Presto

January, 1930
P R E S T O-T I M E S
40
R A D I O
RADIO RECEIVING SETS
RADIO PARTS
RADIO-PHONOGRAPHS
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
OF GRIGSBY-GRUNOW CO.
introduced at a meeting of the New Jersey State
Funeral Directors' Association, held two weeks ago
in Camden, by John S. Martin, mortician, delegate
from Elizabeth, N. J.
BRUNSWICK EXPANSION
IN RADIO MAKING
Additional Expansion Coming When Company Will
Manufacture Electric Refrigerators.
DEGENERATED RADIO PROGRAMS.
Company Adds to Its Forty Million Dollar Invest-
ment by Acquiring Bremer-Tully.
Great manufacturing corporations frequently do not
confine their production to the main product but go
in heavily for articles of commerce that their facilities
allow them to produce.
The Ford Motor Company makes many things that
are not autos at all. Thomas A. Edison, Inc , has
always manufactured a variety of useful devices,
nearly all related to electrical application. The Chase-
Emerson Company, New York and Norwalk, Ohio,
makes pianos and motor boats.
The National Carbon Company, New York, manu-
factures many other things beside in addition to radio;
The Q R S-DeVry Company has probably a half-
dozen lines of manufacture. The American Steel
& Wire Company has many lines of differentiated
manufacture and the Standard Oil Company makes
numerous articles, but nearly all related to oil as the
basic ingredient.
General Motors is in so many lines that they are
hard to enumerate. And now Grigsby-Grunow, hav-
ing grown very great in radio, is preparing for big
expansion by manufacturing electric refrigerators, be-
ginning this month.
RADIO MOVIES SHOWN IN NEW YORK.
Santa Claus gave a big treat to the radio trade and
general public on Christmas Eve. It was the first
public demonstration of radio talkies, or talking mo-
tion pictures, at the Lauter Piano Company's store
in Newark, N. J. According to D. W. May, well-
known radio distributor, who staged the demonstra-
tion in co-operation with the Jenkins Television Cor-
poration of Jersey City, N. J., this was the first
time that perfectly synchronized sight and sound
broadcasting had been shown to the public. It marks
the advent of everyday television, or radiovision. That
the demonstration was no mere laboratory experi-
ment is evident from the fact that the Jenkins radio-
visor, or simple home television device, the Jenkins
radiovision kit, or inexpensive assembly of parts for
those of an experimental turn of mind, and the spe-
cial Jenkins short-wave receiver, were shown in use.
HARTMAN CORP.'S BANNER YEAR.
C. L. Hartman Corp., Rochester, N. Y., Atwater
Kent radio distributor, celebrated a banner year of
business by holding a Christmas party in the display
room of the firm at 18 North Union street. A num-
ber of the members of the radio staff were present,
including Carl L. Hartman, president; Adolp Bastian,
vice-president and treasurer. Others present were
Alice Kliment, Madeline McMahon, Edith Karasick,
Erma Kliment, Harold H. Hosely, B. L. Peer, Frank
Stubbs, Howard L. Bancroft, Ray F. Prairie, Jack
Fisher and F. Douglas Spoor.
The voice of the disgusted public is not so weak
at the "rotten program" makers imagine it to be.
For one can hardly glance over a daily paper with-
out reading a communication, signed with a full name
or initials, proclaiming the writer's hostile disrelish
of "rotten" radio programs, nasty movies or lascivious
books. A musical program on the radio is very apt to
be spoiled by the insertion of yawping about Dr.
Pizen's sure hot corn cure. One writer at Macomb,
111., in a Chicago daily last week had this to say:
"Free, yes. But who wants such stuff because it is
free? What is the effect when a beautiful piece of
music, well rendered, is sandwiched with the sardine,
limburger cheese advertising stuff that comes be-
tween the parts of the program? For my part I
would rather pay a radio tax and have programs free
from junk."
ENGLAND'S RADIO CHRISTMAS.
"Large numbers of our readers have embraced
Radio, and from talks with reputable manufacturers,
the music trade is going to pull its weight in Radio
this Christmas," says the Music Seller and Small
Goods Dealer, of London. "The problem of store
and window space press closely at that time. This is
a season when it is essential to show a wide range of
musical merchandise; and when a wide note must be
struck."
BROADCAST STATIONS FAVOR TAX.
Although the members of the Federal Radio Com-
mission and the members of Congressional commit-
tees having to do with radio are not in accord over
the proposal to tax broadcasting and communication
stations, the broadcasters themselves are reported to
be favorable to such a scheme for financing govern-
ment control of radio.
The Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company of Chi-
cago recently added to its 40-million dollar invest-
ment in plant and equipment by purchase of the
Bremer-Tully Manufacturing Company, also of Chi-
cago, and one of the oldest manufacturers of radios
and parts in the United States. The purchase was
decided upon in order that every operation in the
manufacture of Brunswick radios might be conducted
in a Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company plant.
"Brunswick-Balke-Collender, with plants in Chi-
cago, Muskegon, Michigan and Dubuque, Iowa, owns
50,000 acres of timber lands, operates its own saw and
planing mills, dry kilns and veneer plants and car-
ries the manufacture of its radios from the growing
trees to the finished machine."
"Officials or the Brunswick company say that there
are today many cabinet makers in their plant who are
the grandsons of the cabinet-makers employed by
the company at its inception, 84 years ago.
"W. J. Baker, branch manager at Indianapolis,
says: In many cases, the second and third genera-
tion of these Swiss and German craftsmen are work-
ing in the Brunswick plant, having been raised vir-
tually in the plant and taught woodwork from the
time they were old enough to stand by their father's
desk.
"Radio has been seeing a big change mechanically
s : nce it first came on the market, and receiving
apparatus has been revolutionized since the introduc-
tion of the tube receiving sets, but the manufacturers
who have well-established and thoroughly trained men
in the furniture field, men that have been pleasing the
public taste for more than a half century, will be the
survivors in the radio field.
MORE AUTOS MADE THAN RADIOS SOLD.
UNIVERSAL HOLIDAY BY RADIO.
Dr. Alfred N. Goldsmith, vice-president of the
Radio Corporation, speaks for a universal language to
overcome the polyglot of different tongues as exempli-
fied by the recent holiday broadcast across the oceans.
He said in New York: "We need not adopt a new
speech, but an auxiliary one. Radio is making this
more important every day."
Trade estimates that have reached Presto-Times say
that there were more automobiles made in 1929 than
the number of radio sets sold. This sounds incredi-
ble, but the sources of our information stand by it as
a statement based upon actual figures from the book-
keeping and statistical departments of the respective
lines of manufacture. Piano manufacturers find in
these estimates an allayment of their fears that the
radio is going to supersede the piano. It surely can-
not, as the piano is an instrument that produces orig-
THE RCA RADIOLA.
Here is part of an advertisement by the RCA-Vic- inal music, while radio is merely a transmitter of that
tor Co., Inc.: "Ask your dealer to show you the music. The piano is an author; the radio is merely
Radiola 46, the instrument that gives you greater the reader of the book.
sensitivity and selectivity—power without distortion
and tonal realism of such exceptional beauty that it ZENITH PRESIDENT SAILS ON TRIP.
is a revelation to every music lover."
The yacht Mizpah, owned and operated by Eugene
F. McDonald, head of the Zenith Radio Corp.,
GENERAL COUNSEL FOR RADIO.
steamed out of Miami, Fla., on January 4 on a secret
Colonel Thad H. Brown of Ohio has been named
mission. Mr. McDonald admitted that stops would
general counsel of the Radio Commission, succeed- be made in Cuba, Porto Rico, Haiti and the Virgin
ing Bethuel M. Webster, Jr., whose resignation was Islands. Mr. McDonald has an archeologist aboard
accepted. Colonel Brown has been chief counsel of
and it was surmised that perhaps the yacht will head
the Federal Power Commission since July.
for the South American jungles on an exploring quest.
RADIO SALES OF $21,490,414.
A special dispatch from Washington, D. C , to the
Chicago Daily News said that retail sales of radio
equipment during the third quarter of 1929, reported
by 6,237 dealers to the Department of Commerce,
BURGLARS ROB RADIO COMPANY SAFE.
amounted to $21,490,414, or an average of $3,450 per
Burglars broke into the offices of the Western
dealer, an increase of 14 per cent over the third quar-
ter of 1928, when the average sales per dealer Radio Manufacturing Company, 128 West Lake street,
amounted to $3,030. The average number of A. C. Chicago, on the night of December 13, and, despite
sets sold per dealer increased 40 per cent during the the gushing of tear gas, escaped with $1,500, the con-
quarter, as compared with 1928, but the average value tents of the safe.
per set sold declined from $167 to $155.
INDIA HAS SIX STATIONS.
There are six broadcasting stations in India, oper-
MILLIONS OF SETS SOLD.
Maj. Robert M. Frost of the Radio Manufacturers' ated by various interests. A company which is to
Association, has estimated that between 3,000,000 and have a monopoly on broadcasting is, however, being
3,500,000 new radio sets went into American homes organized. Set owners are taxed about $3.65 a year.
last year. O. H. Caldwell, the former federal radio
FIRE DESTROYS RADIO STORE.
commissioner, now editor of a leading radio trade
journal, sets the figure at nearer 4,000,000 and reports
The S. D. Moran radio store and the Reliable Co.
that two out of every three homes in America are building, South Bend, Ind., were destroyed by fire on
still prospects for modern receivers. The public, he December 16. The fire chief, Roy A. Knoblock, was
says, spent $750,000,000 on radio equipment last year, hurled 20 feet by an explosion during the fire.
marking a record for the industry.
STEINITE'S 1930 MODELS.
RADIO FUNERAL SERVICES.
The Steinite Radio Co., Fort Wayne, Ind., an-
Mortuary music may be used soon to enhance ser- nounces that it has gone into production on the 1930
vices for the dead. The plan has been studied in New models, all of which are equipped with the new inter-
Jersey and those studying it thought that a fixed hour ference eliminator patented by Steinite.
might be set for the nationwide broadcasting of
Krebs Service has opened a radio store in Michi-
funeral music and nationwide funerals might be timed
accordingly. A resolution urging such procedure was gan City, Ind.
HOLLAND'S RADIO SYSTEM.
Broadcasting in Holland is carried on by five politi-
cal and religious societies through two privately
owned stations. A commission has been appointed
by the government to put broadcasting on a more
satisfactory basis, possibly through some sort of
government control. There is no license fee for lis-
teners.
SUSPENDS EARL TRADING.
The New York Curb exchange on December 19
suspended trading the capital stock of Earl Radio
Corporation, successor to the Charles Freshman Com-
pany. A permanent receiver for the corporation was
appointed recently after an involuntary bankruptcy
action had been filed in federal court.
RADIO COMMISSION'S LEASE OF LIFE.
President Hoover on December 19 signed the bill
extending the life of the Federal Radio Commission
indefinitely.
Frank W. McDonnell of Rossiter, Tyler & Mc-
Donnell, Inc., radio engineers, has leased for a term
of years the Colonial type residence of William Bu-
chanan on Wappanocca street, Rye, N. Y.
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