Radio Broadcast (May-Oct 1925)

490 Radio Broadcast tion which will satisfy the obvious requirements for practically every radio use: one that will deliver faithful service and one that readily can be built from standard and available parts. Further, we have tried to design this set so that it is easily made portable, if that be the desire, but chiefly to make it easy to install in the various types of phonographs found in American homes. These aims we are convinced we have attained in the Phonograph Receiver. If the constructor has a phonograph of any one of the standard types which have been sold in such enormous quantities, the Phonograph Receiver can be built and installed with ease, and the phonograph will not be marred or made less useful in any way. In fact, we feel that we have shown the way to make the phonograph doubly useful. To combine in one instrument the amazing breadth of entertainment the phonograph affords and the instant and vital daily entertainment that is the charm of radio is an accomplishment which should interest every one who sets store by his home and all that therein is. Our correspondence shows that our solemnizing the marriage of the phonograph and the radio has met with very widespread approval. Reform Is Needed in Radio Advertising THERE is no doubt at all that radio has a rather unsavory reputation with much of the buying public. We are continually asked about "what set to buy," and find that the intelligent public believe little that is written about the merits of this set or that one. The reason for this disgust is at once evident to one who picks up an average radio magazine or newspaper and looks over the radio advertisements. There is apparently no set that isn't the best, no condenser that hasn't the lowest loss, no coil that isn't the most efficient. Obviously they can't all be the best. The reader naturally distrusts all of them. The average radio advertisement is not an honest attempt to tell just what the apparatus will do, but rather a claim that it is better than that of any other advertiser. The "low loss" advertisements which have filled the magazine pages for months past are enough to demoralize any prospective purchaser. Each condenser has such low losses that this or the other laboratory found it impossible to measure them. Even if it were so, the fact remains that the purchaser could not tell the difference between perhaps twenty different makes, in so far as condenser loss is concerned. The losses in the coils (which always must be used with condensers) are so much greater than those of the condenser that any one of twenty good condensers will act practically the same in so far as strength of signals is concerned. When it comes to complete sets, the situation is much worse. Were one to believe the extravagant claims made by dozens of manufacturers he could take a set home and after about ten minutes time spent in installation, hear practically any station he wanted to from one coast to another. But this isn't the truth and many a purchaser has been grossly J. C. GILBERT Washington; Chief, Radio Market Service, Department of Agriculture "Progress in the field of radio broadcasting must include a systematic organisation of weather, crop, and market reports and helpful agricultural information. There must he greater cooperation between all agencies concerned. I should like to see some general instruction broadcast to farmers about their radio sets, and how they should be installed and operated. The surveys which the United States Department of Agriculture made in IQ23 and 1924 showed that the use of radio on farms is increasing rapidly. jyo,ooo radio sets on farms were estimated for 1924 as compared with 145,000 in 1923. About fifty per cent, of farmer-owned radio sets are home assembled. This is not extraordinary, for people on farms have much experience in making their own tools and equipment. There is no group or class of people in this country to whom radio means so much as to the farmers."