A Manufacturer in Indianapolis

A few years ago I found a beautiful marketing sign under the tree at Christmastime. My wife and I both like historical items, and prowl the antique malls when we have an hour or two to ourselves.

The sign adorns my hamshack now.

I had heard of Fairbanks Morse, but only as a manufacturer of industrial equipment - pumps and such. I had no idea they made radios.

It turns out they were located in Indianapolis.

I have added the location to the Radio Row google maps file.

Radios at the Indiana State Fair

I'm always looking for radio technology in museums and antique malls.

At the Indiana State Fair this year, I wandered through the antiques entries. Among the assortment of All American Fives and an impressive group of early transistor radios I found this beauty.

It appears to be a crystal radio set, with a Bakelite front panel and wooden case.

Another Ghost

Atwater Kent's Wissahickon Avenue Plant in Philadelphia


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You can still make out part of the name "Atwater" over this entrance:


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This plant, the South Plant, was once connected to the North Plant via an overhead walkway (conveyor? maybe someone can comment.) over Abbotsford Avenue. All that remains of the North Plant is the powerhouse.


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The walkway came out of the South Plant, near the smokestack...Just about where this square structure is attached. I assume this was an anchor for the walkway.


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See also
Uncle Alberts has a view to the west, showing both plants (and the walkway).

Atwater Kent Manufacturing Company, North Plant, 5000 Wissahickon Avenue, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA of the Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering
Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey has many views of the plants, including interiors.

You can see the entire My Places map or download a KML file.

Living in the Past

Some of the ghosts of radio manufacturers still haunt Google Maps.

I started trying to map out the original streets from New York's Radio Row -- Cortlandt, Dey, Liberty, etc. I ended up finding a lot of buildings around the country that used to house radio manufacturers. I created a Google MyMaps page to hold them all. You can find a KMZ at

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4459841/Radio%20Row.kmz

You'll find Hallicrafters, ElectroVoice, Heathkit, and more. I threw in some lines for Radio Row for good measure.

Thanks to Street Cities - Free Mapping and Street View Tools for the street view control.

Popular Science and Popular Mechanics on Google Book Search!

Google Book Search announced today that it was posting scans of several magazines, including Popular Science and Popular Mechanics online.

I'm excited because it means that old radio articles in these magazines are available for viewing.

Try this: Go to http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search, and enter the words "crystal", "coil", and "condenser" in the search window. Check the "Full View Only" and "Magazines" buttons. It returns a bunch of magazine articles on crystal radio sets.

Now the next trick...To bookmark the article, you don't have to save that entire godawful URL it brings up. You can trim from the end of the URL to the "&pg=PAXXX" term. The rest is just for highlighting the search text in the article and stuff.