Wavelength or frequency.

[colly0410]

British radios used to have the wavelength marked on their tuning dials/scales, USA had frequency marked. What did other countries such as Australia/New Zealand/Russia/Japan do?

[Murphyv310]

My Tandberg Solvsuper 3 (1941) has its dial calibrated in frequency.

[Old Sparky]

AFAIK, all Continental European Radios had their dials marked in Kilocycles (later Kiloherz), as presumably did other countries besides the USA & Canada. It always struck me a a little odd, that the only metric measurements in common use in the UK were Metres on Radio dials, and Litres for vehicle engine capacity. Another anomaly was that, when VHF broadcasting started we 'joined the majority' in marking dials with the frequencies involved, rather than 2.8 to 3.4 Metres.

[Murphyv310]

Before you and I were born, engine capacity was in cubic inches here.

[Terry]

The change from wavelength to frequency in the UK started in 1962 when the first imports of 6-transistor 'vest pocket radios' built in Japan for the US market started arriving in Britain with dials marked in hundreds of kilocycles, including the triangle and square symbols denoting the US ConelRad frequencies.

Hong Kong copies duplicated these designs, right down to the US dial markings.

As Far Eastern imports started to dominate the UK market, the trend of frequency marking increased. Also, as there is no Long Wave in the US, they were virtually all MW only - what the Americans used to refer to as the Broadcast band (BC). When the VHF band was added, this became the FM band in the US and the Broadcast band was renamed the AM band. Almost overnight, traditional UK traditions were wiped out by these imports!

[Cardigan]

Australia used to mark their dials in frequencies and callsigns - quite often, state specific. So sometimes you'd have sets marked just with stations in that state - e.g 2GB, a station in NSW (Sydney, in fact).

[colly0410]

Remember when all the Brit radio stations said their wavelength: 1500 metres for radio 2, 247 for R1, 208 for Luxembourg. Radio Trent in Nottingham said 301 metres (998Khz) but when it went up to 999Khz in 1978 it stayed with 301, I think it was nearer 300 metres but suppose 301 had a better ring to it...

[Old Sparky]

...and of course (back in the 60s) 'Radio Caroline on 199', even though their actual wave-lrngth was maybe 198 Metres

[Terry]

Radio Trent's 998kHz was 300.6m - 301m when rounded to the nearest integer. The move to 999kHz brought it down to 300.3m so, as 300m with rounding.

However, the 301m wavelength was familiar to listeners and nobody had radios with dials that accurate so would have been pointless to change it.

Radio Caroline - later Radio Caroline North - was 197.4m and Radio Atlanta - later Radio Caroline South was 1495kHz - 200.6m - so there never was a Caroline on 199 - but then, there never was a Caroline on 259 either!

The new frequencies used - 1169kHz and 1187kHz - equate to 256.6m and 252.7m repectively.

In similar fashion, Radio City claimed to be on 299m but it was really 1034kHz/290.1m

[Miguel Lopez]

Old Soviet radios had the dial calibrated in wavelength.

VEF-206 had a model with the dial calibrated in wavelength, and another model calibrated in frequency.