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An antique radio is a radio receiving set that is collectible because of its age and uniqueness. Although collectors may differ on the cutoff dates, most would use 50 years old, or the pre-World War II Era, for vacuum tube sets and the first five years of transistor sets. more...
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Types of antique radio
Morse only sets
The first radio receivers used a coherer and sounding board, and were only able to receive morse code, and thump it out on the board. This type of transmission is called CW (Continuous wave) or wireless telegraphy. When wireless telephony (ie transmission & reception of speech) became possible, speech radio greatly improved the usability of radio communication. Despite this, the antiquated technology of morse code transmission continued to play an essential role in radio comms until the 1990s.
All other sections of this article concern speech capable radio, or wireless telephony.
Early home made sets
The idea of radio as entertainment took off in 1920, and radio ownership steadily gained in popularity as the years passed. Radio sets from before 1920 are rarities.
Pre-war sets were usually made on wooden breadboards, in small cupboard style cabinets, or sometimes on an open sheet metal chassis. Homemade sets remained a strong sector of radio production until after the war. Until then there were more homemade sets in use than commercial sets.
Early sets used any of the following technologies:
Crystal set;
Crystal set with carbon or mechanical amplifier;
Basic TRF;
TRF Reaction Sets;
Super-Regenerative Receiver;
Superhet;
Crystal bets
These basic radios used no battery, had no amplification and could only operate headphones. They would only receive very strong signals from a local station. They were popular among the less wealthy due to their low build cost and zero run cost. Crystal sets had minimal ability to separate stations, and where more than one high power station was present, inability to receive one without the other was a common problem.
Some crystal bets users added a carbon amplifier or a mechanical turntable amplifier to give enough output to operate a speaker. Some even used a flame amplifier.
TRF
TRF sets (Tuned Radio Frequency) are the most popular class of early radio. These used one or more valves (tubes) to provide amplification. Early TRF sets only operated headphones, but by the 1930s it was more common to use additional amplification to power a loudspeaker, despite the expense.
The types of speakers in use at the time were crude by today's standards, and the sound quality produced from the speakers used on such sets is sometimes described as torturous. Speakers widely used on TRF sets included:
Read more at Wikipedia.org
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