My subscription to Life expired, but I still have a subscription to Mad.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Handie History


Until I saw this 1944 Motorola advertisement, I had no idea that "Handie Talkie" goes back to World War II.

"The first radio receiver/transmitter to be widely nicknamed 'Walkie-Talkie' was the backpacked Motorola SCR-300, created by an engineering team in 1940 at the Galvin Manufacturing Company (fore-runner of Motorola). The team consisted of Dan Noble, who conceived of the design using frequency modulation, Henryk Magnuski who was the principal RF engineer, Marion Bond, Lloyd Morris, and Bill Vogel.

"Motorola also produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II, and it was called the 'Handie-Talkie' (HT). The terms are often confused today, but the original walkie talkie referred to the back mounted model, while the handie talkie was the device which could be held entirely in the hand (but had vastly reduced performance). Both devices ran on vacuum tubes and used high voltage dry cell batteries. (Handie-Talkie became a trademark of Motorola, Inc. on May 22, 1951)." (Source: Wikipedia)

The name Henryk Magnuski, principal RF engineer of the walkie talkie, rang a bell. One of the packet radio pioneers was Hank Magnuski, KA6M; in 1980, his callsign was used for the first packet radio digipeater in the USA, KA6M/R in the San Francisco Bay area.

And it tuns out that Henryk Magnuski is Hank Magnuski's father!



No comments:

Post a Comment