My Dad told me the story of how he built one of these when he was 7 years old with no help in 1932. He became a Ham radio operator, worked at WGLI and later a Broadcast Engineer for ABC News Radio.
I remember crawling on a rooftop terrace in the 50s. with my home-made radio and a 40 ft. antenna; could only clearly get two stations. Great memories!
Wow - memories like that never go. Similarly I can remember needing really good antenna for a crystal set and needing to make the antenna as high as possible.
@@ElectronicsNotes We used my friend's terrace on top a a second-floor which was about 20 feet high and ran a 40 foot copper wire and a lead-in probably 10 ft.
This is interesting. It’s probably the same kit that is discussed on this page. I managed to get hold of one recently. www.electronics-notes.com/articles/history/radio-receivers/radio-shack-science-fair-crystal-radio-kit.php
@eddieboggs8306-- I also had the crystal radio and shortwave sets. My dad got them for me and we sat at the kitchen table putting them together. Miss those.
I built a number of these back in the 1960 or so era. I still have some pieces of galena for the detector. A better term for timing capacitor is a tuning capacitor.
The diodes used were to the modern ones and although the basic concept was straightforward they needed a mechanical arrangement to hold the crystal itself.
