American Radio History

[ppppenguin]

I'm sure this amazing site has been mentioned before, but not recently.

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/

There are lots of UK jornals and books available, all totally free of charge. Not only are they well scanned but they are also OCR'ed and full text searchable. Almost a full set of Wireless World is one of the many treasures to be found.

I was surprised to find 4 of the 5 volumes of Asa Briggs monumental BBC history. Also just happened upon "On Air, A History of BBC Tranmission"

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arc...ission.pdf

Books like this, valuable as references, are made even more valuable by having fully searchable text. I have the paper copies but being able to search them means that my first recourse will usually be to the scanned versions.

I'm sure the copyright position is a bit dubious on some of his scans but he plays fair by openly saying he will take down disputed material.

[Old Sparky]

I have just read about a dozen pages of that 'History of BBC Transmission. Quite a fascinating story, but whether I shall ever read the whole thing is a moot point.

[Terry]

Your post seems to have put a curse on that site, Jeffrey!

I manage to download "On Air" with a little difficulty but then the site started timing out which was a pity, because I'd never noticed the search function before. I did, however, eventually manage to load the Wireless World index page so, hopefully, it was a temporary glitch.

One problem I have with WW in particular is finding the contents pages. Some issues are complete from cover to cover meaning that you have to plough through the rather large advertising section at the front to find the contents page whilst copies from other sources have been stripped back to the editorial content only but the contents page is also missing!

Having to downsize when we moved, I decided that all my paper copies had to go. Now, with my marvellous powers of hindsight, I wish I'd taken the time go through them and cut out all the contents pages ...

Another source of interesting articles is the IBA's Technical Review, copies of all the issues being available here:

http://www.ntlpa.org.uk/memorabilia  - about half way down the page.

[peter scott]

I have a some bound WW volumes from the 1930s that lack their advert pages. It is convenient but is also something of a loss.

Peter

[Old Sparky]

WW weren't the only mag. to put the contents page several pages of adverts inwards as it were. PW, Radio Constructor, PE, and (Practical)Television all did likewise, or at least they did when I was buying them regularly in the 60s & 70s.