Special thanks to Ray Robinson and Jeff White for sharing Part 3 from the AWR Wavescan program.
Jeff: Here in Wavescan, we’ve been serializing the history of the Zenith Radio Corporation, based largely on a brochure issued by the company in 1955. Today we reach part 3, which picks up the story from 1925. Here’s Ray Robinson.
Ray: Thanks, Jeff.
CREATION OF FEDERAL RADIO COMMISSION
In 1925 in the United States, one man had sole control of radio, with the Secretary of Commerce being the supreme czar. E.F. McDonald Jr., whose financial backing and initiative had powered the growth of the company in the early 1920’s, said to then Secretary Herbert Hoover that he did not believe the law was sound. On the invitation of Mr. Hoover, who said he would welcome a test case, McDonald violated a Department of Commerce order and broadcast on a Canadian wavelength.
The Department brought an action against Zenith, and against McDonald personally. Zenith went into court with the contention that the radio law of 1912 was out of date in 1926. And, Zenith won.
Congress then passed a law establishing the Federal Radio Commission (now the FCC) whose task it was to minimize the growing interference between stations on the same wavelength. Zenith officials took a leading part in helping to frame and pass the new law.
FIRST AC SETS
In 1926 came one of the most important milestones in radio set history, another Zenith First. Up to that time home radios operated on heavy storage batteries called accumulators, dry batteries, or a combination of both. Zenith developed and put on the market the first home receiver that operated directly from regular AC electric current. For most homes this meant the end of cumbersome and messy batteries, and made radio safe for the living room rug. That marked the transition of radio from tinkerer’s toy to a standard household necessity.
Another Zenith First of 1926 turned out to be the better mouse trap that the world didn’t beat a path to. It was the first railroad train in the world equipped with shortwave radio communications, actually on 70 meters. It was a New York Central special of twelve cars that pulled out of Elkhart, Indiana on June 11, and made the 100 mile run to Englewood, Illinois with all communications between cab and caboose conducted by radio.
The equipment was designed and installed by a then young Zenith engineer named G.E. Gustafson. He started from scratch, developing suitable antennas, signaling systems to call the crew at either end, methods of preventing road noises from getting into the mikes, etc.
The October, 1927 issue of Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers reported, “No difficulty was had in maintaining two-way conversation between the caboose and the locomotive when standing still or when running at top speed. The engineer was able to hear and understand everything coming from the loudspeaker behind his head without diverting his attention from the road ahead... all train orders were given by means of the radio installation ... the train was stopped and the engine uncoupled from the train and run ahead under orders given entirely by radio from the caboose ... communication was maintained with loudspeaker operation at both ends up to a distance of four miles ...”
There was an official demonstration on July 8, with a 116 car freight train carrying a passenger car and caboose filled with newspaper men and radio and railroad officials. It made the run from Englewood to Elkhart with all communications between cab and caboose by radio. Results of the official test were entirely satisfactory, and radio transmission of signals saved the delays that ordinarily had occurred previously when a train man had to walk the entire length of the train.
Zenith did not go into the railroad radio business because the limited market didn’t justify the heavy expense involved, and because of the Management’s conviction that Zenith’s future lay in mass production of radio equipment for the public.
So, the idea didn’t take hold straightaway, partly because of the shortage of radio frequencies, and partly because the idea was not vigorously promoted. But, development of FM, and expansion of radio into the shortwave spectrum, did lead to extensive use of radio by railroads in subsequent years. All railroads now have their trains equipped with radio to communicate both between cab and the rest of the train, and between the train and land stations. Before the cell phone era, some also used radio to provide links for passenger use from moving trains to the long distance telephone network.
THE LATE TWENTIES
By 1927 the radio manufacturing industry encompassed a helter-skelter of many brand names, most of which have long since disappeared, and radios had wide variation in quality and performance. Zenith, which already possessed an outstanding reputation, placed even greater emphasis on superior quality and engineering innovations, and on marketing these features. The company’s advertising employed such slogans as “The Quality Goes in Before the Name Goes On,” “Known the World Over,” and “World’s Largest Manufacturer of High Grade Radio.”
Through most of 1927 Zenith continued to be the only manufacturer producing all-electric AC sets. To this feature was added automatic push button tuning, which enabled the user to select any of nine stations by simply pushing the appropriate button.
The company was really beginning to roll, and in the next year, Zenith moved into high gear. The company offered a line of all-electric sets, many with automatic tuning, which sold in a price range from $100 to $2,500. By 1929, company earnings broke the million dollar mark for the first time with a thumping $1,110,000.
An interesting highlight of 1929 was the production of a custom-built radio for King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. A special emissary of the King called. He said he had been turned down by radio manufacturers in New York who thought he was pulling a gag, and he said that he wanted to purchase a special radio set for His Majesty. He came out to the factory in formal attire, with a ribbon across his chest, and placed the order.
The set was housed in one of Zenith’s most ornate cabinets. It included Zenith’s finest longwave and shortwave chassis, plus a remote control on a 75 foot cord. The King had a wonderful time with it. At one party he confounded his generals by switching from station to station, and shortwave to longwave, with the remote control. They thought it was pure magic. The King was so pleased with the set that he gave Zenith an order to supply radios for the Yugoslavian school system.
The outlook for business seemed rosy in these last months of “the era of wonderful nonsense.” Then came the market crash of October, 1929, and the depression years that followed. All business suffered severely, and the young radio industry was thrown into virtual chaos.
THE DEPRESSION YEARS
Zenith retrenched savagely. The Michigan Avenue offices were shut fast, and all operations were consolidated in the plant at Iron Street. Product planning was regeared to meet the times. Large sets were replaced in the line by smaller, lower-priced models, but the emphasis on quality was not relaxed. Employees, imbued with fierce pride and loyalty, tightened their belts along with management.
Among Zenith’s depression weapons was a new line of low priced table model receivers introduced in 1931. These sold in great volume. Another was a 110 volt DC radio operating directly from the electric line. This model was very popular in such cities as New York and Chicago, where large areas still had direct current, particularly in business and apartment hotel districts.
ECONOMIC UPTURN
The economic turn for Zenith began in 1933, and in 1934, they introduced a car radio which had the tuning control on the steering column in easy reach of the driver. In subsequent years Zenith became one of the largest suppliers of car radios to the automobile industry.
FREE POWER FROM THE WIND
One of Zenith’s other recovery tools was a legacy from McDonald’s voyages to the Arctic. Along the route he had presented radio receivers to a number of missionaries and government officials, with what he believed to be an ample supply of batteries. But he had forgotten the loneliness of the six month long Arctic night, when these remote spots were completely out of touch with civilization. Radio was like a new breath of life to these isolated people, bringing them news and entertainment from all over the world. As a consequence, supplies of batteries that should have served for three years were exhausted in less than one.
McDonald did the best he could for his Arctic friends by sending them new batteries as needed. At the same time he began wondering if there were not some other method of supplying them with dependable power. One day while sailing a boat it occurred to him that the one great source of power that was available almost everywhere was the wind.
In 1935, with major depression problems solved, he asked Zenith engineers to find out if there was in existence a practical device for translating free power of the wind into electricity.
Within 24 hours the engineers reported back that there were two Iowa farm boys, John and Gerhard Albers, who were associated with the Wincharger Corporation in Sioux City, which was building wind driven generators for charging 6-volt storage batteries. They had solved the problem of getting their generators to work in light winds by using two airfoil sections for blades on their “wind mill.” The wind pulled these airfoils around, as compared to the way wind pushed the multitude of blades on the low-speed windmills used for farm water pumps.
The Albers boys had done all of their development work without the aid of wind tunnels. Instead, they mounted Winchargers on automobiles; on calm days, the speedometer reading gave them the wind velocity.
Zenith, meanwhile, had developed an efficient battery radio that operated on a single 6-volt storage battery. When used together, this radio and the Wincharger unit could provide unfailing radio operation, with a total power cost of about fifty cents a year. Moreover, it had enough reserve power to operate a few lights from the storage battery, a Godsend to farms that had no electricity.
Zenith bought control of Wincharger, which then acquired a larger factory in Sioux City, and started mass production. The first order from Zenith to Wincharger called for fifty thousand units.
The 6-volt Wincharger was sold for $10 to purchasers of Zenith radios who wanted the power unit. It was an outstanding commercial success. Sales were counted in tens of thousands, and since each $10 Wincharger sale usually resulted in the sale of a Zenith radio, the company soon became the industry’s leading supplier of farm radios.
In 1937, Zenith purchased all outstanding stock to make Wincharger a wholly owned subsidiary.
And there we have to leave the Zenith story once again, but we’ll be back with part 4 in a few weeks’ time. Back to you, Jeff.
(AWR/Wavescan)