QST The Official Organ of the ARRL

Hartford, Connecticut: The American Radio Relay League. Very Good. 1926. First Edition. Hardcover. 1500 pages; Volume X. Twelve issues, January-December, 1926. Bound in dark red library buckram, complete with advertisements and covers (front and rear) included. Index to the year bound in at the front (minor wear to these three leaves). Page count is estimated. QST -- (radio speak for "calling all stations") was first published at the end of 1915, and after a short suspension during the first World War, continues to the present day. Initially intended for the serious radio amateurs, interested in both broadcasting and receiving signals, the ads included the full spectrum of products available to the most serious of "brasspounders" [slang for the oldtimers who sat at their apparatus with fingers poised over their telegraph keys] and also intended for the rapidly growing audience of who just wanted to buy or assemble receiving "sets" in order to receive the newly burgeoning collection of commercial radio broadcasts. The very first leaf of the January issue contains a full-page ad for an important new tube -- the DeForest type H transmitting tube, "imput rating 150 watts..." This $18 tube was one of the first to reach into the VHF range [ as high as 300 MHz, or so Lee DeForest claimed. There is a short review of this new tube on p. 22 of the February issue]. The twelve issues bound here each has a blind stamp from the Naval Research Laboratory, East Annacostia, Washington DC. The individual issues mostly have check-out slips lightly tipped in. The year was probably bound up for the Naval Research Lab in the 1940's. Card pocket with an old punchcard still present, mounted to the rear paste-down endpaper. Generally good condition, apart from the removal of pp. 43-6 in the May issue. At least one small box ad has been cut out (1/8th page). There are three mentions of television (or, at least "picture transmission") in the year's text -- two concern Washington DC inventor C. Francis Jenkins' apparatus -- one with a photograph. The wealthy amateur seeking the best experience of the new broadcasting choices might find the RCA Loundspeaker ad to be of interest. Three models are described in detail (models 100, 102 & 104). The last of these could eliminate the requirement for a "B" battery. Or, if the purchaser used this loudspeaker with RCA's "Radiola" model 25 or 28, there was no need for any supplimental batteries... "operates on the 50 to 0 cycle, 110 v A.C lighting circuit." Price of the model 104 loudspeaker was $275! [The least expensive Ford Model T ("runabout") retailed for $260 in 1925]. .