Early Radio

Steve Davis, who has sent dozens of cover scans to me for the magazineart.org website, included a duplicate with a note that it was signed by, and apparently belonged to, F. E. Handy, one of the early big cheeses of the ARRL. Here's an image of the cover of the December 1924 issue of QST, with what looks like both handwritten and rubber-stamped signatures of Handy (call signs 8BCM and 1BDI).


He's selling it now on eBay, and currently it's fairly cheap; but the auction ends soon.

Another image from Goldsmith's 1918 book. 
You can buy a copy of the Goldsmith book for yourself.

From Steve Davis, photoshopped for clarity:

From Alfred N. Goldsmith, "Radio Telephony" (Wireless Press; 1918). It's the "Berliner-Poulsen 3KW Arc Radiophone Station." Click for larger.

A recent immigrant from Luxembourg, Hugo Gernsbacher started a company to import European electrical and radio parts to sell to American enthusiasts. Soon he found himself publishing not just a catalog, but a magazine called MODERN ELECTRICS. Not surprisingly, EIC was a regular advertiser in this magazine. From the April 1910 issue:

When radio became popular in the middle of the 1920's, the world changed. Staid marketers like Sears, Roebuck latched onto the new trend and remade themselves as the foremost purveyors of the new fad.



Have your teenaged friends over for a dance party, right in your own living room! Mom will feed the hungry crowd, and Dad will try to read his newspaper, but won't be able to resist tapping his toe to the music.
 

Special thanks to Radio material collector Steve Davis, for these images from his collection. [We Photoshopped them a bit to restore them to their original state.] Steve adds, "This Sears catalog was the first Sears radio-specific catalog, family and socially oriented. Earlier catalogs were electrical appliance catalogs, with radios in them." For more Radio material, try the MagazineArt.org site.