I've been getting into old radio programs and what not. There's a website called OTRCAT or Old Time Radio Catalog that sells all kinds of radio shows. I've bought all the Amos & Andys, Father Coughlin sermons and what not. I've always been interested in radio so it fascinates me to hear all this old stuff like Major Bowes and Renfro Valley Gathering. I have some Tokyo Rose broadcasts, Axis Sally, and some Nazi jazz band called "Charlie & his Orchestra." It's very well played and arranged jazz playing old standards like "Hold Tight" and "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon" but with pro-Nazi and anticommunist lyrics. These are great historical documents and I'm glad someone has preserved it and made it available to the public. The OTRCAT CDs are not audio but are packed with MP3s. A single disc holds 20 to 40 hours worth of stuff but you can only play on a computer or download the files onto an MP3-player. Each disc is only $5.00 and well worth it.

So I was out at an antique store today and came across an old wooden radio. I could tell from the design that it was 1920s. There was a big ol' loudspeaker in the same display case and they were willing to part with both for under $150 so I thought what the hell and bought both. When I got home, I looked it up on the internet and found that both the speaker and the radio went together. It's an RCA Radiola 18 with an Model 100-A speaker. Even the power cords and plugs are original. Here is a good photo of both radio and speaker. I'm amazed how good a condition both are in:

http://www.antiqueradios.com/gallery/d/48293-2/DSC01700.jpg

If you flip open the top lid, you can see the tubes and innards:

http://www.wshu.org/oldradio/2005/radiopics/radiola18b.jpg

It has 7 tubes and two chassis. One chassis is for the operation of the radio and uses 6 of the tubes. The other chassis is the power source. The radio has TWO power cords because of the different voltages used between the US and Europe. There was also a battery-powered model of this radio but the batteries were massive and expensive but in the 1920s not a lot of houses had electricity yet.

The Radiola 18 came on the market in 1927. What set it apart from earlier radios was that it had a 3-stage TRF controlled by one knob instead of three. One used to have to tune all three knobs just right and it was a pain. RCA wound all the tube wires on one shaft of the tuner knob and injected a bit more regeneration in the 2nd stage for gain. The result was an easy-to-use radio with excellent sound. RCA prided itself on offering a product that outdid the 6-stage TRFs that other manufacturers were offering. So the Radiola 18 was cheaper and more reliable and hence a huge seller. That's why you can still find them out there today--RCA made quite a lot of them. And it's a rugged, durable radio. A great deal of them still work or can be easily refurbed to work. It needs a pretty long antenna wire but works very well otherwise.

I haven't tried mine out yet. I would like a radio expert to check it out before I go plugging it in. The tuner knob is stuck but one website said that this was a common problem that is easily fixed but didn't say how. My brother is pretty good with electronics and maybe he would like to try to get it working. It has everything and parts are available online. I'm leery about the power cords. I don't want to plug it in and get electrocuted. But if I could keep these cords, that would be fantastic. The cords and plugs have that 20s look to them and I would SO love to keep them. I don't anticipate there being anything wrong with the speaker. It looks brand new.

The radio is in such fine condition I wonder who originally owned it. Must have been someone fairly well-to-do. This radio couldn't have been that cheap back then. It's heavy as hell!! But it's cool to own an 85-year-old radio and even cooler if I can get it working. Strange but the speaker housing is metal while the radio housing is oak. This was the days when radios were actually considered furniture. That ended in the 50s with the advent of transistorized units. Texas Instruments made the first--the TR-1--around '52 or so, I think. Then Sony (formerly called TTK) really broke it open with a far superior and even smaller model called the TR-63, which changed the world and turned Sony into a powerhouse.

But I'm in love with old radio, the Golden Age of Radio. I go to sleep every night with my laptop/tablet playing old radio shows. It's amazing how many actors and what not started in radio. Michael Conrad playing Matt Dillon in "Gunsmoke." Raymond Burr in "Fort Laramie". Gale Gordon in "Grandby's Green Acres" (from 1950 and the forerunner of the TV series). "Dragnet" with Jack Webb. And when they read off the casts of characters, you never know whose name you hear--Ross Martin, Bob Crane. Sometimes they don't read off a name but you know the voice--Frank Cady was in one (that's Mr. Drucker), no mistaking that voice, but he wasn't named in the end. Another guy whose name constantly pops up is Vic Perrin who can do just about voice imaginable. He became famous as the "control voice" on the Outer Limits TV series but did a lot of voices on "Star Trek" and shows like that.

And Orson Welles was the king of radio with his voice. I have the uncut "War of the Worlds" broadcast and it's no wonder it scared the shit out of people. I also have the radio play "20th Century" with Welles who is truly hilarious on that one. If you don't think Welles couldn't do comedy, you haven't heard "20th Century." Even stranger, the music of the Mercury Theater broadcasts were usually written by Bernard Herrmann who went onto write the Twilight Zone music and many of Hitchcock's movie scores from the 50s and 60s.

I can fall asleep listening to broadcasts of the attack on Pearl Harbor or the experimental broadcasts of live music in the 20s. I like the horror and suspense shows as "Black Mass" and "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater" (hosted by E.G. Marshall).

That is the one thing lacking from satellite radio--radio shows. Or maybe there is such a channel and I'm unaware of it.