article about a camera and a portable radio combination
Toronto. Anther faux pas in North American camera sales. An article in the April 1948 issue of Popular Mechanics touted a case that carried a small camera plus a ‘portable’ battery powered radio.
Smart phone users may relate to this story but the battery was non chargeable and the camera and radio were separate entities. Modern smart phones use rechargeable lithium-ion cells (light and powerful), connect to cell towers via radio at a far higher frequency, and have a teeny digital camera built in.
The article mentions a ‘superheterodyne’ receiver which was the norm even earlier. The vast majority of radios used this kind of circuit as did early TVs – TV video used AM (actually vestigial side band) while TV sound used the relatively new FM for better sound quality. The over the air signals were usually amplified and then transformed to intermediate frequencies (IF) and further amplified before being detected and sent on to the audio amplifiers, etc..
This article was found my my good friend, George Dunbar, who shared it with us. It was possibly a good idea since minicams and portable radios were popular post war, but alas, it seemed to be a non starter where it counts – in retail sales.
Note. The post title is a riff on, ‘Calling All Cars’ which was a popular catch phrase last century (police alerts, radio programs, board games, video games, etc.).
