Allied Radio Catalogs from 1926 to 1982

[jackinnj]

One of the ham radio guys (Novice Rig Roundup on Facebook) posted this link:
Allied Radio & Electronics Catalogs (View catalogs in HTML format)

I think that my 91 year old mother has thrown out my collection from the early 1960's.

 

[jackinnj]

6th grade Christmas present:

 

[freddi]

fantastic ! for hifi (or lofi) it would be fun to see some scans of McGee Radio flyers
here's a few pages of a McGee catalog I uploaded in 2008 http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hug/messages/13/139149.html

 

[Pano]

$29.95? Ouch!

 

[jackinnj]

$29.95? Ouch!

If you figure that the nominal median weekly income in the US was about $120/wk in 1960 it was an "ouch". $30 was what a really good pair of men's shoes cost.

 

[Pano]

I.E., it was quite a nice Christmas present.

 

[Pano]

I was looking at the 1934 catalog and saw that a lot of the radios were available in 32V versions. That got me curious about 32V, because I used to live on an old boat, built in 1948, that had a 32V system for lighting, pumps and a few other things.

Apparently, 32V DC was the farm voltage generated by the farm lighting generators. Delco sold a million or more of these to light up farms across America. Consequently you could get a lot of electrical things, lights, radios, refrigerators and other appliances in 32V versions.

The Rural Electrification Project killed all that by stringing 110V AC out to the farms.

 

[jackinnj]

There was a "Laurel and Hardy" short from the early 30's in which they tried to sell a vacuum cleaner to a gal in a farmhouse -- no electricity.

I still have some of the pieces from the kit.

 

[Pano]

Good that you managed to keep some of it. That's a great present for a smart young guy.

FWIW, my mother didn't have electricity on the farm until she was in her teens. No telephone until she went to college. Things changed quickly.