Find That Radio Dial (Part 5)

 

This is an interesting Superhet table radio made by Silvertone. They were a Sears & Roebuck company, and are still based in Chicago today. It's a Silvertone model 4769 made in 1937. This particular model could tune both AM and two shortwave bands. The preset buttons are laid out in a ring, like an old phone with the tuner dial in the center. They called it a "Teledial."  [SOURCE]  I did fine a thread where someone tried to restore one. That quirky mechanism appears to be a challenge to disassemble and reassemble, with different pulleys turning clockwise and counterclockwise. [SOURCE] 

This dial has WEEI, WHDH, WORL, WCOP , WNAC, and WAAB; all metro-area Boston stations, so there's little mystery about location. This is set also closely matches an ad in the 1937 Radio Yearbook for the most popular Boston radio stations. (below) It lists WNAC, WEEI, WBZ, WAAB, WHDH, WMEX, WCOP, and WORL in that order. (Of course, that's a list of only local stations. )  But the omission of WMEX and WBZ from the pre-sets is at the least, interesting. Perhaps a reception issue, or just personal taste. These sets usually came from the dealer with some buttons already set for demonstration purposes. Then there were perforated tags the owner might add. This owner may not have bothered. This radio has 4 unlabeled.

Broadcasting Yearbook 1937

 WEEI is a well known Boston station, operating today on 850, but were on 830 kHz from 1929 to 1941, when this radio was new. However, the station today that broadcasts as WEEI broadcast as WHDH from 1929 until 1994; so this is a actually different button on that same dial. That WEEI, a Hubbard station and CBS affiliate, broadcast at 5,000 watts daytime, and 1,000 at night from 590 kHz.  590 in Boston today is WEZE; a religious talker. More here.

 WHDH broadcast from 850 kHz, and was owned by Matheson Radio Co. I know I wrote 830 above but 850 is what's in the Radio yearbook. It broadcast out of the Hotel Touraine from 1933 to at least 1939. The building was on the corner of Boylston St. and Tremont near the Boston Common. Built in 1897, the Jacobethan building even contained a library and in the 1950s, was the HQ of the local Communist party. It is still standing today but was converted to apartments in 1966. 

WORL broadcast from the Myles Standish Hotel. That building is also called Myles Standish Hall, and is located at 610 Beacon St. In 1949, Boston University bought the building and converted it into a dorms. They renovated again in 2018 and re-named it Wituwamat Memorial Hall. 

WCOP broadcast on 1120 from the Copley Plaza Hotel. The station changed calls from WMFH in 1935. Owned by the Massachusetts Broadcasting Corp on paper it was operated by it's founder, Joseph Kirby. He died in 11937 and it was sold by his estate to Arde Bulova. Under NARBA it moved to 1150 kHz in 1941. I think they began broadcasting the Hayloft Jamboree in 1948. Today this is WWDJ still on that frequency but broadcasting religious blather.

WNAC was a member of both NBC-Red and the Yankee network. Their studios were at 21 Brookline ave. But it shared a transmitter site with WAAB in Quincy, MA. A year later Congress began an investigation of "duopoly" stations and John Shepard had to divest. Seems quaint with the crazy monopolies allowed to run wild today. 

 WAAB was both a member of both the Mutual and Colonial networks. It broadcast on 1410 at 500 watts; another occupant of 21 Brookline Ave. It was the home of the Colonial network, which itself carried some Mutual programming. Owner John Shepard operated the Yankee network out of WNAC. Shepard had bought the station in 1931 and changed it's calls from WLEX. Mayflower Broadcasting made an attempt in 1938 to take WAAB from Shepard, but in 1941 he won in a re-hearing with the FCC.

But back to the Silvertone model 4769. It appears to have been popular in the 1930s, or maybe that's survivorship bias. Maybe they're just popular with collectors. A quick web search finds dozens of mostly non-working dust collectors.  

 

This one (above) has WJR, WLW, WKJR, KDKA, WWJ, WJAS, WWSW?, and WKBN? This is a mix of Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and Detroit stations. This has to be someone in a rural area of Ohio, but that's hard to narrow down without a local station. 

WABC, WCAP, WBRB, WMCA, WIP, WEAB, WOR, WJZ, and KYW. This one is certainly in New Jersey, receiveing both New York and Philadelphia metro stations. WBRB, being the only local one of the bunch. 
 

 

 

Find that Philco

 

Are these all Philcos? No. I just like the alliteration. This dial lists KOA, KGIR and all the other buttons are knocked out. That's not a lot to work with. 850 KOA-AM signed on in 1924. They signed on as a 5,000 watt station and in 1927 increased to 12,500 watts, becoming an NBC affiliate in 1929. The station was so ubiquitous in that era it does not narrow the date range. 

Today the KGIR-AM calls reside in Cape Girardeau, MO. But back in the 1930s, KGIR was a 500 watt station in Butte, MT on 1360. With only 500 watts of power, I think that puts our radio somewhere between Butte and Cody, WY. They're about 500 miles from Denver, but surely able to receive a clear channel station in that era.  The station signed on in 1929 and changed its call letters to KXLF in 1946 which book ends our date range.

Here we have a more to work with, though the labels have slid around unhelpfully: KMPG?, KOH, KGMB, KGKB, KROV, and KICA. But what a weird selection. 590 KGMB I can hardly believe as it's was based in Honolulu. It also can't be KGME-AM in Phoenix, AZ. It signed on in 1940 on 1200, as KPHO only picking up the KGME call letters in 2000. I hope I'm misreading that one. KROV does not exist that I'm aware of. I think that could be KRGV in Oroville, CA but more likely 690 KROW in Oakland, CA which used those calls from 1936 until 1964 before it changed to KABL.  More here. 

980 KICA-AM was most recently a farm station in Clovis, NM. The calls are not cut off. But earlier it was a TV station with the same calls in the same city. It was on 1240 back in the 1940s, and 1370 in 1936. This is highly unlikely with it's distance from the other bay area stations, but I have no other plausible matches. 

630 KOH-AM was not in LA, it was in Reno, NV from 1928-1994 when it became KRCV-AM. The stick on 780 in Reno is KKOH, it borrows the brand name but is not otherwise related. The original KOH, now KPLY is known the oldest radio station in Nevada. 

The first calls are KMP-something. Station 710 KMPC-AM was in Los Angeles. More here. The calls have moved around and currently broadcast Radio Korea on 1540 in LA. The original station first signed on as KRLO in 1927 and changed calls to KMPC in 1930 and held the calls for 67 years. Gene Autry owned KMPC in the 1950s. It aged with it's audience and was Adult Standards and talk radio in the 1980s.  

Just one more. This one is fun with the vertical station levers instead of push buttons. I see KGFW, KFAB, KMMJ, WGN, and WOW.  KGFW, is another heritage station, founded in 1927in Ravenna, NE. The station moved to Kearney in 1931 where is remains today on 1340. KFAB is even older and first signed on as KFRR in 1924. It moved to 770 in 1928. 

KMMJ is almost as old, having been founded in 1925 in Clay Center, NE. Noe how near Kearney that is.  I think 720 WGN-AM out of Chicago is an outlier, received only because it's a clear channel station.  Likewise 590 WOW has been on air for 100 years but never more than 5,000 watts. I think this radio sat between Omaha and Grand Island. This set of stations is pretty consistent. 

Upstate PA Radio Dial

I found this Radio at an antique shop south but failed to record the make and model. But the call letters present the usual game of guess-where-this-radio-is from. The call signs are as follows:

• 560 -  WFIL-AM - Philadelphia, PA
• 660 -  WEAF-AM - New York, NY
• 770 -  WJZ-AM - New York, NY
• 830 -  WEEU-AM - Reading, PA
• 1060 - KYW-AM - Philadelphia, PA
• 1210 - WCAU-AM - Philadelphia, PA
• 1340 - WRAW-AM- Reading, PA

Now I have to acknowledge that KYW used to be on 1020 in Chicago prior to 1934, and that today the WJZ-AM callsign is on 1300 AM in Baltimore. While WFIL and KYW have remained in Philly with the same calls, stability is no good for this exercise. The WEAF-AM calls now reside on 1130 AM in Camden, South Carolina. But we can safely ignore that geographic outlier.

The two local Reading stations certainly place this radio in Reading, PA area living room. WRAW signed on in 1922 at 1260, but only at 100 watts. It didn't get a bump up to 250 watts until the 1950s on 1310, then moved to 1340 in the 1960s. It was WKAP  from 2007 to February 2014 but returned to it's heritage calls that Spring.

WCAU signed on in 1922 as well, at 250 watts. They stuck with those call letters for 68 years becoming WOGL in 1990 flipping to oldies. They became WGMP in 1994 trying out sports talk, the just plain talk as WPTS 2 years later, 30 days after that they changed it again to WPHT which has endured since. Their stability again tells us very little. 

WJZ started in Newark, NJ in 1921 and moved to New York in 1923 when it was sold to RCA. In 1927 it became the flagship of the NBC blue network. It became WABC in 1953 which helps to date this radio dial.  WEAF also signed on in 1922, but those calls changed to WNBC in 1946 following the Blue Network divestiture. So this radio must predate that even change.

So the KYW timeline tells us that the radio must post date 1934, and WEAF, that it must pre-date 1946. Surprisingly it must have included WRAW while it was still at 100 watts. It's not a very tight range but it's not what you know, it's what you can prove.

Scans of radio dials

I found a set of scans of radio dials from old radios. The designs are very interesting to see freestanding without the rest of the radio wrapped around it. Well worth a look.
http://www.vcomp.co.uk/dials/dial_glass.htm