Stewart-Warner - 1954
A nice close-up shot of the dial on this Stewart-Warner Model 9182 "AM - Special Services" radio.
The triangular "CD" markers along the outer frequency numbers, indicated the CONELRAD radio frequencies, 640 and 1240 AM (see description below). The inner portion of the dial shows the general frequency areas for several shortwave services, including AMATEUR, POLICE, SHIPS, and AVIATION.
On the back of the Model
9182 you can see the "Broadcast/SpecialServices"
switch, as well as an External Antenna wire lead, and - in those
days before transistors - the location of the vacuum tubes inside.
President Truman established the CONELRAD [CONtrol of ELectronic RADiation] system in 1951, to provide emergency alert to the public. Under this first national alerting system, in the event of a Soviet attack on the United States, all commercial radio stations would cease normal operation, in order to prevent Soviet bombers from homing in on their targets by using specific radio commercial radio stations as navigation beacons. Instead, selected CONELRAD stations would broadcast on either 604kHz or 1240kHz to inform the public about emergency measures. As part of the system it was obligatory for all radios sold after 1953 to have the CONELRAD frequencies 640/1240 kHz marked with small triangles on the dial. The triangles were referred to as CD marks, for Civil Defense. The marks on the radio dial were to make finding the frequencies easy. This requirement was dropped when the CONELRAD system was replaced by the Emergency Broadcast System in 1963. By the early 1960's the development of Soviet missiles had made the CONELRAD system obsolete.
In the late 1950s, radio personality Dennis James recorded a public-service announcement about the CONELRAD system.
Click
HERE to
listen to the .mp3 version, or click
HERE to
download or listen to the 2.6MB .wav file.
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