Jerome Sill worked in advertising in the 1930s into 1940s writing for Advertising & Selling magazine. There was  Jerome Sill of WMLO Milwaukee who led an independent station revolt in 1947 against a new NAB code. Jerome Sill pops up as the Promotions director of WNEW in 1944, formerly of the Aarons, Sill & Caron an ad agency in Detroit. I think these are all the same man. His letter of protest was widely quoted:

"Should this code be adopted in it's preset form, we might be in the position of being forced to withdraw from the NAB or be dishonest in our tacit acceptance of a code to which we could not sincerely subscribe. We would choose the former course."

If it's him he appears as the general manage of WMIL in Milwaukee in 1953, part owner of WREX in Duluth. He founded WAGE-TV in Greenbay in 1954. There was a Jerome Still who owned WFPG in Atlantic City, New Jersey 1960 and 1961, perhaps the same man. as the primary share-holder of WFPG Inc. he acquired the station in 1956,

 

The interval between the book publishing dates is peculiar. Two books the first year, then none for 3 years, and then one for another two. The Lyman Bryson book does advertise the prior three titles but it's unlike them in other ways. The first three books analyze radio management, and radio programming. Bryson's book is a transcript from a series of talks on CBS from the series "Time For Reason."  The show ran for 27 weekly episodes airing Sunday afternoons from December 1946 to June 1947. Bryson went on to become a frequent guest on the radio game show Information, Please. 

Bryson had been a teacher at Columbia University, but he also moderated The American School of The Air, Invitation to Learning and from 1938 to 1946 he hosted the publish affairs program The Peoples Platform. In many ways it was the adult version of Youth Forum, assembling a panel of laypeople to discuss areas of national interest. Publishers Weekly wrote a review in 1948 in advance of it's February 19th release date.

Some mysteries persist. There was never a fifth book in the series and George W. Stewart seems to stop operating in the early 1950s. The latest books are in a new series, a "Cookery Library" with a series of specialized cook books on coffee and cheese and a random Bible Quiz. In 1951 he published a book about war propaganda and by all appearances, nothing after that.

TAB Books

Technical Author's Bureau Books was based in Blue Ridge Summit, PA on the Maryland border about halfway between Gettysburg, and Hagerstown. It's s small town, even today the population is just 1,089.  That's fewer people than TAB released titles. 

TAB was founded by Verne M. Ray and Malcolm Parks Jr. in 1964. Some sources report that Technical Author's Bureau became TAB Books Inc. in 1980 but use of the TAB logo precedes that by at least a decade. 

Their bibliography is a highly varied assortment of technical books ranging in size from pamphlets to large compendiums; ranging in topic from radio, to computing, electronics, aviation, and into pure engineering. Some books are from anonymous teams of magazine editors and other authors appear dozens of times. 

The TAB Books name appears on all of these titles alongside either the TAB logo, the G/L logo or the Foulsham-Tab  F/T logo. The G/L stands for Gernsback Library. Early editions of some G/L marked texts preserve the known TAB book numbering but do not bear the TAB Books like Ex. Rapid Radio Repair by G. Warren Heath and Oscilloscope Techniques by Alfred Haas. The overlap goes through at least book #83, Fun With Electricity in 1967.

In 1988 TAB acquired Highmark Publishing. It was was acquired by the McGraw-Hill Inc.in that same year and their release schedule fell off sharply. the latest release I've found was in 1997.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of titles. I starting working on a list, compiling by author from the books listed on the inside pages of other texts. The list ballooned to absurd proportions and I had to scale-back my ambitions for now. After the McGraw purchase and numbering seems to have stopped. You can find some of these titles in Google Books, and on the World Radio History site of course. [LINK]

TITLE	No.	AUTHOR	YEAR
Servicing Record Changers	59	Henry Mileaf	1956
Rapid TV Repair	60	G. Warren Heath	1956
Transistor Techniques	61	Radio Electronics Staff	1956
Transistor Circuits	63	Rufus Turner	1957
Elements of Tape Recorder Circuits	67	Herman Burstein & Henry Pollack	X
Electronic Hobbyist's Handbook	69	Rufus Turner	X
Electronic Puzzles And Games	70	Matthew Mandl	1958
Oscilloscope Techniques	72	Alfred Haas	1958
Model Radio Control	74	Edward L. Stafford	X
Transistors - Theory & Practice	75	Rufus Turner	X
Servicing Transistor Radios	76	Leonard D'Ario	X
Rapid Radio Repair	78	G. Warren Heath	1959
Designing and Building Hi-Fi Furniture	79	Jeff Markell	X
Fun with Electricity	83	Tom Kennedy Jr.	X
Installing Hi-Fi Systems	86	Jeff Markell & Jay Stanton	X
Transistor Projects	89	Radio Electronics Staff	X
Radio Control handbook	93	Howard McEntee	X
Transistors - Theory & Practice	94	Rufus Turner	X
How To Fix Transistor Radios & Printed Circuits	96	Leonard Lane	1959
Industrial Electronics	99	Tom Jaski	X
Basic Math Course for Electronics	100	Henry Jacobwitz	X
Practical TV Troubleshooting	102	Compiled by Gernsback Library	1957
Basic Radio Course	104	Paul Kenian	X
Basic TV Course	105	George Kravitz	X
Radio Servicing Made Easy	107	Leonard Lane	1961
The Oscilloscope	108	George Zwick	1963
Basic Transistor Course	111	Paul Rodget Kenian	1962
Learn Electronics By Building Easy-to-Build Projects	112	John Schroeder	1973
Getting Started With Transistors	116	Lou Garner	X
Electronics Data Handbook-Rev. 2nd Edition	118	Martin Clifford	X
TV Sweep Oscillators	119	X	X
Hi-Fi Troubles	120	Herman Burnstein	X
Advanced Radio Control	122	Edward L. Stafford	X
Color TV Repair	123	X	X
The Handbook of Electronic Tables	125	Martin Clifford	1965
Servicing AGC Circuits	126	X	X
Skill-Building Transistor Projects & Experiments	129	Lou Garner	X
Basic Oscillator Handbook	130	Norman Crowhurst	1966
Test Instruments for Electronics	131	Martin Clifford	X
Radio Control Manual 2nd Edition	135	Edward L. Stafford	X
Easy Way To Service Radio Receivers	429	Leo Sands	X
Amateur Radio Extra-Class License Study Guide	453	73 Magazine	X
VHF Ham radio Handbook	460	Edward G. MacKinnon	X
104 East Transistor Projects You Can Build	462	Robert M. Brown	X
6 East Home-IMprovement Projects	343	Steven Bolt	X
Electronic Hobbyist's IC Project Handbook	464	Robert M. Brown	X
Ham radio Projects For Novice & Technician	468	Bert Simon	X
Ham Radio Incentive Licensing Guide	469	Bert Simon	X
104 Simple One-Tube Projects	486	Robert M. Brown	X
Transistor Circuit Guidebook	470	Byron Wels	X
64 Hobby Projects for Home & Car	487	Robert M. Brown & Mark Olsen	1969
Semiconductors from A to Z	493	Phillip Dahlen	X
Audio Systems Handbook	494	Norman Crowhurst	1969
Tape Recording For Fun & Profit	497	Walter Salm	1969
CB Radio Operators Guide	499	Robert M. Brown	X
Working With Semiconductors	501	Albert C. Saunders	X
Zenith Color TV Service Manual - Vol. 1	502	Robert L. Goodman	X
How To Fix Transistor Radios & Printed Circuits	504	Leonard C. Lane	1969
Installing & Servicing Home Audio Systems	505	Jack Hobbs	X
How to Read Electronic Circuit Diagrams	510	Robert Brown & Paul Lawrence	X
Understanding Solid-State Circuits	513	Norman Crowhurst	1973
Philco Color TV Service Manual	522	Robert L. Goodman	X
Guide to Radio - TV Broadcast Engineering Practice	523	Edward L. Stafford	X
104 Easy Projects For The Electronics Gadgeteer	524	Robert M. Brown	1970
Amateur Radio Advanced Class License Study Guide	527	73 Magazine	X
Pulse & Switching Circuits	528	Jarvey Swearer	X
Handbook of Magnetic Recording	529	Finn Jorgensen	X
Basic Electronics Problems Solved	530	Donald Arnold Smith	X
Servicing Modern Hi-Fi Stereo Systems	534	Norman Crowhurst	X
General Electric Color TV Service Manual - Vol. 1	536	Robert L. Goodman	X
125 One Transistor Projects	537	Rufus Turner	X
Computer Circuits & How they Work	538	Byron Wels	X
Transistor Projects for Hobbyists & Students	542	Larry Steckler	X
TV Trouble Diagnosis Made Easy	544	X	1970
Electronic Musical Instruments	546	Norman Crowhurst	X
Zenith Color TV Service Manual—Vol. 2	562	Robert L. Goodman	X
Modern Radar: Theory, Operation and Maintenance	575	Edward L. Stafford	X
How to Use Color TV Test Instruments	577	Robert L. Goodman	X
Modern Radio Repair Techniques	580	Art Margolis	1971
199 Test & Alignment Procedures	593	Art Margolis	1972
199 Color TV Troubles and Solutions	595	Robert L. Goodman	1972
Basic Color Television Course	601	Stan Prentiss	1972
Japanese Monochrome TV Service Manual Repair	602	Charlie Buffington	X
How To Build Solid-State Audio Circuits	606	Mannie Horowitz	1972
Basic Electricity & Beginning Electronics	628	Martin Clifford	X
Aviation Electronics Handbook	631	Edward L. Stafford	X
Simplified TV Trouble Diagnosis	633	Robert L. Goodman	1973
Modern Electronics Math	655	Martin Clifford	X
Fm Stereo-Quad Receiver Servicing Manual	660	Joseph Carr	X
Understanding & Using the Oscilloscope	664	Clayton L Hallmark	X
Zenith Color TV Service Manual -Vol. 3	668	Robert L. Goodman	X
Electrical Wiring and Lighting for Home and Office	671	Edward L. Stafford	X
Understanding & Using the VOM & EVM	672	John Cunningham	1973
Professional Picture Framing for the Amateur	674	Jack & Barbara Wolf	1974
Pictorial Guide to CB Radio Installation and Repair	683	Forest H. Belt	X
TV Tuner Schematic / Servicing Manual - Vol. 1	696	Robert L. Goodman	X
Electronic Measurements Simplified	702	Clayton L Hallmark	1973
Indexed Guide to Modern Electronic Circuits	706	Robert L. Goodman	X
Radio astronomy For the Amateur	714	David L Heiserman	X
Complete Guide to Outboard Motor Service and Repair	727	Paul Dempsey	X
The Complete FM 2-Way Radio Handbook	735	Clayton L Hallmark	1974
Vintage Airline Color TV Service Manual	741	Tab Editorial Staff	1975
Color TV Case Histories Illustrated	746	Robert L. Goodman	X
The Complete Auto Electric handbook	748	X	X
Auto Electronics Simplified	749	X	X
4 Channel Stereo From Source To Sound	756	X	1973
Troubleshooting with the Dual-Trace Scope	772	Robert L. Goodman	X
How to Make Jewelry Like a Pro	775	X	X
Op Amp Circuit Design & Applications	787	Joseph Carr	X
Microelectronics	794	X	X
Master Handbook of HAM Radio Circuits	801	Editors of 73 Magazine	1977
Flying Model Airplanes and Helicopters by Radio Control	825	Edward L. Stafford	X
Impedance	829	Rufus P. Turner	1976
The Complete Broadcast Antenna Handbook	833	John E. Cunningham	X
Zenith Color TV Service Manual - Vol. 4	838	Robert L. Goodman	X
Build Your Own Working Robot	841	David L Heiserman	X
CB Radio Schematic / Servicing Manual Vol 4.	862	X
Microphones - How They Work & How to Use Them	875	Martin Clifford	X
Color TV Case Histories Illustrated: Photo Guide to Troubles/Cures - Vol. 2	876	Robert L. Goodman	X
General Electric Color TV Service Manual—Vol.3	879	Robert L. Goodman	X
Do-It-Yourselfer's guide to chainsaw use & Repair	892	Charles Self	1977
CET License Handbook - 2nd Ed.	901	Joseph Carr	1976
Concrete & Masonry	902	Tab Books	X
How To Build Metal/Treasure Locators	909	Robert J. Traister	X
Servicing Zenith TV Modules	918	Robert L. Goodman	X
Practical Electrical Installation Repair & Rewiring	925	John E. Traister	1979
Servicing Medical & Bioelectric Equipment	930	Joseph Carr	X
Handbook of Marine Electronic and Electrical Systems	939	Edward L. Stafford	X
Mimeograph Operation, Maintenance and Repair	941	Howard Hutchinson	X
CBers Manual of SSB	959	Edward L. Stafford	X
Microwave Oven Service & Repair	962	Clayton Hallmark	1977
CBers Handy Manual of Base Stations	969	Edward L. Stafford	X
Miniprocessors: From Calculators to Computers	971	David L Heiserman	X
TV Tuner Schematic/Servicing Manual - Vol. 2	979	Robert L. Goodman	X
The Master Handbook of Still & Movie Titling for Amateur & Professional	1001	Elinor Stecker-Orel	1979
The Upholsterer's Bible	1004	Percy W. Blandford	1978
How To Repair Movie & Slide Projectors	1011	Robert Villastrigo	1978
How to Design and Build Electronic Instrumentation	1012	Joseph Carr	X
How to Repair Video Games	1028	Robert L. Goodman	X
How To Produce Slide Shows & Movies With Sound	1031	X	X
Hot To make Old Time Photos	1039	John McDonald & Melba Smith Cole	1981
101 Quality Wooden Toys You Can Make	1046	Hugh & Judith Ryan	1980
How to Install Everything Electronic in Cars, Boats, Planes Trucks & RVs	1056	X	X
Computerist's Handy Databook/Dictionary	1069	X	X
The Complete Handbook of Robotics	1071	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
Radio Control Handbook - 4th Edition	1093	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
Digital Interfacing With An Analog World	1070	Joseph Carr	1978
How To Build Your Own Vacation Home	1074	Charles R. Self	1978
How To Build Your Own Log Home & Cabin From Scratch	1081	S. Blackwell Duncan	1978
HTV Field & Bench Servicer's Handbook	1082	John Spillane	1979
All About Telephones	1097	Van Waterford	1978
How To Take Great Great Sports Action Photos	1098	X	X
How To Design & Build Your Own Custom TV Games	1101	David L Heiserman	1978
How to Cast Small Metal & Rubber Parts	1105	William A. Cannon	1979
Computerist's Handy Manual	1107	Clayton L. Hallmark	1979
Lasers, The Light Fantastic	1108	Clayton L. Hallmark	X
How to Make Your Own Lamps and Lampshades	1112	Bruce Mitton	X
77 Furniture Projects You Can Build	1122	Editors of Family Handyman	1980
The Complete Bed Building Book	1124	HyDee Small	1979
Building Fiberglass Ship Models From Scratch	1127	Richard V. Humphrey	1981
The Complete Handbook of Leathercrafting	1129	Jane E. Garnes	1981
Radio Control Manual - Systems, Circuits, Construction	1135	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
How To Build Your Own Working Robot Pet	1141	Frank DeCosta	1981
How To Repair Old-Time Radios	1148	Clayton L. Hallmark	X
The Complete Handbook of Centrifugal Casting	1153	Philip Romanoff	1980
Practical Troubleshooting with the Modern Oscilloscope	1162	Robert L. Goodman	X
The Complete Handbook of Sewiong Machine Repair	1163	Howard Hutchinson	X
77 Weekend Kitchen Projects You can Make	1165	X	X
Model Radio Control-3rd Edition	1174	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
The Complete Handbook of Lampglass Art	1175	Nadine H. Roberts	X
Practical Troubleshooting with Modern Electronic Test Instruments	1177	Robert L. Goodman	X
Troubleshooting Microprocessors & Digital Logic	1183	Robert L. Goodman	1980
The Master Guide to Electronic Circuits	1184	Thomas M. Adams	1984
The Master IC Cookbook	1199	Clayton L. Hallmark	1980
The Complete Microcomputer Systems Handbook	1201	Edward L. Stafford	1979
Basic Drafting	1202	Martin Clifford	X
Make Your Own Gemstone Jewelry	1208	X	X
44 Weekend Plastic Projects You can Make	1215	X	1081
How To Troubleshoot & Repair Electronic Circuits	1218	Robert L. Goodman	1981
Advanced Radio Control, Including Rockets & Robots - 2nd Edition	1222	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
Master Handbook of Electronic Tables & Formulas 3rd Ed.	1225	Martin Clifford	1980
Practical Knots & Ropework	1237	Percy Blandford	1980
Electrical Wiring Handbook	1245	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
Playing the Stock and Bond Markets with Your Personal Computer	1251	L.R. Schmeltz	1981
234 Wooden Wall Decoration Projects	1252	E. R. Huckleberry	1981
Giant Handbook of 222 Weekend Electronics Projects	1265	Raymond A. Collins	1981
How To Build, Maintain, and Renovate Your Home	1287	Edward L Stafford Jr.	X
99 Fun-To-Make Electronics Projects	1288	Cy Tymony	1981
Giant Handbook of Electronic Circuits	1300	Raymond A. Collins	1980
The Master Craftsman's Illustrated Woodworking Manual - With Projects	1315	Lewis H. Hodges	1981
The Second Book of Electronics Projects	1317	John E. Traister	1981
The Typewriter Repair Manual	1336	Howard Hutchinson	1981
49 Easy-To-Build Electronic Projects	1337	Robert M. Brown & Tom Kneitel	X
101 Easy Test Instrument Projects	1339	Robert M. Brown & Tom Kneitel	X
49 More easy-To-Build Electronics Projects	1347	Robert M. Brown & Tom Kneitel	1981
The Giant Book Of Hobby Projects	1359	Robert E. Ostander	1982
The Giant Book of Electronic Projects	1367	Editors of 73 Magazine	1982
Radio Communications Receivers	1391	Cornell Drentea	1982
Handbook of Advanced Robotics	1421	Edward L. Stafford	1982
Build a Personal Earth Station For Worldwide Satellite TV Reception	1409	Robert Traister	1982
Building Free-Form Furniture	1440	Charles W. Durney	1982
The Complete Handbook of Woodworking Tools and Hardware	1484	Charles Self	1983
Electronic Databook	1538	Rudolf Graf	1988
Sign Carving	1601	Garrit D. Lydecker	1984
The Homesteader's Manual	1629	Editors of Farmstead Magazine	1983
ABCs of Building Model Railroad Cars	1635	Wayne & Mary Cay Wesolowski	1985
Build-It Book of Digital Clocks	1683	Robert Haviland	1986
The Countryside Book of Farming Lore	1952	The Editors of Countryside Magazine	1985
Working with Acrylic Plastics	1959	Jack Wiley	1986
Electronics Math	1962	R. Jesse Phagan	1986
Car Design: Structure and Architecture	2104	Jan P. Norbye	1984
The Learjet	2246	Joe Christy	1979
How To Take Great Photos From Airplanes	2251	Frank Kingston Smith	1979
Low-Horsepower Fun Aircraft You Can Build	2267	Don Dwiggins	1980
Cold Weather Flying	2273	Jeff Griffin	1979
Maintenance/Overhaul Guide to Lycoming Aircraft Engines	2277	Joe Christy	1979
The Complete Guide to Aviation Photography	2281	Peter M. Bowers	X
The Complete Guide to Single-Engine Mooneys	2283	Paul Garrison	1980
Flying As It Was True Stories From Aviation’s Past	2403	Gerry A. Casey	1987
The Complete Shortwave Listener's Handbook	2655	Hank Bennett, Harry L. Helms, David Hardy	1986
Home Butchering and Meat Preservation	2713	Geeta Dardick	1986
The Packet Radio Handbook	2722	Jonathan L Mayo	1987
Principles and Practice of Impedance	2725	Rufus P. Turner &  Stan Gibilisco	1987
62 Home Remote Control and Automation Projects	2735	Delton T. Horn	1986
Practical Blacksmithing and Metalworking	2894	Percy Blandford	X
Experiments with EPROMs	2962	Dave Prochnow	1988
50 Powerful Printed Circuit Board Projects	2972	Dave Prochnow	1988

Ralph Milne Farley

The science fiction writer Ralph Milne Farley was actually Roger Sherman Hoar. Ralph was a pseudonym for a  sitting state senator and assistant Attorney General of the state of Massachusetts. His fiction was often patterned after Edgar Rice Burroughs works. Many of his novels like The Radio Flyers,  The Radio Man, and The Radio Gun-Runners were first published in the pulp magazine Argosy, in serial form. What drove a mild-mannered assistant Attorney General to write pulp sci-fi?  No one knows.

Hoar had a thing about radio. If you take a look at his bibliography it's quite obvious (see below) His first book The Radio Man had radio as a key plot device. (pun unintentional)  He and science fiction had a small Renaissance in the late 1940s and his early serial works came into back print. That brief window is what elevated him above the rest of the pulp magazine writers and among peers like Robert Bloch, Gordon Dickson and Olaf Stapledon. It's not exactly H.G. Wells, or Bradbury but we must be realistic.

The Radio Man, 1924 - Fantasy Publishing 
The Radio Beasts, 1925 -  Ace Books
The Radio Planet, 1926 -  Ace Books 
The Radio Flyers, 1929 -  Rialto
The Radio Gun-Runners - 1930 - Rialto
The Radio Menace, 1930- Rialto
The Radio War, 1932 - Rialto
The Radio man Returns, 1939 - Argosy
The Radio Minds of Mars, 1954 - Spaceway

So about that radio fixation. You have to remember that Hoar was born in 1887, so he was a teenager in the early years of experimental radio;  when it seemed like the realm of mad scientists come to life. He wrote his first book the same year KDKA was licensed. So to him radio was as sci-fi as flying saucers. Critic Den Valdron, author of the sci-fi mag ERBzine noticed his radio obsession as well.

"A few brief comments are worth making over Farley's obsessions with Radio, and it is damned near an obsession. In the Radio Man, a radio engineer manages to accidentally teleport himself with a radio broadcaster to another planet where the beings all use radio instead of sound. He manages to communicate with them, with his own radio device. In the Radio Planet, he winds up on another continent and is so obsessed with radio that he builds an entire technological infrastructure in order to construct a radio to talk to his wife... Radio appears in several more titles. So Farley's signature was 'Radio'...  But why?"

After and the republishing hoopla, Ralph Milne Farley wrote a new book, his last one The Radio Minds of Mars, which was published in 1954. He died in 1963 before the rest of his bibliography was re-issued. He hadn't written any non-fiction since 1934.

A Radio for Leibowitz

"The similar tidbits in the museum were connected together too—not in the form of a necklace, but as a complex and rather disorderly maze in the bottom of a small metal box, exhibited as: "Radio Chassis: Application Uncertain."

 Science and Science Fiction have a long history together. Science fiction inspires science, and vice versa. My radio-geek readers are most-often radio engineers, hams, and DJs; the target audience of sci-fi. But on the off chance you have not read this book I'll recommend it. Before A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller had published only short stories, and it was the only novel he published in his own lifetime.

A Canticle for Liebowitz was first published in 1959 a three part book that was first written as three novelettes. The book remains in those three parts but heavily re-written to preserve continuity to integrate the three parts into a single novel. But it keeps that short-form momentum built into the often dense language loaded with Gothic religious metaphors and Latinate phrases... adding a certain gravitas often missing in hack sci-fi books or even full-bore post-apocalyptic science fiction novels.

"In the lower right hand corner was a printed rectangle containing, in simple block letters, various dates, "patent numbers," reference numbers, and names. His eye traveled down the list until it encountered: "CIRCUIT DESIGN BY: Leibowitz, I.E." 

Without giving away too much of the plot I'll first explain that Isaac Edward Leibowitz was an electrical engineer who existed in the 20th century in the time of a nuclear apocalypse. Half a millennia later, he is beatified and eventually declared a Saint. His Monks many hundreds of years later eventually devise an arc light based on his memorabilia. Many editions cover art fixate on the religious side of the story, some also depict the numerous parts that revolve around electrical drawings, and apparatus. This private edition [LINK] was hand-bound with a circuit-inspired design. More here.

Cavalry Radio School

 Cavalry School in Fort Riley Kansas didn't exactly have a radio school. But they did have a class in radio theory. This was no cloistered christian college. This was a United States Army Cavalry School. In 1887, the U.S. Congress appropriated $200,000 to found this military academy. Five years later it was in operation. The Fort Riley post hospital, built in 1855, was remodeled in 1890 and became the headquarters and home for the school.  But the best part is that in 1957, the former home of the Cavalry School, became the U.S. Cavalry Museum.

It was called the Mounted Service School beginning in 1907 and until World War I when it resumed the name cavalry School. This continued until 1946,when the Army ended all training and educational programs dealing with equine-mounted troops. After 1950, it continued as the Army General School until May 1955.  It is currently the headquarters for the U.S. 1st Infantry Division. The school did produce some DJs notably Jerry Boulding. But might be better known for training the Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet (RB&L) which went to Korea in 1951. They were a propaganda unit.

More interesting to you is probably that I  scanned all 87 pages of their Basic Radio Theory text book. This book was used in the waning days of WWII at a military school that would cease teaching within a decade. Now it's a fascinating artifact. The book is typed and mimeographed, and hand illustrated. It's alternately a science text and how-to manual. It's worth the read.

Download all 72 MB

HERE

 

Letters of a Radio Engineer to his Son

There was once a book titled Letters of a Radio Engineer to his Son, written by John Mills and first published in 1922, published by Harcourt. You can download it free here, courtesy of the quality literary wonks at Gutenberg.org. It was never printed again commercially, though modern public-domain trawlers do still reprint the book today. It's not a legitimate father-son book. Instead its more of a radio hobbyist instructional written from that point of view. Nonetheless it's rare as hell so we're lucky to find even the digital copy.

Born in 1880, John Mills worked in the Engineering Department of Western Electric and also authored three other science texts Radio-Communication Theory and Methods, Electronics Today and Tomorrow, The Realities of Modern Science, Through Electrical Eyes and their use in Communication, The Engineer in Society, Industrial Research and its Opportunities, and Within the Atom. Actually there probably are more, but it's a common name, those are just the ones I am certain of. Mills generated a large number of patents for Western Electric including some early two-way transmission technology. He was a member of the IEEE, and a long time radio man. How long?  He was on hand in 1915 in Arlington when the first Naval order was sent by Wireless. [Source] In his writings he  proves to be shockingly progressive, a man of science and not politics. I'll quote from The Realities of Modern Science.

"The illustration in question indicates well the manner by which science grows, that is, by accretions or contributions. These have been made in the history of science by many men whose names have long been forgotten or, as in the case of some of the earliest discoverers, by men who probably had no names at all. Such contributions have been made by men of all races and nationalities. In the case of radio-telegraphy it is to be recalled that Maxwell was a Scot, Hertz a German, and Marconi an Italian."

He was originally from the south side of Chicago, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 190. He earned his Master's Degree in Physics from the University of Nebraska in 1904. Mills became a teacher and lectured students at Case Western, and Colorado College. While at Bell he designed the Bell Telephone exhibits at the world's fairs in Chicago, San Diego, Dallas, San Francisco and New York. By about 1925 he was working as the Director of Publications at Bell Telephone Laboratories. He worked in that position for another 20 years before retiring. He became a student counselor at the California Institute of Technology until his death in 1948. 

Howard W. Sams

SAMS Publishing was founded in 1946 by Howard W. Sams. In the beginning they mostly published radio schematics and repair manuals.Today they do a lot of self-teach software and computer books. A of chang lot happened in between then and now. Ironically, founder Sams was not a radio man, not even an engineer.

He was born in 1897. He studied law but I find no record of him earning a degree or what institution he attended. He went into sales, and worked at Goodyear, General Battery and PR Mallory. More here.  At Mallory he handled sales literature and got involved with the technical instructions. At Mallory he developed the"Radio Service Encyclopedia" and the "MYE Technical Journal."their success got him promoted bu tit also gave him the idea he could strike out on his own. In 1946 he founded Howard W. Sams & Company Inc.  His first idea was his Photofact folder series which used large clear images of the devices and big fold-out schematics to explain maintenance. they were well-formatted and wasy to use. It was very popular and became an industry standard. More here.

There are two versions of how his publishing company and  ITT became entangled. The school claims on their website that in 1966 The ITT Technical Institute was bought by Sams. The school had been founded in 1935 as the Acme School of Die Design. Basically that Sams bought an existing school. Other books record that Sams opened Sams Technical Institute in Indianapolis in 1963, then Sams sold out to the  New York-based ITT Corp, which included  ITT Technical Institute. I find this second version more plausible. But the first version isn't impossible. the Culver Citizen Newspaper records that profits were up 37% in 1961 at Sams. It was a healthy business.

For what it's worth the Sams site says it was acquired by ITT in 1967. Then in 1985,  ITT sold its publishing division to Macmillan. In 1987, Macmillan was acquired by Robert Maxwell who split Sam's into three divisions, transferring the computer book division into what later became Macmillan Computer Publishing. Maxwell was a British media magnate who later was found to be stealing from hsi company's pensions to fund his luxury yacht lifestyle. He liquidated everything else, finally selling the Sams name in 1990 to two former Sams' executives, Richard Hauser and Damon Davis who used some venture capital money. In 1995 Davis and Hauser sold it all to Bell Atlantic.Bell Atlantic held onto it for 5 years then sold the entire Howard W. Sams Company to a California dot com, eCatalogs. Damon Davis swooped in and bought just Photofacts from eCatalogs, he was later forced to sell it to AGS Capital (more VC weasels) under an unscrupulous non-compete clause.  Howard W. Sams died in 1974, before ITT sold off his publishing company.

BOOK WEEK: Radio's Golden Years

The book Radio's Golden Years: The Encyclopedia Of Radio Programs 1930-1960 was written by Vincent Terrace in 1981. The book includes the cast, and crew and air dates of virtually every radio program from the years listed. That works out to over 1,500 radio programs. As a reference book it's short on adjectives, listing sometimes only the type of program, host, length, network and year it aired. But there are numerous programs for which this is the only source of information whatsoever. It's a shame that the hardback printing by A.S Barnes & Company was so shoddy. Every copy of the book I've found has a dried out and split binding. I've re-glued my own copy several times.

Author Vincent Terrace is not a college professor, though he does have a  BFA from New York Institute of Technology.  He also wrote the Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 Through 2010, and a number of other media reference books. It was while doing research for those earlier books those that he discovered a basic lack of reference material on OTR programs. He's still alive and active today and serves as the Television Historian at McFarland Publishers. He's even on Linkedin.

BOOK WEEK: Don't Touch That Dial!

J. Fred MacDonald published Don't Touch That Dial! Radio Programming In American Life From 1920 To 1960 in 1979.It's a long title so I'll be truncating it from here on in. This book is referred to less by my other reference books and seems to overlap less as well. I am as often surprised what I find in it by what I don't find in it. It is not a reference book. It's just really detailed in in it's narrative and is built on a lot of original research. His section on Westerns is more detailed than anything I've found elsewhere. He also gets in to advertising and ratings in a way that other books completely skipped.

Author MacDonald was a professor of history at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He retired in 2002. He also was the curator of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. [Side note: Northeastern Illinois University is home to 88.3 WZRD.] Don't Touch That Dial! is just one of his 6 published books, not counting his e-books. (I'd really need to get a few more of them.) He's also been published in Phylon, Popular Music and Society and some educational mags. Did I mention his blog?  Prof. MacDonald made this post easier to research by maintaining his own personal domain here.

BOOK WEEK: Historical Dictionary Of Old Time Radio

 The Historical Dictionary Of Old Time Radio was written and compiled by Robert C. Reineher and Jon D. Swartz in 2008. They also wrote the Handbook of Old-Time Radio: A Comprehensive Guide to Golden Age Radio Listening and Collecting which is an equally fine book, I just don't happen to own it yet. They also contributed to the book Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound, Volume 1, and The Routledge Guide To Music Technology. It must be nice to be a college professor and have those publishing connections...

This book was published more recently than many of my other go-to books but it stands on its own. It covers old time radio programs and staff from 1926 to 1960 very broadly. So among it's short comings it's pretty obvious that it doesn't go into a whole lot of detail on any of it's entries. But at the same time It casts such a wide net that it sometime sis the only book which provides me with any information at all. For that reason it sits beside other most-favored books on the reference shelf.

Robert C. Reinehr is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology, Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX.  He retired in 1999. It's no coincidence that Jon D. Swartz is a psychologist and a former dean for Libraries and Learning Resources at the same university. In 1990 Swartz became the Chief of Psychological Services, Central Counties Center for Mental Health-Mental Retardation in Temple, TX. He too retired in 1999. No doubt with more research to do and more books to write together. Keep at it gentlemen.

BOOK WEEK: The Deejays

The book The Deejays by Arnold Passman was first published in 1971. I own it in hardback and my copy is a former property of a library complete with tape parks, tears and missing pages. This single book has probably led to most blog posts than any other. It's a radio history from 1911 to about 1970 told as a narrative about DJs and radio programming as vectors of cultural change. Everyone knows what Alan Freed did for Rock n' Roll but there are thousands of lesser figures who also contributed to incremental change. It is a kind of book that no one else has ever tried to write and honestly, The Deejays is so thorough there isn't much need.

Billboard magazine raved over the book. Reviewer Claude Hall wrote: "The book is must reading for everyone in radio. Record Promotion men and those men who've been closely associated with radio over the years will find the book fascinating too." Passman has been quoted in probably hundreds of other music industry books. He even appears in the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

What's most interesting is that the author, Arnold Passman, isn't even a radio man. He was a staff writer for playboy and Scanlaris  magazine. He's also been a freelance writer and a publicist. I wish I knew more about him, but from the text I'd assume he was a rock fan. The book has been lightly criticized for ignoring country radio and soul, to focus on rock n roll but for a book covering multiple decades I think it's as comprehensive as can be expected.  The Deejays has come back into print this year in a digital edition with a new afterward by Passman.

BOOK WEEK: The Airwaves Of New York

This week I am dedicating to just some of the books I refer to most frequently in my research. Some of these are reference books, others are history books, but they are only the most important and frequently used books in my radio library. Every book I write about in BOOK WEEK is a must-own, but among them all this one comes first. Today I'd like to start with the one that is certainly the most important, Airwaves Of New York by Bill Jaker, Frank Sulek and Peter Kanze.

Airwaves Of New York was first printed in 1998 this book catalogs the complete histories of 156 AM radio station sin the New York metro from 1921 to 1996. I go back to this book more than any other because it covers the biggest radio market and it does so in canonical thoroughness. The book desperately needs an FM-band sequel. Actually Scott Fybush was collaborating on just such a book with Kanze and Sulek. Sulek is now deceased so I presume it's just him and Kanze now. More here. Knowing Fybush it'll be worth the wait. In the bibliography you'll find other favorites of mine, both The Golden Web and A Tower In Babel by Erik Barnouw are there but also The Deejays by Arnold Passman. Much of the rest is also on my wish-list.

Author Bill Jaker is a producer at 89.3 WSKG up in Binghamton, NY. He appears innumerable times in the thanks lists of other radio history books. Frank Sulek is a radio producer for the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. Peter Kanze was the PD over at  88.1 WARY at Westchester Community College. He's known widely as a collector of radio airchecks, and as a co-producer of  the BBC/Billboard series Twenty-five Years of Rock. He has a radio resume as long as my arm. There's a nice profile here.

WOR-AM: Best-Seller

It's a bookmark, a promotional bookmark. People have been putting advertisements on bookmarks for a century now, so there's nothign new about it in that respect. But this is the first example I've seen in a wide universe of ridiculous radio tchotchkes of a radio station branded bookmark.

The image "Arie" is the zodiac sign for the ram. the credit and text is in Italian "desegni di A. Moroni" means designed by A. Moroni.  I sort of wonder if that's an inside joke. But A Moroni might be Attilio Moroni, and he died in 1986. The artist seems immaterial , the question is the tie-in.

Was there a book review program or segment on WOR-AM?  they have a podcast called the "Book report" but I am under the impression currently that it does not air. Maybe it was a simple pun on "best-seller."  they may have just had a sales guy with a book schtik.

The WOR-TV tower was built in 1949, the calls changed with ownership in 1987 to WWOR-TV.The intersection of those two dates leads me to beleive that this was made in the early 1980s. The paper in good shape with no crumbling or oxidization so I'd guess it's of relatively recent vintage.