Evening Star Newspaper, April 14, 1929, Page 86

RADIO PRICE ROP- HINTS TRADE WAR Rival Manufacturers Believed Drawing Lines for Drives to Get Buyers. BY C. E. BUTTERFIELD, Assqclated Press Radio Editor. Down comes the price of radio sets. Along with the drop there are hints at drives by rival manufacturers to attract to their sides the greatest number of purchasers. As the battle cries of the campaign that now is on in earnest, apparently to continue until Christmas, there will be only shouts of glee of the recently great radio vuying public. Console Models Cited. . The first attack, begun with the new year, gave little indication that it was the initial laying down of a barrage of less dollars per radio set. It took the form of console model receivers having dynamic speakers, with the price tag reading around $115 “without tubes.” Little was heard from what is taking on the appearance of front line trenches for some time. It seems that the rivals simply were building up their reserves for counter attack. The ammunition proved to be another console model, containing the latest type magnetic cone, at 50 cents under $100. The opening skirmish demonstrated what could be done toward dressing up radio in metal cabinets. Memorial to Heroes. In New York City there is a memorial to the heroes of wireless, said to be the only one of its kind. It is a granite shaft standing in Battery Park, where it was unveiled 14 years ago to disclose the names of nine men carved on the face. Action of the weather each year has made these inscriptions fainter, until disappearance was threatened. Living key pounders decided that this should not be, so the granite inscriptions were replaced with bronze plates which now include the names of 15 other heroes. Each side of the shaft also has been provided with a bronze plaque on which other names may be placed. The memorial was inspired by the death of Jack Phillips, who went down with the Titanic. “Loud Speakers” in Bass. Is the ultimate radio consumer get- ting tred of an overdose of overac- centuated bass notes? There are without a doubt thousands of speakers performing today whose sole reason for existence has been blamed by the radio engineer upon the listeners’ plea, “I want to hear the drums.” They “boom” more often than they hit the high registers of the soprano. An increasing desire of new types of speakers to climb up a little in the scale may be the answer. RADIO HELPS CHILDREN. Btudents Give Programs Weekly Over WEDH. ERIE, Pa. (4).—Co-operation with the | schools in developing future broadcast units is a feature of the work belnl‘ done by Uncle Charlie's Junior Radio | Club of WEDH. Each Saturday evening a group fo students from one school is presented | in a musical and literary program. The work has the indorsement of school principals, who realize its value in de- veloping self control and poise. In a recent concert was presented a | @ 5-year-old girl, June Sullivan, who al- though not of school age, has been giv- ing recitals of merit. Her work is at- tracting much attention. GERMANY ADVANCES. Paying Radio Subscribers Increase | 31 Per Cent in Year. BERLIN (#)—The number of paying radio subscribers in Germany increased from 2,009,842 in 1927 to 2,635,567 last year, a gain of 31' per cent, according to a report of the German Federal Broad- casting Co., the organization which con- trols the various German broadcasting concerns. From October 1, 1928, to January 1, 1929, 301,314 new subscribers were re- corded. THE The New and Mightier “MAJESTIC” All-Electric RADIO is now offered to the public on the most liberal terms by The “NATIONAL.” Come-in and hear it dem- onstrated—examine the bea: superb tonal quality—and be convinced!! ‘A small down payment delivers the mac monthly payments on the balance. . NO EXTRA CHARGE FOR THE EASIEST . CREDIT M | beacon course there was a break THE MIGHTY MONARCH OF Louis_ XVI Walout - Cabinet. rs ental Walnut with genuine inlaid Marquetry Border. panel also of Diamond Matched griuul Walnut framed ~ with utt S AnACase - CALIBRATION URGED FOR EMERGENCIES Experience in Locating Cleveland Airport by Radio Beacon Is Related. Radio stations on the civil airways should have their transmitting sets cali- brated so that broadcasting can be done on the radio beacon wave length in emergencies. This is the opinion of Wesley L. Smith, division superintendent of Na- tional Air Transport, in a letter to the Department of. Commerce. A pilot in difficulty has no time to tune his radio receiver from & beacon | to a communication wave length but | | needs to have both beacon and voice on the same channel, Mr. Smith asserts. He describes an experience he had in locating the Cleveland airport by radio | beacon and landing his plane under | low_ceiling and poor visibility. “I went by the airport on the course at 500 feet and saw nothing although I could identify the port by the chungel in the radio beacon signal,” he said. “I| then started to ease down .flm and | once more found that the ceiling and visibility were too low for safe flying. “The radio beacon at Cleveland is on the northwest side of the airport 50 that the east-west course laid out | by the beacon does not lead over the improved part of the airport. But the north-south ~course passes over the | western end of the developed part. So I pulled up to & safe elevation and flew | | southwest. “Just as I located the nort.h-mut;r the clouds and I found myself over Berea so that I had a double check on my location. ‘The ceiling was still too low to stay beneath the clouds so I flew north .and came down under the clouds cver the western end of the air- port I landed safely at 4:25 p.m. “While I believe that I could have SiGurD NiLsson- Stars of the concert and musical | comedy stage who will appear -before | the microphone in this week’s outsia. ing broadeasts. Miss Case, the famous operatie and concert soprano, will-be featured in the De Forest hour tonight over WMAL. Ethel and Dorothea Ponce, whe specialize in vocal harmonies, will be heard in the Veedol program from the same station Friday night. Nilssen, the famous Norwegian bass, will be the star of the General Motors “family pnrtl h{," & ‘WRC attraction tomorrow nigl ;IFBM CLAIMS RECORD. Has Broadcast Boxing Contests for. Three Years. 5 y INDIANAPOLIS (#).—WFBM claims to have broadcast more boxing contests | than any other station in the United States. Every Tuesday night, from October to May for three years, WFBM has given its listeners a blow by blow de- scription of the semi-windups of Amer- fcan Legion shows staged in Indian- reached the airport safely without. the | 81l parts aid of the radio beacon by means of my knowledge of the country, I feel that the beacon made it a much safer pro- ss. “In difficulties such as I had the pilot needs to have both beacon and voice on the same wave length.” i S A T Power Increased Ten Times. The . directional power of W2XAF, short wave companion station of WGY, has been increased 10 times by the erec- tion of a special antenna. It faces the south and is used only once a week to broadcast to the Byrd ew&lm. It is of the horizontal checkerboard type. B Uil we T New Voice in Radioland. CHICAGO (#).—The golden notes of Gounod'’s majestic “Ave Maria” brought a new voice to radioland—that of Rich- ard Earl Thompson, 14-year-old Oak Park boy-soprano. Eastertide provided the background for the debut of the young singer. AIR utiful cabinets—listen to,the hine, and small weekly or TERMS!! Model 72 " - amond - Matched Ori- Instrument Walnut end Bird's-eye aple Panel. Blind KGO Speaker Reads Radio Talks From Braille Type SAN FRANCISCO (#).—Kath- erine Foley reads her prepared radio talks over KGO from pages of finger-reading Braille 2 Miss Foley, herself blind, has adopted the radio to reach many other persons who have lost their sight. She is employed by the California State Library to teach the blind to read. Miss Foley has carrfed on the work for more than a decade by traveling from town to town, Now she vflvu instructions over - the alr, visiting various schools of the blind during the six days of the week she is not at KGO. Post Colonial Period De- sign with instrument. of Matched ' Burl Walnut. . Frame with eli MODEL 71 PonceE SISTERS- RADIO’S STORM AID 70 BE EMPHASIZED I.nbemntioul Conference on Safety of Life at Sea to Be Held in London. Radio's importance in protecting the thousands who, ride on storm-lashed ships in fcg and iceberg menaced wa- ters will be emphasized at the Interna- toinal Conference on Safety of Life at Sea which convenes in London Tuesday. ‘The American delegation to the con- | ference, representing all agencies of the Government interestd in shipping and navigation, is headed by Representative Wallace White, jr., of Maine, one of the authors of the radio act.- The radio delegate from this country is W. T. Terrell, chief of the radio divi- sion of the Deparfment ¢f Commerce. Lieut. E. M. Webster of the Coast Guard will act as technical adviser on radio matters. The international conference which prepared the original convention for safety of life at sea was held in Lon- don in 1914, after the disaster to the Titanic, which senk with the loss of- 1,490 persons April 14, 1912, after col- lision with an iceberg. Great strides have been made since that conference in the development of safety devices, the advance in radio being more rapid than in eny other field. The e of the coming conference is to bring up to date the standards of safety of life at sea and to adopt inter- national regulations regarding the in- stallation - of life-saving devices, the broadcasting of weather reports, distress calls, signal codes, the destruction of derelicts and the maintenance of the ice patrol. Radio questions to be considered are the more uniform use of standard ap- paratus, the equipping of life boats with Tadio, the use of the automatic alarm signal device and requirements for ap- paratus and operators aboard ship. RADIO FANS ACTIVE. Mail of ' Broadcasters Swells From Year to Year. CHICAGO (. —Radio fans do not tire of sending letters to broadcasters. Predictions made four or five years ago that the listeners soon would discon- tinue the practice have been proven false, say directors of WENR, Chicago. ‘The mail of WENR and other widely known Chicago stations has increased each year. Mike Fits Flyer's Face. SAN FRANCISCO (#).—A micro- phone which fits over the face and is sufliporud by the helmet w] con- tains the earphones is an portant part of the equipment for aviation radio work. It is designed so that it will always be in position, no matter how | much the aviator moves his head. UR pianist was to go on st broadcasting studio at in the evening. He was & artist, debut, and he . number as an ' event of dis- his 5 an. ncunced his t importance, We had heard that he had a rather on time and he should suddenly ling salts or a- T-bone steak—artistic vagaries which you learn to_antic te in this business. He ived at 20 minutes to'8. - We were vastly relieved, for we saw,.at & glance, that he had not been seized with the buck fever, which, oftener than not, hits artists when they first see a microphone. It was a big evening, with all the machinery and temperamen involved keyed up to a high pitch and everything clicking along smoothly but tensely in a tight schedule. Nothing had ever made us so happy as to see our ace performer walk right up to the microphone and give it a cold, insult- ing look, as much as to say, “No small piece"o{ tin like you is going to get my While he was a pint-sized man, he had a Napoleonic, way about him which was most reassuring. There was no doub’ but that, on the stroke of 8, he would step up to the piano, and, with- out eny preliminary agonies, fiil the air with beautiful music. I have guessed wrong on quite a few things in my life, ?:& I never made a wilder guess than Picks From Piano Flock. Our artist suddenly gave the piano a surprised and resentful look, a look which seemed to convey the idea that somebody had dragged in something ex- tremely offensive. He beckoned imperi- ously to an attendant and said some- thing which must have been extremely emphatic. I was at the mike, filling in 8 moment’s gap in the program, With 4 watch in my hand, noting that it was then 15 minutes to 8. - ‘When I saw the attendant dash out of the studio, little beads of perspira- tion began to pop out of my forehead. It was a toss-up whether the signor had d>manded ice cream or a monkey wrench. I was wrong on both guesses. In a moment the emergency squad .ap- peared, rolling in another piano. They keep quite a flock of pianos in the studio, all on rubber wheels, so they can be rolled around silently, like tea tables. The pianist's hands went up with a gesture of despair. This piano w: apparently more hopeless than ‘he other. For five minutes pianos shuttled in and out lke trains at the Grand Cen- tral. I remembered the clown con- struction boss in the old Hippodrome, making the boys put somet! here and then there and then take it away. Finally, with a snort of disgust, the planist accepted one of the pianos Again I was relieved, and again I was mistaken. He sat down on the stool and jumped up as if he had sat on a tack. He waved for an attendant. In a mo- ment a chair had replaced the stool. Again the signor was filled with con- tempt. There were chairs and chairs and more chairs. Goldilocks, trying out the bears’ furniture, was a good picker, compared to this chap. Pinally, he nodded his approval of one of the vice president's office chairs. Bring in Stock of Cushions. “That's over,” I thought, but I was wrong again. There was a demand for a cushion. By this time, the standing army of pages had been called cut. at the 8 o'clock | 5 pages executive had folding this with the number of exactly required, and placing it on top of the cushions, the signor was boosted to his working level 'and he curtly nodded his acknowledgment of our efforts, exactly on the deadline of 8. Then he played like a cherubim cnd ts | seraphim and a flock of archangels. It was a grand night. At our studio we have a great chance to observe eccentricities of tempera- ment, and I would find it almost as in- teresting as a ball game, if it weren't for that menacing deadline and the desperate necessity of maintaining our schedule. Many particular artistic folbles, but virtually all of them get the cold shivers the first time they approach a microphone. made their radio McCormack paced up and down like a trapped lion, with perspiration rolling down_his face. Lucrezia Bori was as Julius Lansburgh Furniture Co. MODEL 71 $157 Complete With Tubes. Nothing Else to Buy. tions, whose outstanding The Julius Lansburgh on these popular sets. Entrance, HAS MADE NEW HISTORY with the NEW and MIGHTIER sionst 1 S187 Complete With Tubes—Nothing Else to Buy. Stighty Monarch of the Air Let us demonstrate these splendid Majestic crea- quality of performance and quality of appearance. jent Deferred Payments to suit you readily arranged The Julius Lansburgh - Furniture Co. ” MODEL 181 3316 Complete With Tubes. Nothing _Elle to Buy. feature is quality . . . Furniture Co.’s Conven- great Briists have no, inert with a sort CANADIAN SETS GAIN. -| Increase in First Ten Months of Fiscal Year Is Reported. VANCOUVER, British Columbia (#), ~—Considerable increase is reported in . the number of licenses issued to receiv- | ing set owners in British Columbia dur- ing the first 10 months of the fiscal year 1928-1929 as efln;gnred with the entire season of 1927-1928. The number for the last 10 months was 20,777, against 18,561 for the previ- s iy (Copyright, 1920.) —_— = Beffle Board of Fiber. A baffie board capable of making the dynamic perform satisfactorily may be made of fiber, A baffle to reproduce |ous period. Vancouver is credited with notes as low as 75 cycles should be |9.431 licenses. about four feet square. The baffle pre- | = vents sound waves, issuing from the front and rear of the speaker, from cancelling each other on the low side of the voice range. Get Our Terms —on the MAJESTIC Electric Radio. Come in and make yourself at home in our studio, Our Repair Department in Charge of Experts is INC. 920 14th St. N.W. Main 2190 Open Evenings Time. 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