[78-L] Early portable electric recording? [FWD]

[David Lennick]

The Buffalo station began offering these radios as premiums a couple of years 
ago, after that one storm that left some people without power for a number of days.

dl

Michael Biel wrote:
> Mike Harkin wrote:
>>> I've heard of wind-up radios, for places like Darkest Africa
>>> where there's no electricity. IIRC the wind-up motor drives
>>> a small geneerator; don't remember how long a winding was good for.
>>> MIke in Plovdiv
> From: Malcolm Rockwell <malcolm at 78data.com>
>> One can also get these in Darkest America if one knows
>> which catalogue to look in.  Mal
> 
> 
> Or you can just go to Radio Shack where they have about 5 or 6 different
> models.  Most also have a flashlight and emergency light, and I prefer
> the ones which also have a solar cell power option.  Most of these now
> also have a power outlet to allow for the recharging of cell phones. 
> You don't need to live in an area where there is no electricity service
> to experience power outages.  While I have never been in a situation
> where I lost power for more than 10 or 12 hours, there have been areas
> quite close to me -- including cities of a half million people -- where
> an ice storm or a flood caused the loss of power for two weeks.  You
> would have to be crazy not to have at least one of these. Most of these
> crank radios do not use wind-up motors, but have the crank driving the
> generator directly to put a charge into rechargable batteries.  You can
> prepare the batteries with when you have power, and also keep it in the
> sun if you have one with solar cells.  Then the crank is used to keep
> the batteries topped off when you lose power and it is night, or if you
> are running the flashlight bulb or charging your phone. 
> 
> To get back to the original question, the Magnamite wind-up tape
> recorder I discussed earlier, only used the spring motor to move the
> tape.  The tube amplifier needed batteries.
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>