Accession No
6668
Brief Description
Miniature crystal radio receiver, "vest-pocket" size, by Radiax Ltd, English, early 20th c.
Origin
England; London
Maker
Radiax Ltd.
Class
sound
Earliest Date
1910
Latest Date
1940
Inscription Date
Material
paper; wood; metal; plastic; lead (galena)
Dimensions
55mm (width) x 36mm (length) x 20mm (height), mounted on a modern frame measuring 207mm (width) x 280mm (length) x 11mm (height)
Special Collection
Michael J. Clark Bequest
Provenance
Inscription
Description Notes
Miniature crystal radio receiver, "vest-pocket" size, by Radiax Ltd, English, early 20th c.
The object consists of a small receiver (two coiled wires, and a detector consisting of a tiny "cat whisker" and a crystal made of lead sulfide/galena) inside a wooden matchbox tray, and the matchbox sleeve. The matchbox appears to have been appropriated and re-used by the maker of the instrument for this purpose.
The matchbox and a small slip of paper with instructions have been mounted onto a small wooden frame, modern, for display purposes (by Clark?). A typed label, modern, has been pasted on the frame below the object, suggesting that Clark lent the object to a local museum or gallery for an exhibit.
Condition: fair, complete
References
Events
Description
Miniature receivers were marketed in the 1910's as a convenient way of receiving radio signals, usually simple indications of the time, allowing the urban user to set his watch from anywhere in town, as long as he had an umbrella to use as an antenna! This set, on account of its size and primitive set-up (the crystal receiving method was obsolete by the 1920's), may have been more a novelty.
To use the receiver, one had to connect the ends of one coiled wire to the ground and an antenna (these metal outlets on the side of the box are labelled "A" and "E"); the second coiled wire would need to be connected to a telephone receiver (metal outlet on the other side of the box, labelled "P") and to the galena crystal via the "cat-whisker" (labelled "D"). The user had to adjust the cat whisker against the crystal until the signal was successfully received. This already difficult process was complicated by the size of the receiver, which would have made the cat whisker extremely frustrating to adjust.
25/09/2018
Created by: Matthew Green on 25/09/2018
FM:47365
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