British Wireless for the Blind Fund...

[Nick]

Another day, another radio...

This one has a rather lovely, but badly damaged, gold label on it stating:

"The property of"
"The British Wireless for the Blind Fund"

I could do a bit of Photoshop to generate a new, complete, transfer but it would take a while. It is rather nice - very glitzy in a 1950's kind of way...

Anyone know what I'm talking about here

Cheers

EDIT: The "British Wireless for the Blind Fund" are still around http://www.blind.org.uk/ albeit with a rather newer logo!

[Paul_RK]

Anyone know what I'm talking about here

Very much so The WFBF (or perhaps an earlier incarnation) has provided radios for blind listeners since the 1920s - Burne-Jones crystal sets with Braille tuning dials come to mind. The label you describe or something very similar will probably be familiar to most folks chiefly from turning up on generations of Roberts sets from around 1960 at least until 1990. Rexine/vinyl covered examples were almost always red, presumably to aid visibility, and would sometimes show modifications to make them more suitable for partially-sighted listeners: a large mushroom-shaped plastic tip to the telescopic aerial, or an oversized on-off switch with clear visual indication of which way it was pointing.

The latest WFBF models here are two TVS1s, mains-only television sound receivers in the style of Roberts' larger transistor portables. Both their gold and black labels have gone crinkly, but I ought to be able to locate a mid-'60s WFBF R300 if you would like a scan of a well-preserved label to help with reconstructing yours.

Regards,
Paul

[Nick]

Here's a rather poor photo from my phone... 'tis the very dirtiest DAC10 'oive every clapped me eyes on... many generations of gerbils seem to have been making happy times in there...

[Paul_RK]

Yes, as far as I can see that's the exact label applied to the Roberts TVS1 about forty years later.

[Nick]

Yes, as far as I can see that's the exact label applied to the Roberts TVS1 about forty years later.

I spoke to the fund and they don't have any available graphics, though they are sending me a photo of a compete one.

In the interim, a graphics artist friend has done a wonderful job of re-creating the sticker, including the subtle mottled effect of the gold background, the fonts, the scroll-work etc. - he did it from scratch - its astonishing what a professional can do in a hour - 10 times better than my attempts and in a fraction of the time...

When we've confirmed it is an accurate version of the full label, I'll make it available - too large to post here - the bitmap is 10Mbytes at the moment (that's what comes of using someone with real kit!).

I have some sheets of laser water-slide transfer paper that I'll run through to check them as well...