Soldered splices

[LarryFine]

Larry, would a Gillette Red Blade work just as well?

Don't know. This was from an elementary-school libraray book I found when I was in the first grade (45 years ago). It was about how prisoners-of-war made radios with what they had.

The circuit had a 100-turn coil of wire wrapped around a paper-towel tube, one end grounded, the other end to the antenna. Paralleled with that was the detector in series with high-impedance headphones.

The detector itself was made by attaching a piece of pencil lead to the tip of a safety pin with a small piece of wire, and only the tip of the lead touching the blue blade. (I don't think there were red blades back then.)

The wire to the safety pin went to the antenna end of the coil, and the wire to the blade went to the headphones, and the other headphone wire went to the ground end of the coil.

 

[rattus]

Larry, red blades came before blue blades. My daddy reused them by honing them inside a water glass! Of course, I am older than you; older than most for that matter.