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On March 21, 1920, the Sandusky Register reported on an astonishing invention in which W. W. Macfarlane, traveling in a car (driven by a chauffeur), held a conversation with his wife back at the garage -500 yards down the road! The article is reprinted at Paleofuture. Link
The following is an article from the book History’s Lists from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.
During America’s wars, they were considered entertainers more than harbingers of fear to U.S. troops. But sometimes media stars like Tokyo Rose and Hanoi Hannah broadcast strategic information that there’s no way the enemy should have known.
As radio propagandists transmitting from enemy capitals, their job was to undermine the morale of opposing troops in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Uncle John examines the careers of seven infamous enemy broadcasters of the 20th century.
1. TOKYO ROSE
Iva Toguri was born in Los Angeles in 1916 and graduated from UCLA with a zoology degree; she was visiting Japan when war broke out in 1941. She was hardly a household name in World War II -until the name given her by Allied forces in the Pacific made her an international celebrity.
Wartime Activities: Tokyo Rose played American music and used American slang during her 20-minute daily newscast on Radio Tokyo’s “The Zero Hour” while she predicted attacks, identified American ships and submarines, and even peppered her conversation with the names of prominent individuals. Listeners thought she was uncannily accurate, but she had little impact on the offensive juggernaut that first isolated and then defeated Japan.
Postwar: After the war, Toguri was arrested, convicted of treason, and imprisoned; she was released for good behavior in 1956 after serving six years. Upon moving to Chicago, where her family ran a store, she insisted she had always been a loyal American. She claimed that she was forced to make the broadcasts, and Allied POWs who worked with her confirmed her story years later, convincing president Gerald Ford to pardon her in 1977. In January 2006, she received the Edgar J. Herlihy Citizenship Award from the World War II Veterans Committee; she died in September of that year.
2. LORD HAW-HAW
The British gave the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” to a collection of announcers on the English-language propaganda broadcasts from Hamburg, Germany, during World War II. But it was William Joyce, who claimed to be a British citizen, who came to symbolize Lord Haw-Haw as the chief Nazi sympathizer. Born in the United States and raised in England and Ireland, Joyce was a member of the British Union of Fascists and was about to be arrested when he fled to Germany in 1939.
Wartime activities: From 1939 to 1945, his radio broadcasts to England on the “Germany Calling” program were designed to undermine the morale of the English, Canadian, Australian, and American troops, as well as the citizens of the British Isles. Joyce reported Allied ship losses and planes shot down, and bragged about Nazi secret weapons with the goal of demoralizing the Allies.
more …
If you thought the morning zoo crew on your local radio station were about as entertaining as robots, there may be more truth in that then you thought. One station in San Antonio has “hired” an artificially intelligent DJ named “Denise” to talk to listeners. Is this the end of the traditional radio DJ?
Meet Denise. She is not a real person, but instead, a personal assistant conjured up by Guile 3D Studio. She used to be a AI secretary, starting Aug 24th, she’ll be promoted to AI DJ at KROV in San Antonio. Denise cost a meager $200 when she was “hired” as a personal assistant to answer phone calls, Google things for people, check emails and make appointments. You know, the same kind of things you have your intern do after you’ve bought him for $200. It was radio personality Dominique Garcia‘s idea to promote Denise to DJ.
The Onion always has some great satire, but this radio piece on the banks trying to charge $.75 every time a customer says the word “bank.” I’m glad I use a credit union or else this article would cost me.
Link Via Consumerist
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BodyGard Survivor – $28.95
Is your Father a gadget freak? You need to check out the BodyGard Survivor 12-1 self-powered emergency tool from the NeatoShop! It is the perfect gift for any Dad who loves to push buttons. This great little item includes lots and lots of buttons and other cool stuff:
Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Tools!
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Building the world’s largest radio telescope will come with lots of infrastructure issues to start with. One of the biggest problems researchers will face is how to analyze the massive amount of data that will be collected. One solution may be to turn to the public for some extra computing power.
Australia wants to host the world’s biggest and most sensitive radio telescope, and as part of its bid to land the $2.1 billion Square Kilometer Array (SKA) the joint Aussie-New Zealand effort is going go launch a massive cloud computing initiative in September to prove it can handle the data flow. The initiative could quickly turn into one of the largest scientific cloud computing networks in the world, tapping the computing power and storage offered up by desktop computers worldwide.
This photograph of a liquor store was taken in Minneapolis in 1939, and recently posted to Shorpy. Interesting, but… what is that futuristic thing sticking up out of the car parked in front?
The first comment on the picture identified the car as a new 1939 Mercury, and the second commenter asked about the flashy antenna. It didn’t take long for someone to find another car with the same gadget, and another to find an advertisement for the exact radio and antenna. This kind of collaboration and information sharing is one of the things that makes the internet so addicting. Link -Thanks, Marilyn Terrell!
The Romance of Radio Astronomy – $14.95
If your lover is a star lover (no, not the celebrity kind – the massive, luminous ball of plasma kind), then here’s the perfect T-shirt for you: The Romance of Radio Astronomy from the NeatoShop by Mark Heath of Nobrow Cartoons. Perfect for Valentine’s Day gift, too!
Like that? See more: Mark Heath T-shirts | Scientists Do It T-shirts | Science T-Shirts | Funny T-Shirts
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It doesn’t have fancy display system and a bazillion buttons to push, but the Naked Radio by Simon Hasan managed to capture the essence of cool with minimal parts.
From Technabob:
It’s made from unusual materials such as porcelain, walnut, stainless steel, brass, and yes, that’s a speaker grill made from lace. You control the volume by turning the speaker. The frequency is selected by rotating the antenna. It’s too bad that Hasan has only made one of these, because I’m sure that they’d sell to those with an eye for unusual design.
In some recesses of the radio spectrum, you can listen to strange broadcasts that consist entirely of people reading numbers. For years, people have speculated about the purpose of these unlicensed, unidentified radio stations. The most obvious possibility is espionage. NPR consulted Mark Stout, a spycraft historian, on the subject:
He tells NPR’s Guy Raz that the stations are unlicensed, which makes it hard to figure out where they’re broadcasting from. And the mystery only deepens: No government has ever officially admitted to using numbers stations. No one’s really sure when the stations began broadcasting, though they’re most likely a Cold War-era invention.
And, Stout says, no matter how advanced modern computer cryptography is, good old shortwave is often the best option for getting messages to spies in the field.
“Because [a message] can be broadcast over such an enormous area, you can be transmitting to an agent who may be thousands of miles away,” he says. And, he adds, computer communications almost always leave traces.
“It’s really hard to erase data out of your hard drive or off a memory stick,” he says. “But all you need here is a shortwave radio and pencil and paper.”
Link via reddit | Photo by Flickr user maliciousmonkey used under Creative Commons license
A radio at the Montrose Air Station Heritage Center in Scotland has been picking up radio broadcasts from the WWII era.
The vintage radio set is kept in a recreation of a 1940s room. Several people have heard Second World War era broadcasts including the big band sound of the Glenn Miller orchestra and speeches by Winston Churchill. The broadcasts come on at random and can last for up to half an hour…
“It plays Glenn Miller, and that’s what everyone has heard. It is very faint and you have to put your ear to it, but that’s what it’s playing.
“It’s not just one of us who’s heard it – most of us here have. We are talking about highly educated, reliable people.
“My wife Aileen was with me when we heard the Glenn Miller Orchestra last weekend. She’s a physicist and not predisposed to believing in things like this but no-one has an explanation.
The fact that the radio is not plugged in will cause some people to be skeptical, and assume that an audio device has been hidden inside the radio case. However…
Technicians who examined it removed the back, but found “nothing but cobwebs and spiders”.
So there.
Link. RAF Heritage Center website.
This list of hilarious answers to game show questions proves that American contestants aren’t the only ones who fall apart under pressure. Here is a sample:
BEG, BORROW OR STEAL (BBC2)
Jamie Theakston: Where do you think Cambridge University is?
Contestant: Geography isn’t my strong point.
Theakston: There’s a clue in the title.
Contestant: Leicester.
PHIL WOOD SHOW (BBC GMR)
Wood: What ‘K’ could be described as the Islamic Bible?
Contestant: Er. . .
Wood: It’s got two syllables . . . Kor . . .
Contestant: Blimey?
Wood: Ha ha ha ha, no. The past participle of run . . .
Contestant: (Silence.)
Wood: OK, try it another way. Today I run, yesterday I . . .
Contestant: Walked?
What’s doubly funny is how the hosts try their best to help out a clueless contestant. Link -via Bits and Pieces
At Chromoscope, you start with a boilerplate view of the Milky Way galaxy. Select options to view it in other wavelengths such as x-ray, infrared, microwave, or radio. Above is the hydrogen alpha wavelength view.
Link. Blog with video explanation. via kottke.
In the world of radio journalism, there’s nothing better than “This American Life.” With their remarkable focus on everyday people and their indescribable story selection, the hipster-friendly show is a unique radio magazine.
Try your luck on ten questions about the PRI show and its television counterpart in this Lunchtime Quiz from mental_floss. Link
Following a friend’s suggestion, Jonathan Ryan made a Pandora station with artists and bands with foods in their names. Here’s the result: Food Radio – via JonathanRyan
