the Cat's Whisker : 50 Years of wireless design

Jonathan Hill

Uitg. Oresko, hardcover met tekstomslag, geillustreerd

Most of the people who owned a wire-less set in the mid-1920s listened in on a crystal set with its 'cat's whisker'. This tiny coil of wire was an essential part of the set and had to be carefully adjusted with the crystal so that the loudest sig-nals could be heard in the headphones. The simplicity of these early receivers, consisting of little more than a few com-ponents mounted on an ebonite panel, characterizes this experimental age when every listener was a pioneer.

By the 1930s, however, the wireless set was an intrinsic part of every home-life, and manufacturers concentrated their efforts upon design, hiding the new technical refinements from the view of their customers. The radio had become for the general public less an object of scientific experiment and more a piece of furniture, whose unique amalgam of functional technology and aesthetic de-sign gave it a central role in the develop-ment of Art Deco.

Jonathan Hill traces the history of the wireless set from the efforts of the early amateur enthusiasts through its heyday in the Second World War to its eclipse with the advent of television.
Drawing on his own large collec-tion of vintage radios and components, early photographs of transmitting and receiving stations, wireless manuals and magazine advertisements, he charts the growing sophistication in wireless tech-nology and design. The Cat's Whisker is a comprehensive and stimulating analy-sis of a phenomenon which crystallized the early twentieth-century obsession with practical science and with design which reflects function.

over 120 illustrations