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In the
beginning, they
were all "communications" receivers, used to pass messages from one
point to another. The advent of broadcasting, in the early
1920's, clouded the picture, and introduced the dichotomy between
communications and broadcast radios. My techno-centric view of the world has caused me to develop a profound interest in the technologically sophisticated communications sets. At any particular point in time, a top-notch communications receiver probably cost as much as a respectable automobile. While it may be easy to have contempt for the cheap, miserable broadcast set, one must keep in mind that it's been the extreme economic pressures of the public entertainment industry that has driven technological evolution ever since the inception of broadcasting. In this section, we will be primarilly concerned with vacuum-tube communications receivers of radio's Golden Era of the 1930's and '40's. You can read about the preceeding era here: The Age of the Autodyne |